Skylanders Superchargers and how the models work

To all the potential tech and 3D model nerds scrolling my page, or if you've stumbled upon my Skylanders rips online, (which haven't been approved to The Models Resource yet at the time of writing this) I've decided to make a post explaining Skylanders Superchargers models and how to properly set up the nodes in Blender! This probably works for the models from other games but I haven't gotten around to ripping those apart yet.

Blender Render of Lava Lance Eruptor with a basic lighting setup

For this particular instance I'm going to be using the WiiU models that I ripped. And I'm going to be using Eruptor since he is a good instance for having all of the textures I need to cover.

First thing's first, import the DAE of the Skylander you're using (yes, this tutorial is for beginners too) and you might have a fully textured model already. If it doesn't have textures already hooked up then... oops. First thing might look nice already but it doesn't have any of the extras plugged in, you're going to have to do that yourself.

No extra textures plugged in yet...

And the Shading tab in the top of the screen is where most of our work will be carried out.

As you can see, those blocks below are nodes, and that large green one is where everything will be plugged into. Add more image texture blocks and find the textures that correspond to your part.

These are the textures we are using, in reading order we have the Color, Composite, Normal, and Emissive maps

Just plugging these in directly won't do much, a lot of these have prior setup required. Let's start off with the composite since there isn't too much difference from adding it unless it's a metallic prop.

Add a Separate Color node and connect the composite, and plug the green channel to specular and the blue channel to metallic. One of the more simple node setups. 

Now for the emissive:

Plugging in the emissive right now won't look correct, you have to add a color mix node.

Add a color mix node and place it with your regular body color and emissive texture. Connect the emissive to channel B and connect your regular body to channel A. (Don't disconnect your color from the base color! One texture can connect to multiple nodes.)

Now set your color mix node to Multiply and the factor to 1.000 and now the result good for plugging in! You can adjust the emission strength to your liking for however bright you want the lava to be.

Now for the normals which are the most important texture, even if you don't want the other textures, I would recommend adding the normal map. Skylanders has a strange problem with normals where the red channel is inverted, but luckily Blender can fix it no problem with one extra step! To fix the normals add a RGB Color Curve node and plug in the normal, flip the red channel in a straight line.

(Click to enlarge the images if you need to understand this step better)

Now add a Normal Map node from the vector node section and plug the curve output into that node. The normal can now be properly plugged in!

Before and After adding the nodes

Have fun messing with your models now!

My Birthday!

 Hi! It's April 27th, and you know what that means? My birthday! This year I just asked for Skylanders and uh, didn't get any, again... But that's okay cause I finally got a Cricut machine to help me make stickers! And with making stickers I can hopefully make some of my own money to buy Skylanders with!

Dive-Clops is my favorite Skylander

I'm 17 now, and one year closer to getting that internship that I really want...

Thanks for sticking around! 

Bill Tiller | Environment Concepts

Bill Tiller worked as a senor concept artist as Toys for Bob on Imaginators, primarily working on props and environment designs.

Cool environment concepts!

These two seem to be for the Life sensei realm and... I actually haven't played Imaginators (My least favorite of the games, not sorry) in a long time so I'm assuming this might be the light realm? The only realm I don't have access to is the dark realm, so I have never seen it...

The dolls from the tech sensei realm. 

Of course, I always make sure to leave some stuff out of posts to let people support the artists by directly visiting their respective pages, here is Bill Tiller's website, holding a few more Skylanders concepts and tons of other cool art! https://www.billtillerart.com/skylanders

Anthony Avvento | Skylanders Swap Force 3Ds and Count Moneybone

Anthony Avvento designed a ton for Skylanders Swap Force 3Ds including making Count Moneybone's design. 

Even citing Clark Gable and Skeletor as inspirations for the design!

Throughout the game Moneybone's suit becomes more elaborate with each fight

I personally think Moneybone is criminally underrated for being such a fun character, I almost never see him mentioned in most Skylanders media. He's pretty charming for being a villain (I would say thanks to Clark Gable's part in the design) I love his overexaggerated voice and grandiosity. 

There's a more concepts on Anthony's site such as for Moneybone's robotic monstrosities, please support the artists!

(Fun fact, Count Moneybone was actually introduced in Swap Force 3Ds and not Superchargers)

Toys for Bob is going indie, and what does this mean for Skylanders?

 

So last month Toys for Bob announced that they're going to become an indie studi0, they shut down their physical headquarters in California since it was too expensive to keep up, and people almost worried that TFB were going to be shutting down for good. TFB have stated that they are still in a partnership with Microsoft too, so what does this mean for any future Skylanders games?

In my personal opinion, I don't think this actually changes much for the future of Skylanders. Since Microsoft is still partnered with them they can still use IPs such as Crash Bandicoot and Skylanders.

I still hold onto some hope that a remaster is a possibility in the future, but I do doubt that there will be anything relating to Skylanders being released for years to come.

Addressing some claims going about from their post: (Note that I am not an employee of TFB and that these are just what I have inferred from research)

Skylanders is not cancelled forever but the chances of a new game are still slim

No, the fact that 'horns' are mentioned here does not confirm a new Skylanders game like some people are saying (what logic is that???)

Toys for Bob mentioning Skylanders (once) in the post also does not confirm a new game

So in the end, what does this mean? Nothing too much really in terms of Skylanders.

The chances of getting a new game is the same as before, still miniscule. But this doesn't mean that the series is done for good.

Happy Birthday to my Blog! And a small update-

    So I went on an accidental hiatus for a bit, whoops! I didn't post anything all Feburary, and I haven't been making much progress on my comic for a bit. (Sorry!) It's weird to think this blog is already a year old now, my first post was about me saving up to buy the land trophy for Superchargers, I still haven't actually brought it.

(Apology sneak peek)

I've 3D modeled the environments for convenience! (I hate drawing different camera angles...)

    I haven't been doing much related to Skylanders in general for a small while, I have been doing a lot of other stuff, juggling working on multiple games, such as my own project, two Yo-Kai Watch fan projects, and working on an entirely original game as an animator and modeller. I'm a highschool student too, which also cuts down my time to work on projects by a lot. 

Also I haven't had my Skylanders hyperfixation come back swinging in a while, don't get me wrong I still adore Skylanders but I've ended up gravitating towards other games for the past while. Though I still enjoy drawing Skylanders from time to time. 

    I was going to say that nobody really visits this blog but I went and checked my website statistics and it seems I get a small amount regular viewers which honestly surprised me! A very pleasant surprise, I wish I could shout them out here but I can't view usernames which is honestly for the best.

    Either way thank you to any readers that visit, it means a lot to me! I'm sorry about my lack of recent posts, I hope to get back to my regular posting schedule of once at least every week. I'm also going to be back on doing regular renovations and working on polishing some pages while making some new ones, as you can see by the Fanart and Collection buttons I've made that take you to an empty page...

Thank you for visiting! And happy birthday to a now entire year of my Skylanders blog!

Skylanders Superchargers concept art

From Lisa Wiley who worked on Skylanders Superchargers, several pieces of concept art and level sketchovers! Also an earlier version of Splat seems to be present in some of the level sketchovers. There are more on their site which is why I didn't upload everything here as I urge you to visit their page and look at their amazing art for youself, Lisa Wiley's art site!

Character concepts:

Fox clothing concepts for Cloudbreather's Crag

Level concepts and sketchovers:

An early splat design appears in the latter two, probably an in-between design of Splat and Inkwell.

Again, there is a ton more on their website that I didn't upload here, please look at their work from the source!

Sorry for the brief post hiatus! I was busy working on other things and I kinda forgot that I ran this site in the first place, I did wish I had some help here, I still need to work on the dark mode button... 

Model Ripping Post??? Again?!

 So currently I'm still working on the last of the Ring of Heroes rips, fixing them to be uploaded online, and now I have over doubled the previous page! With 86 pending models, tons of Skylanders and Enemies pending now, a quick compressed list here:

(all alphabetized)

The full pending list

Barbella

Bomb Shell

Bone Chompy

Boomer

Brawl'N'Chain

Brawlrus

Broccoli Guy

BruiserCruiser

Buzzer Beak

Chain Reaction

Chill

Chomp Chest

Chompy Mage

Chopper

Chopscotch

Cyclops Grunt (Evolved)

Cyclops Mage

Cyclops Mage (Evolved)

Cyclops Queen

Cyclops Warrior

Cyclops Warrior (Evolved)

Cynder

Dark King Pen

Dark Spyro

DejaVu

Destroyer (Dark)

Destroyer (Earth)

Destroyer (Fire)

Destroyer (Life)

Destroyer (Light)

Destroyer (Tech)

Destroyer (Undead)

Destroyer (Water)

DinoRang

Dreamcatcher

Drobot

Ember

Eruptor

Eye Scream

Fisticuffs

Flare Wolf

Flashwing

Fling Kong

Foodfight

Freeze Blade

Gearshift

Giant Chompy (Chompy Mage)

Golden Queen

Grilla Drilla

Gusto

Headrush

Hex

High Volt

Hot Dog

Jet Vac

Ka-Boom

Kaos

Kaos (Ultra Traptanium Kaos)

Knight Light

Knight Mare

Krankenstein

Light Flashwing

Light Hex

Lightning Rod

Lob Goblin

Lob Goblin (Club)

Lob Goblin (Evilized)

Mags

Master Eon (Head)

Ninjini

Pain-Yatta

Pit Boss

Roller Brawl

Ruin Guardian

Sheep Creep

Slam Bam

Smolderdash

Snapshot

Sprocket

Taekwon Crow

Tidepool

Tree-Rex

Tuff Luck

Wash Buckler

Watcher Stone

Wildfire

More Skylanders for the Collection!

More Skylanders arrived today!

With the last of my christmas money I Deeecided to buy some more Skylanders! I'm a sucker for the minis so I definitely had to buy more...

Thanks to SCL for having some amazing prices! And they even gave me a free sticker! (I love stickers so that went on my PC immediately) Though I did forget to put my P.O box number on the package, and with my state's new postage regulations, they were going to send my package back! Luckily I managed to get it in time with some help since I was at school at the time.

They also gave me a cute note with a doodle, I feel so appreciated :,)

I hope I can order again in the future! I'm planning on saving up for thrillipede so if they ever do get him in-stock... 

Skylanders Kiosk Demos

We have some Imaginators Kiosk demo files from the Skylanders Reverse Engineering community! I'm also linking them in the helpful links page for the sake of archiving them.

If you want to check out these files here's the link!

But if you don't want to dig through them, I'll overview them here.

Here's the 'Attract' file, the standard video that loops on the kiosk in most circumstances.

Most of the files from the kiosks are videos, with a few extra tidbits of code included for the sake of archiving the exact files.

Ro-Bow's kiosk video file

Imagine being lucky enough to see this in stores, I can only dream... Luckily I pride myself on being a proud Ro-Bow owner, though enough of my bragging and back to the rest of the rundown. Also, these videos showcase the Imaginators themselves alongside the senseis, alongside their special item unlocks.

Even Skylanders that weren't released physically in stores like Chompy Mage have video files. Though the Giants and originals are missing entirely. Probably because they weren't being sold in stores at that point? Though I can't recall since I actually never bought any senseis in-store when I was younger. 

The ERROR1.AVI is a copy of ATTRACT.AVI this time, unlike other kiosk files where the error file is its own unique video, usually just black text on a red background telling you to plug in a portal, it honestly looks like a cheesy creepypasta.

I couldn't find anything else of note while looking through these so if you do decide to look through them yourself please message me if you find more stuff of note!