I'm planning on doing some re-skins for FE and finishing off the re-skin of the various races I didn't get to in Elemental. I'm sure those of you who used Mods in Elemental probably remember my skin packs and the Undead Rising series the Dragonlance Team and I did. If you weren't around then, here's some pictures so you get the idea.

Zombie Skin for units in the Undead "Ravenloft" faction from Undead Rising.

Realistic Urxen Skin. I used the term "Realistic" not because it makes the units look real, but because the textures I used to make the skins in the "Realistic" series all came from actual photos of skin textures. When I did the Quendar (see below) I used actual scale textures from a rattle snake.

I would very much like to improve on my Skeleton skin this time around.

As you can see in the images above the Skeleton is just a skin on a standard model. I'd like to find a way to do a actual skeleton model but I'm no modeler or animator. The guys in the team, Admiral and Impinc did a model and animation but I don't know how it came out in the end and whether or not it upped the running requirements with it's poly count. Sadly when I got sicker and went inactive for a rather long time I lost touch with the other members of the Dragonlance Team. Unfortunately I should probably also take this opportunity to announce the actual Dragonlance project is dead. The coding necessary to make it work was far too ambitious I think.

As for a actual skeleton, I think it may be possible to mask out some of the model with a alpha channel and make only the skeleton skinned part of the model show with the skin its-self. I'm not sure though. Or, if we want an actual skeleton model, I'll need a little help. I have noticed that FE seems to have actual undead units all it's own while Elemental did not so maybe there will be a model for me to re-skin in the final version.

I may or may not need some help with some coding as I've more or less forgot what I knew a year ago when it comes to making custom tiles show up and I still have all the tiles done by the team members, myself, and the most excellent John Hughs who did some outstanding tile work here in the community.

Also, I don't want to step on any toes and Heavenfall has a undead faction is his mods as well and he's done great with and far surpassed what I am capable of doing alone. Most assuredly with my health being what it is Heavenfall will be more active in the modding community after I've completed and finished whatever I'll turn out. As such I've offered him custodianship of my work after it's done to be incorporated with whatever he does if he so chooses and also made my skinning skills available to him for whatever he does.

If anyone has anything they'd like to contribute feel free to speak up. Feedback on what you all want to see and ideas are always welcome. This would include unit ideas for the rebirth of the "Ravenloft" faction when I update Undead Rising for use with FE. With a lot of the new monsters Stardock has provided with FE I can really do some proper undead advanced units this time so we won't be stuck with just Lord Strahd, a Skeleton, and a Zombie. I think Heavenfall has created some awesome Ghosts and stuff I haven't seen yet so maybe he'll let me borrow some of what he's done if I ask him nicely and we can round out a full unit compliment with multiple types of units specific to the undead.

Please let me know what you all think.

Thanks for reading, RavenX