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Moon Lord (Terraria)

"Impending doom approaches..."


Moon Lord, the ultimate showdown, punctuating the apocalyptic finale of Terraria. His twisted alien visage strikes fear into the hearts of even the most hardened adventurer. His piercing eyes shoot luminescent bolts of energy, striking through the defenses of his adversaries. He brings with him absolute domination, and leaves absolute destruction in his wake.


I had originally planned to do the bosses in order, starting with the Eye first, and Moon Lord last. This was before I broke my workshop schedule, and before I got terribly ill. I decided, since the workshop has been so patient with my absence, I'd go ahead and pick one of the fan favorites from the list instead. Moon Lord has hundreds of more requests than any other boss. There has also never been a Moon Lord released to GMod. He was originally started back in September, and I've worked on him on and off since then. Between my own personal sickness and other delays, he's taken four months of work.

Design-wise, what you see is what you get. The sprite is super detailed, so translating it to 3D was fairly straightforward. The difficulty came into play with the small detail work. His face alone required a lot of tweaking and adjusting to get right. Planning for some of his many moving parts was also annoying, requiring breaking the model into several pieces and working on it in sections, only to rejoin it at the end.

It's strange to think, but having worked on many of the other bosses, their little quirks ultimately contributed to Moon Lord's construction. I found myself using techniques I learned from several of the other bosses while working on Moon Lord. Ice Queen's arms, Eater of World's fleshiness and worm-skeleton, Skeletron and Pumpking's facial details. Had I done Moon Lord first, I imagine this model would have turned out drastically differently, probably for the worst. Iterating on these bosses based on difficulty has resulted in better submissions across the board.

However, I'm not going to kid myself, Moon Lord has problems. Despite looking nice, he's got several issues with his weights and rig. His texture also came out somewhat bland, and the facial flexes are mediocre at best. I had a sobering realization while working on him that my 3D content creation skills are borderline amateur at best. I don't appear to be improving as much as I used to. Following on some advice I got from artists much more talented than myself, I'm beginning to question if I should continue creating models for the workshop, and instead seek out professional help, maybe through tutorials, tutors, or even classes on the subject.

I think I'm going to take a break from the Terraria stuff for a while(I know, I put out so little as it is), and maybe pursue some other stuff I have piling up.

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-Like Ice Queen, he has a set of VRD bones that support tweaking of the shoulder and forearm. The forearm twist bone is called hlp_lowerArm_twist_L/R, and is pretty much mandatory if you want to fix his arm twist. The shoulder bones are largely useless. I need to take some serious time out to figure out how to use VRD bones before I pursue another "armed" model.

-His central eyeball, the one in his forehead, is poseable. It functions just like a real Source eyeball.

-The brain covering his heart is bodygrouped, and can be hidden.

-The eyeballs in each hand are bodygrouped, and can be hidden.

-He has a set of facial flexes for some primitive expressions and other nifty effects. The basic ones are as follows:
>"Shock" = Raises his eyebrows
>"Anger" = Furrows his eyebrows
>"Nose-Sniff" = Nose Curl
>"Mouth-Open-Wide" = Opens his mouth horizontally
>"Mouth-Open-Jaw" = Opens his mouth vertically
>"Mouth-Teeth-Open-L" = Opens his left teeth outward
>"Mouth-Teeth-Open-R" = Opens his right teeth outward
>"Eyes-CloseCenter" = Closes his central eye
>"Hands-Eyes-Open" = Opens his left or right hand eyes. This is a stereo flex.

-In addition to the above facial flexes, he also has flexes for controlling special features on his body:
>"Forehead-Eye-Hide" = Moves his central eye back into his head
>"Forehead-Teeth-Warp-Set1" = Wiggles several of the teeth in his forehead eye socket
>"Forehead-Teeth-Warp-Set2" = Wiggles several of the teeth in his forehead eye socket
>"Forehead-Teeth-Warp-Set3" = Wiggles several of the teeth in his forehead eye socket
>"Hand-Teeth-Warp-Set1" = Wiggles several of the teeth in his left or right hand eye socket. Stereo
>"Hand-Teeth-Warp-Set2" = Wiggles several of the teeth in his left or right hand eye socket. Stereo
>"Hand-Teeth-Warp-Set3" = Wiggles several of the teeth in his left or right hand eye socket. Stereo
>"Heart-Pump" = Shrinks/Enlarges the heart in his chest, to simulate pumping.

-Each of the three eyes on his body(his central eye, his left hand, and his right hand) can be hidden to reveal a toothy eye socket. To hide the left or right hand eyeballs, use the bodygroup "hand_eye_L" or "hand_eye_R". Because the central eyeball is a real eye, you have to use the "Forehead-Eye-Hide" flex to hide it instead.

-The "Forehead-Teeth-Warp" and "Hand-Teeth-Warp" flex sets allow you to simulate randomized teeth movement in his eye sockets. Sliding the flex to the left rotates the teeth in each set Clock-Wise, and to the right, Counter-Clock-Wise. Using the Motion Editor, you can record yourself jostling the slider up and down to create randomized teeth movement. Do this for each Teeth Set, and then playback. You'll have your very own animated toothy eyesocket.

-The "Heart-Pump" flex works the same way as the Teeth Set flexes. Gradually moving the slider up and down while recording will create a heart pumping animation. Go faster or slower for faster/slower heartbeats.

-He has an almost unmanageable number of tentacles on his face. Refer to the rigging script supplied with this submission.

-His eyes have a luminescent glow, which can be toggled off using the secondary skin.

-Despite my best efforts, I was unable to get his face tentacles glowing. I don't have a solution to this problem, he just can't have a skin texture AND glowing tentacles.

-The tongue model is separated, mostly for convenience. It contains bones for coiling the tongue, and closing the greater mandibles. The minor mandibles can be closed/opened using the corresponding flex.

-For whatever reason, when spawning him in, his eye viewtarget will be facing directly at the ground. No clue why that happens, I assume it has to do somewhat with having a central eyeball.

-I had planned to add the other attacks as extra models, but this submission NEEDS to be finished, I can't keep delaying for minor stuff.

-This model sports a whopping 25k triangles, nearly 2.5 times the average boss. Handle with care.

-He was scaled using Skeletron as a base. Maybe I shouldn't make them so big.



The original concept and design of "Moon Lord" is the intellectual property of "Re-Logic".


Includes:
terr\models\bosses\boss_moon_lord.mdl
terr\models\bosses\boss_moon_lord_tongue.mdl

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