WOW! I hope you didn't think you had to spend money on this, though those sound like great toys to have anyway -- I hope the wife/gf understood (grin). I cant wait to see what you come up with.
I've written four new OpenZone tutorials for mob modeling with Anim8or, but when I finished them I realized that the process was way too tedious for my liking (I usually take some shortcuts like modifying the .AN8 files directly, but they won't do for a tutorial). I've decided to make some enhancements to my software to try to make things easier:
1. Expand OpenZone's .AN8 import ability so it can handle grouped objects (partially done, can load groups as long as they aren't rotated)
2. Expand the client so it will also look for objects and creatures in separate .XWF files in the zone's .XWA archive (done; if the .XWA contains objects.xwf and/or creatures.xwf, it will load them as well).
3. Add force-loading capability to the client when dealing with .XWA files (done, but untested; requires an upgrade to OpenZone first).
4. Change OpenZone's export to .XWA so it puts objects in objects.xwf and creatures in creatures.xwf rather than putting everything in a single .xwf file.
5. Add .AN8 export capability to OpenZone. This is good to have in general but part of it is also necessary for step #6.
6. Add tools to OpenZone that tackle some of the more tedious parts of mob modeling, such as copying a model, removing all variants, copying an object to make a variant, etc. These need step #5 above since they'll involve modifying Anim8or files.
7. Rework the tutorials to use the new OpenZone features.
This will probably take a few weeks, but the results will be worth it. I can use whatever you make without all this, but these changes will make it easier for everyone else to take all of the needed steps to make mob models usable. If you want to see the models I've already made, they come with OpenZone 7.6 in the /library/creatures folder (.AN8 files are Anim8or files).
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