Nick - tweaks, improvements and optimizations

To simplify this simple mod, I improved the fingers so that the clothes are now moved with the thumb, and Nick's LOD model has reduced polygons.

This means this mod improves performance!

I'd love to suggest other ideas for improving Nick's.

For details:

A lot of Nick's animations come from Bill, and some of the animations don't look very good due to Nick's heavy fingers. SMG is the best example because the animation wants the middle bones of all fingers to rotate downwards and the tops of the fingers to rotate upwards. Nick's left hand was not weighted for this move, so I re-weighted his left fingers to smooth it out better. I also put the pieces of clothing on his thumbs so they don't get caught on the clothing whenever he raises his thumbs.

Nick, like most models, has an LOD - Level of Detail - where the further away you are from the model, the lower the polygons of the model become. For some strange reason, Nick has LOD, but the LOD model doesn't actually reduce the polygon count. So I made my own. They only affect the legs and therefore do not affect the face or other important factors. The changes are minor, but as mentioned - this mod improves performance compared to the original version.

I've implemented a style similar to Bill's LOD for Nick!

Nick has 17,446 tris or polygons. Since Nick has a shadow using his highest poly model, this number is doubled, and the game uses 34,892 tris to render one survivor. After including the shadow LOD (which has 3,746 polygons), the game only needs to use a maximum of 21,192 polygons. That's 13,700 polygons saved. Of course, only if you're close to Nick. Farthest away from Nick, the main model can be scaled down to 3,746 tris, allowing him to render 7,492 tris. When you move away from him, 27,400 polygons are saved!

To be more specific:

LOD 0 - Highest multi-count model. (17,446)

LOD 10 - No fingertip bones used. This is the default model for settings below "High". The number of polygons is the same.

LOD 15 - Hair details removed. Avert your eyes. Some of the finger bones are not used. Total number of polygons reduced by about 25% (12,963)

LOD 25 - Face removed. Do not use fingers. Total number of polygons reduced by about 60% (7,073)

Level 40 - No use of hands. Total number of polygons reduced by about 80% (3,746)

LOD Shadow - Same multi-count as LOD 40, but the pointer moves.