-= ReyBomb.com =-

Van Der Dick 14 - DONE!

-= Animate

Finally. I have been playing around with some simple animation files and trying to figure out where my mesh is deforming. For the most part I have been able to clean it up and create a pass-able animation rig.

This is nowhere near professional, but it is a good start and I am sure the next one I do will be better. I can't believe that almost a month of work went into getting this guy up and running. I rendered a small animation clip of Van Der Dick doing a jump kick. The animation file was part of the course materials, therefore I can't fully claim animation credit. However, the composition was all me. The panning camera, the stage, the lights, all me... HA! Check it out in my "Reel" section.

Below you can see a couple of areas that were giving me trouble. Adding animations and scrubbing the time-line is a great way to see how your character/mesh is behaving.

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

Van Der Dick 13

-= Rigging

I'm on a roll now. This phase of the project involves adding a biped skeleton system to the mesh. I've done this before, so I was able to shape the bones to fit inside the mesh rather quickly. What I hadn't done before was to spend time linking all the bones to the corresponding vertices.

In order to have this model work in the supported game engine I am asked to use the Physique modifier. This is actually a decent method for rigging the mesh quickly. From other sources, I have read that the Skin modifier is more commonly used for animations. Meanwhile, the Physique modifier is more often used in video game rigs. I'm sure it is a matter of necessity. I hope to learn more about this in the near future.

Below you can see a selected leg bone and the influence area on the mesh. This must be done for each bone. I'm glad I have a couple years worth of music in my library, since this chore takes time. I'll finish this up later, right now my eyes are about to close for the last time tonight.

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

Van Der Dick 12

-= Meshes Unite

Skinning is complete! This is as much as I am willing to do for now. I have been reading a book on animation in Max and I'm itching to put a rig on this guy and make him move.

I had added a Turbo Smooth modifier just for kicks and to see how much of an effect it would have on my mesh. You can see the tallies in the polygon/face counts below. Over 3k polys on the body with a higher resolution. I'm guessing this is where procedural mapping comes in handy.

This image is a composite of the high resolution body mesh. I doubt it would be game engine friendly. Not as it is anyway, too much to calculate. The feet do look better though!

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

Van Der Dick 11

-= Head On

As instructed, I am only working on half of the head. This speeds the work flow quite a bit, but the downside is that Van Der Dick will have a mirrored personality. HA!

Stoopid I know...

The UV map was much easier to work than the whole body. The face was unwrapped in three pieces; top, face, and bottom. You can see the UV layout below. I stretched the face to make it longer, this way the checkers would all be more evenly distributed. Not bad.

In Photoshop I painted the whole head and face. However, I did use some reference artwork for the facial features. This was included with the project files. I modified it enough to make it different, and of course I had to paint in the nose, ears, and fill in gaps. I also painted along the seams with a similar tone so that when the maps are put together it will look seamless. You can notice this along the jaw on the bottom and the side of the head on the top.

Pretty good looking guy huh? LOL, yeah right...

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

Van Der Dick 10

-= Wacom Time

The instructions for creating textures are rather liberal. You have the option of using the pre-made materials, but what fun is that? There is a tutorial included on how to stitch photo reference material into clothing that can be applied to your UV map.

Speaking of the UV map, after rendering it from 3dsMax I took it into Photoshop and began to paint the areas that would have clothing and skin. I also took some photos of a pair of pants and found images of a military boot online. However, stitching the boot took quite a while. In some areas I had to paint in what the boot may look like from the back or the side.

The same thing happened with the pants. Although I was able to lay out the pants flat for photo taking, it still took a lot of cut, paste, paint, and imagination to fill in the gaps. I almost felt like a garment maker; maybe I should consider doing clothes design, nah...

In any case, this was a fun period after all that tedium with arranging the UV maps. The great thing is that I can create an endless amount of clothes for this character and have multiple character variations using the same mesh. Email me if you want to paint a UV map.

I didn't spend too much time on the shirt or hands, mostly because I want to move on to the head. That should be a challenge.

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

Van Der Dick 09

-= UVs

Editing the UVs and trying to figure out how to lay out them out has to be a special skill earned with experience. I'm only aiming to paint in Photoshop; I can't wait to work with procedural maps, UVWs.

Here I am showing the editing panel for texture coordinates. You can also see on the model that I have mirrored the coordinates from one side to the other. The torso is broken up into the front and back. The arms, legs, boots, and hands have also been separated and flattened.

The checker map is still not 100% perfect, but I do need to move on and take the UVs into Photoshop. I guess after all this unwrapping is done we get to have some fun painting. Time to use the tablet, wooo hoooo!

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

Van Der Dick 08

-= Unrwapping

I think I want to destroy my CPU. I have been staring at those damn checkers for way too long. I think they are getting bigger on their own. No wait, that must be my imagination...

Seriously though, I'm almost there. Again I've restarted the process a few times for the sake of practice; and to figure out what the hell I was doing. I have learned so much; the ability to save mapping coordinates is so helpful and it's starting to save me time when I experiment. I think I'm getting the hang of this skinning, but I don't have to like it!

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

Van Der Dick 07

-= Skin and Pelt

Now that I have a body and a head, I need to paint them. This process involves "unwrapping" the mesh into segments that can be flattened. Think of it as if you were to peel an orange. You pull off the slices of skin, lay them out next to each other, and sew them together into one flat piece. Now paint over the flattened skin, go ahead draw some eyes on it and a mouth.

Now take that painted skin and re-apply it to your orange. Hey! Check that out. Your orange has a personality. Okay, well maybe it is not that easy. Yet that is what texture artists are asked to do to strange and complex 3d objects.

One technique is to apply a texture map to your whole mesh in order to see where things are deforming. Using a checkered contrasting pattern you can see where the faces on a 3d model will pull on the pattern.

Learning this, and learning to use the still fresh skinning tools in 3dsMax is proving to be a test in patience and persistence. Thank god that I can leave in a few minutes to go eat some food. I've never had Middle Eastern chow, I hope I like it as much as I like far eastern cuisines.

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

Van Der Dick 06

-= Almost There

Working all night on this face. It still needs much work to be a handsome devil. For now Van Der Dick, as he is now known, will have to stay content as an ugly mug.

This face has been mirrored and combined to form one whole head. I'm not sure that I like the way the geometry was laid out. I have read in other books that edge loops should be clean. This face is more like the sky, stars everywhere. By that I mean that in too many areas I was supposed to connect triangles and make them look like stars. Not too crazy about it, I prefer nice even quads.

Oh well, onward, I have to learn to paint this thing and make it look decent.

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

Van Der Dick 05

-= Shape Me

You really do need to develop a sense for organic shaping and modeling. My first attempt at a facial spline-cage wasn't the best. I had to re-start a few times just to get a sense of where I was placing lines. After a while I was able to get a feel for where to curve the lines. Eventually I got a face that didn't seem so boxy and rigid. Still needs more shaping, but it should do for now.

In these images you can see a surface modifier is applied and the mesh is turned into editable polygons.

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

Van Der Dick 04

-= Face Me

Modeling faces in 3d seems like an overwhelming task. Like everything in life, practice makes perfect. I have seen my friends model faces from scratch and with rather good accuracy.

I haven't modeled a face in a while, but I'm hoping to learn a new method. Well, new to me anyway. I have modeled faces using box modeling and by deforming the surface to get the details I want. In this chapter however, I am instructed to use lines to lay out the cage of the face. In some steps I am to pull lines forward or back to create depth. This is a very interesting method, but I am not fully sold on it just yet.

Here we have two views of the face sketch; the front and back. You can see the spline cage I'm building from both views. The third image shows the face from a different perspective.

NOTE to self: use higher res image map for sketches.

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

Van Der Dick 03

-= Mirror Mirror

The symmetry modifier in 3ds max is the gateway to using the mirror modeling technique. It is such a time saver and I can't imagine modeling without it. Here you can see varying views of the nearly completed body.

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

Van Der Dick 02

-= Modeling Half

Working from quick and dirty sketches I have mirrored the front to create the back. After some push and pull action I ended up with what amounts to half of the character's body.

In the second image you can see the sharp edges from the geometry. After smoothing the polygons you can see a difference in appearance. I am hoping to keep the total geometry pretty low, I'm aiming for around 600-700 polys.

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

My first game model.

I used to think of game models as boxes on top of boxes. That is to say, that they would be extremely low polygon creations in which you could expect to see many sharp corners. This approach, has of course, changed over time.

Continuous improvements in graphic hardware allow our current game models to reach very high polygon counts. Although I have just started to research the trends, I felt like I could create one of these "game-engine friendly" models.

Thanks to dmak for getting me a book that covered this very topic, a great present! This book is a great start and already I have learned much about game models from it. Check it out if you need a quick start in game modeling; Game Character Modeling...

Although I started going through the book with the given character, I plan on making him my own. I could finish him as a pirate, but I want to learn everything on my own. This means I'll be learning how to unwrap the model and I'll have to create my own texture maps in Photoshop.

The book does come with a finished model and all the necessary graphics to complete the pirate character, and there is nothing wrong with pirates; aargh!

-= Getting Started

I began with spline outlines, added some cross-sections, and pulled some vertices a bit to create one quarter of the wire cage.

Labels: 3d, VanDerDick

ProjectBlog

September 20, 2008

Van Der Dick 14 - DONE!

September 18, 2008

Van Der Dick 13

September 15, 2008

Van Der Dick 12

September 12, 2008

Van Der Dick 11

September 8, 2008

Van Der Dick 10

September 3, 2008

Van Der Dick 09

August 30, 2008

Van Der Dick 08

August 27, 2008

Van Der Dick 07

August 25, 2008

Van Der Dick 06

August 22, 2008

Van Der Dick 05

August 19, 2008

Van Der Dick 04

August 15, 2008

Van Der Dick 03

August 13, 2008

Van Der Dick 02

August 11, 2008

My first game model.