[ARTIFEX]phazer (Patron: Flinn)

[Flinn]

My bit

Hello there fellow Citizens, it’s me again.. I have to say, 2020 has been a naughty year for many, and it was also the year I dedicated most time to promote people in the Curia for both Citizenship and Large Awards.. is that a coincidence?

Silly jokes aside, I’m here today to present you a relatively new member of this community, phazer who has imposed himself to the attention of his fellow modders because of his very good modding tools. Since I’m not a modder myself and because of the facts that a modding tool does not have the immediate visibility of a, say, overhaul mod, for once instead of posting the recommendation letters at the end of the application, I’ll integrate them to my bit to better illustrate his modding contributions.

Let’s start with when I first noticed him: it was during 2018 modding awards, that he was voted as the second best (ex aequo) new modder.

There aren’t many new modders, especially for the new titles, so this in itself It’s a merit he has.. to further add to this he was voted during 2019 edition as the “Favorite Tool & Resource maker for Warscape Engine”

And this is certainly a big achievement and recognition he already got from the community (once again, I’m not a modder, but I know that a lot of people has complained about the lack of tools for Warscape engine, and his works at the least partly fill the gap). His main contribution is in the 3D modeling, which is a rather big field to work at.. while I was asking Gig’s opinion on phazer’s works, that’s what he told me..

I am not very versed with 3D stuff but anyone that works on a tool over that length of time is an automatic artifex for me.

I mean, we can assume that Gig knows what he’s talking about when it comes to modding, can’t we?

However, during the same 2019 Modding Awards edition he has been chosen by the Committee as one of the 3 favorite modders for that year;

Since Steph was the one who proposed him, I’ll use his words

I have been following more closely phazer's work recently. He is more active on Discord, which allow more interactive exchanges during the development of his tools, but he is also active here, where he posts updated of this progress for the major milestones, and also TWC is where the "public" versions can be found.
I've seen a lot of progress in the tools, with clearly a lot of work, skills and passion behind. The tool is not finished, but it's because phazer is expanded it regularly, taking into account new demands from the community, not because it's left in a draft stage.
As it is now, it is already usable, and very impressive; it can display an animate units directly from the game files, with a selection of different parts, and with a final rendering very close from the game. We are very close from an "army painter" requested by many on CA official forum, although sadly for them, it will remains as a powerful editor for mods, and not integrated inside the game... But that would require a lot of changes by CA and is unlikely to happen.
I'm sure phazer still has a lot of ideas in his to-do list, his own or from the community, and his tools should only get better, with more cool features coming.
And beside his technical achievement, I also like phazer's view about the community, sharing ideas, suggestions, and making a tool to help the others as much as possible. He clearly does this because he greatly enjoy the challenge, but in a spirit of service to the community that I appreciate.

I echo the comment about him showing a spirit of service to the community, which is what made me actually think at first that I could sponsor him.
As I’m here, I’ll also report Mr. Jox’s and Frodo45127’s words about phazer’s work

Greetings,
You might or might not remember me, I was in charge of pushing the modding boundaries of newest total war games, that includes export of the models and animations from game format to raw format, I also established a pipeline to add new fully working custom buildings to the game and now I’m working hard on making a campaign map modding possible.
phazer is a really dedicated guy to the total war series and he wants to follow the exact same path, to push modding capabilities in newer games even further.
He proved it with his great tool to add animations back in game and greatly improved overall process of getting files out of the game. This is already enough to be a recognized artifex

Apart of being a modder with a few years of experience, phazers quite a seasoned tool maker, having done over the last year a quite good tool to finally edit rigidmodels (RMEditor), something that was specially a pain to do before, and could potentially cost a few bucks due to the only alternative being a paid one. Despite only being in the works for a year or so, his work was quite consistent, and it looks like it will continue to be like that in the near future, with some new big features he's preparing. So, judging by that, I recommend him for the status/rank of Artifex.

Applicant's bit

Hello

My(nick)name is phazer. I am a programmer (and modder) who have specialized in making graphical modding tool specifically for TW games. My guiding principle is that I write code that makes modding morea ccessible to artists (and others), as I believe that this will lead to to better mods.
If the artists are freed from the really tedious stuff they can focus all their energy on creating the actual art (models, animations, textures....)
I am very dedicated to this hobby, and I will only stop when there is nothing left to improve, or if the “rest” is literally impossible (as many thought custom animations were).
I believe that I am worthy of this honour, being accepted as artifex, as my software has changed the way modding is done in certain fields(custom model import, texture editing, etc.) and furthermore, my software has opened up completely new avenues of TW modding (easy import of custom animations / easier import of custom model).

At the top there are the newest versions of my 2 tools
1: RMEditor Main Thread: (11,656 views) : https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...W-BETTER-VIDEO
2: MicroDDS Main Thread: (2,511 views): https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...ts-TGA-UPDATED!

Here are the main mods, the short list, I have quite a few more, minor ones, but those are the main ones:

HD Cities, All City Types, Rome2
https://www.twcenter.net/forums/down...o=file&id=4378

HD Barbarian Cities, very different from the type included in the above mod, they can be used together, so this one replaces the "normal" barbarian cities
https://www.twcenter.net/forums/down...o=file&id=4409

HD Shield Pattern Mod, I redrew the Rome2 Vanilla shield patterns in a much higher resolution, for legionaries
https://www.twcenter.net/forums/down...o=file&id=4430

Better Gladius 3 HD 2K, high resolution retexture of rome2 standard gladius

https://www.twcenter.net/forums/down...o=file&id=4380

Better Gladius 4 Rome 2, high resolution retexture of rome2 standard gladius

https://www.twcenter.net/forums/down...o=file&id=4389

DeI Campaign Camera SubMod:
https://www.twcenter.net/forums/down...o=file&id=4441

Also, TWC is the only message board / site I have ever used for my tools and mods, of course there are steam+discord, other ways for people to interact, but nowhere else it is a complete, contained community, with events, messages, resources, downloadable content and a dedicated and varied mass of followers (and pleasant "staff" ).
I have a great amount of respect and appreciation for that. A lot of the info I needed for my tools I got from TWC.

What to say more? The dude is still green here at TWC, but he has done quite a lot already, as many have decided to testify in this application.

Flinn,
Of the Church
Of the Latter Day Dude