~ Mercury ~
This skin for mercury was not particularly difficult in itself. After Brynhildr Bacchus, this was my second skin working at HiRez Studios. Going from and overly obese character then immediately jumping to an increadibly lean character was a drastic paradigm shift. It really pollished my knowledge on how the anatomy of the body worked with different body types. It was also fun to work on the nunchucks that could swithc between the hands. This skin was also a lesson in dealing with last moment major model changes. In a short time before this skin was released; the entire head of this god changed drasticly so we could avoid any legal trouble with his likeness.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: Shaolin Fury
Date Released: 12.01.2016
Character Modeler: Michael Ulloa
Bone Count: 67
Mercury is always interesting to work on. Unlike most of SMITE's gods, he does not rely on the use of a weapon or magic, instead he is primarily a melee fighter. This meant that he has a lot of movement, and his new additional armor had to work with his aniamtions with no new controls. This was not an issue, the challenge came in weightign the skirt with the geometry of the model. The slates of armor were modeled into the skirt, so I had to soft weight the skirt in such a way that the armor could deform well, while keeping the general shape.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: Centurion
Date Released: 21.06.2016
Character Modeler: Amanda Chavez
Bone Count: 71
~ Bellona ~
Bellona as a god is a challenge in herself. She wields 4 different weapon variations depending on the attack. I thought that keeping track of her different weapon versions and aniations would be the challenge, but instead I found the challenge instead in her butt. All her prior skins had had skirts and not a large butt. This skin was desgined for her to have a larger butt and I decided to use some bones saved from the skirt to create individual butt bones to preserve volume and script the bones so they would move at different percentages depending on how the legs moved. She also got a brand new faicial rig so she could have a entirely seperate personality.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: Rock-A-Bellona
Date Released: 06.07.2016
Character Modeler: Trevor Hennington
Bone Count: 89
As opposed to Bellona skin 5, where she had no skirts; this skin had 5 seperated layers of skirts. Layering the controls and mesh weighting was the major challenge of this skin.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: Enyo
Date Released: 04.01.2017
Character Modeler: Trevor Hennington
Bone Count: 99
For Enyo Bellona, I felt that the Recall animation for her Axe was a decen choice for showing off this rig. Through this animation she twists and hunches through the movements as well as the changes in her expression.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: Enyo
Date Released: 04.01.2017
Character Modeler: Trevor Hennington
Bone Count: 99
~ Sylvanus ~
Sylvanus is a special case amongst the gods of SMITE. He is built using two seperate biped rigs, one for the Sylvanus himself the other for Grover the tree. Sylvanus didn't change much for this skin, aside from his mushroom cap hat. The change for this skin was Grover's tree branches changing into mushrooms and the fungus on his amrs and legs. I found, in working on this skin, that Sylvanus may be one of my favorite gods to work on.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: Deathcap
Date Released: 30.08.2016
Character Modeler: Saman Tahmasebi
Bone Count: 150
As I said before, Sylvanus may be one of my top favorite gods to work on. Between Sylvanus, Grover and the owl, he is a always a lot of funto work on. The interesting point of this skin was tht Grover the tree was now a cactus and his branches had to behave differently, and getting the tiny cacti to work with this body was a fun challenge. For Sylvanus himself, he was wearing pants for this skin, so that freed up bones for his hat, mustache and poncho.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: High Noon
Date Released: 08.11.2016
Character Modeler: Saman Tahmasebi
Bone Count: 158
As always, I was excited to work on this Sylvanus skin. This time however Sylvanus was made into a V3 rig and was split between myself and another rigger. My part in building this rig was Grover the tree and the new addition; the squirrel. For this skin I added a whole new skeleton to the equation which now makes Sylvanus a 3 character god. I added a new branch onto Grover's back for the easel and canvas, as well as weighted the squirrel with a full face and biped rig. He was treated to a whole new set of animations and was a treat to work on.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: Bob Ross
Date Released: 09.05.2017
Character Modeler: Jonathan Kuo
Bone Count: 160
The Victory animation for Sylvanus may be one of my favorites just for the Grover the tree and his reacitons to sylvanus playing music.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: High Noon
Date Released: 08.11.2016
Character Modeler: Saman Tahmasebi
Bone Count: 158
Sylvanus V3 Skin 6 was treated to a whole new set of animations. I wanted to show off one of the aniamtions specific to this skin, so I chose the taunt animation.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: Bob Ross
Date Released: 09.05.2017
Character Modeler: Jonathan Kuo
Bone Count: 160
~ Vulcan ~
Vulcan was relatively straight forward for the most part. He would have had only the new knife and grenade controls, but I thought the floating leg was odd and it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the skin. To resolve this, I added a slider and bone that would allow the leg to either connect to the body or stay separated depending on the animation.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: Full Metal Vulcan
Date Released: 01.02.2017
Character Modeler: David Riddle
Bone Count: 69
For the military style of Vulcan's Skin 6, the turret was changed to match the theme. It's design did not match to any of the pre-existing meshes, so I rebuilt the rig from scratch.
Special Thanks
Skin name: Full Metal Vulcan
Date Released: 01.02.2017
Character Modeler: David Riddle
Bone Count: 10
I chose to show off the defeat animation because it is one of the few that his leg comes entirely apart. I wanted to show that unique quality of Vulcan's as a god of SMITE.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: Full Metal Vulcan
Date Released: 01.02.2017
Character Modeler: David Riddle
Bone Count: 69
Though the animation is brief, I felt the stunned animation shows how all the different parts of the rig move about in this stunned animation.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: Full Metal Vulcan
Date Released: 01.02.2017
Character Modeler: David Riddle
Bone Count: 10
~ Cupid ~
My first time working on Cupid, much to my amusement, was creating his V4 rig. This skin is his first with holding a firearm, whereas usually he is holding either a bow or a sling shot. Rig wise, it was not too different, but it was fun trying to figure out different set ups for the Jetpack to get the behavior I wanted. His hair was the more difficult part of weighting this model, but I had the most fun with the jetpack.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: Dr. MadLove
Date Released: 26.7.2017
Character Modeler: Ben Knapp
Bone Count: 72
With this being a V4 rig, Cupid got a whole new set of animations to accomidate the new rig. One that I thought was quite charming was one of his Idle variant animations.
Special Thanks
Skin Name: Dr. MadLove
Date Released: 26.7.2017
Character Modeler: Ben Knapp
Bone Count: 72
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