Darkness for
Unreal Tournament 2003
Release date: May 11 2003
Model description :
Jackie Estacado is an orphan who's been raised by his MOB related uncle. He's the only son of the most terrible hired assassin in Mafia history, Danny Estacado. Danny had a reputation of not only killing it's victims, but to also shred them to pieces. He died at the exact moment a prostitute fell pregnant of him. He then passed the mysterious Darkness force to his seconds-old son. Jackie also became a really talented killer for the account of his uncle Frankie. At the age of 21, the Darkness power awakened from within himself and has been under his control ever since. This power of the shadows grant him the possibility of creating various forms of evil creatures, as well as personal weapons in the form of claws, armour and tendrils. The only drawback to this power is that it can't manifest itself under sunlight... and worst of it all, Jackie will die at the exact moment a woman will get pregnant from him, passing the power to this own son.
Other info :
This is the second time I create a model of Darkness. It was my first ever model, back in 1999, for Quake2. I've decided to recreate it because I have evolved a lot as a modeller since this first attempt. Now the UT2003 engine gives a lot of possibility of special effect to give Darkness all those shiny parts. I modelled the character without even looking at the polycount, and ended with 2500 triangles. For the skin work, I wanted to give him a lot of details. The whole body is painted with a 1024x1024 texture, with a 1-pass specularity shader. The CTF team versions are 512x512 though. The face uses the best part of another 512x512 texture, and a 2-pass shader giving reflection as well as glowing eyes. Finally the hair, back spikes and the green orb jewels share together another 512x512 texture, masked by an Alpha channel. The skin is entirely done from scratch, using Photoshop and my Wacom tablet to create the muscle base. Then the minute details are created with 3D Studio Max. I'm really glad of the end result for this model, he has one of my best skinning job so far. The character uses the UT2003 native male animations and rag-dolls.
Here's some screenshots from Unreal Tournament 2003.
