There's an artist who uses the nick Bob3d who frequents the BlitzCoder forums but can't post on here as he's not a coder and doesn't want to buy Blitz. He noticed that this project had started up again and asked me to mention to you that he has a fully rigged, animated and textured model which he made available recently for all. The license is already practically open source, and he's quite happy for you to use it in this project.
It's a gladiator style model, but the quality of the model and animations is excellent, and I'm sure someone could change it to suit their needs quite easily. Remove the shoulder protection, scifi-up the texture, whatever.
THe only problem is that it can't currently be used in b3d format. There is a bug in CharacterFX ( his animation package of choice ) and although I don't quite understand the technical stuff, the animation gets screwed up in b3d format. It's something to do with mirroring bones. I believe he includes the cfx file and the md2 file, so conversion and editing should not be a problem. He has also said that it would be practically useless in b3d format, even if Dirk fixes the CFX bug, as it doesn't animate correctly without vertex weights.
I don't know if there's any chance of us ever getting vertex weights, but here's another model that shows you what we're missing out on by not having them. The thread with the model, and Beaker's mirror is here if you're interested. It's good stuff :
http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/ubb-cgi/postdisplay.cgi?forum=Forum10&topic=000622
It's a gladiator style model, but the quality of the model and animations is excellent, and I'm sure someone could change it to suit their needs quite easily. Remove the shoulder protection, scifi-up the texture, whatever.
THe only problem is that it can't currently be used in b3d format. There is a bug in CharacterFX ( his animation package of choice ) and although I don't quite understand the technical stuff, the animation gets screwed up in b3d format. It's something to do with mirroring bones. I believe he includes the cfx file and the md2 file, so conversion and editing should not be a problem. He has also said that it would be practically useless in b3d format, even if Dirk fixes the CFX bug, as it doesn't animate correctly without vertex weights.
I don't know if there's any chance of us ever getting vertex weights, but here's another model that shows you what we're missing out on by not having them. The thread with the model, and Beaker's mirror is here if you're interested. It's good stuff :
http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/ubb-cgi/postdisplay.cgi?forum=Forum10&topic=000622