Ellis - Vanilla+

List of changes:

• His fingers no longer move parts of his hands. (His pinky doesn't move random parts of his palm.)
• Collapse to Incap & Die Standing animations have had their fall landing sounds adjusted to match.
• Added producer_body_it as an available skingroup, allowing the holster to be covered in Boomer Bile.
• Implemented LOD models for better Source Engine Performance.

To Understand

Okay, here's some clarity. Ellis will still look normal if you download this. The only difference is that ** when you're further away, the game will use less polygons for him ** - which is something the game already does with the L4D1 survivors - making this mod more focused on optimizing. The game didn't do this before, which is bad. Basically, think Vanilla+ or something like that.

This is a model mod. Other Ellis mods that replace the model will conflict. Texture mods for Ellis work fine. HOWEVER, one material is included that may conflict with other texture mods if they change the material: mechanic_head_it.vmt

To summarize, Ellis has been modded to have better LOD, (Level of Detail,) which means this will give you a better performance.

For details:

Ellis' model itself didn't really have any problems. The only thing worth mentioning is that I've removed any issues with his fingers weighted to parts of his hands were they shouldn't be weighted. Other than that, Ellis was fine.

Just like Nick, Ellis' regular LOD models never actually decreased the polygons.

Ellis has 13,776 tris, or polygons. The game also uses that for his shadow, basically doubling the poly-count to 27,552 tris! With this, not only does his model decrease poly-count the further away you are from him, his shadow uses a low-poly model of 2,545 tris. This means that ** even when you're using the highest model from him, he'll still only render 16,321 tris, which is a 11,231 difference of polygons being saved! **

** LOD 0 ** - Highest poly-count model. (13,776)

** LOD 10 ** - Fingertip bones aren't used. This is the default model used when model settings are Low. Poly-count is the same as above.

** LOD 15 ** - Hair detail + others removed. Some fingers' bones are removed. Overall poly-count lowered ~25% (9,961)

** LOD 25 ** - Facials removed. Fingers removed. Overall poly-count lowered ~60% (5,075)

** LOD 40 & Shadow LOD ** - Hand bones aren't used. Overall poly-count lowered ~80 (2,545)

Fun Fact!

Before this mod, if you had all L4D2 Survivors rendered with their shadows, you'd get 125,328 polygons total. If you have this mod and the other Survivors, you'd get 74,958 polygons. That's a ** 50,370 difference just from the lower-poly shadows alone! **