Anim8or Community
Artwork => Finished Works and Works in Progress => Topic started by: CoriDavis on November 07, 2011, 10:09:25 pm
-
and I must say, I was wrong about it! I never used it because I thought it wouldn't do the things I wanted and I would always do everything "from scratch". Absolutely none of my previous models used the subdivided feature. But now I decided I would try it out and I feel amazed and stupid at the same time that I didn't use this before! (Herpaderp :P ) So this is what I came up with. Bet you can't guess what it is! of course now I have to figure out how I'm going to add the eyes and mouth in there...
-
It's bamby ! And for adding the eye's and mouth..welcome to loopmodelling.
-
Actually it's a My Little Pony from Friendship is Magic (unless you were joking, in that case, LOL!) but yeah... I'm sure I'll figure something out.
Edit: Made a nostril by using Inset on a face a few times and moving the new points
-
It's about time!
Looks good for a first subdivision model. However, you've only given us a side view. How does it look from another angle, and where's that wireframe so that we can critique it to shreds?
-
It's only half-a-pony right now because my style is to make half, then mirror it, but yeah here's that wireframe. I added a mouth as well.
Edit: EYEHOLE! It looks a bit creepy now...
Edit 2: and finally the eye is finished. I used a very flattened circle for the eyeball and a seperate transmap for the pupil so I can move it around with morphs. The problem with that is, it can't really blink and it looks very detached from the face in the front view. Anyone know a better way to do this?
(PS. is it just me, or does the front view resemble Spyro?)
-
Hey good to see you've entered the scary world of subdivision!
It's good to see youre experimenting with shapes.. a few tips I can give that might help develop your skills:
- Try to keep your polies 4-sided, in the face there are a lot of triangles and 5- or even 6-sided polies at the moment, which never helps with subdivision.
- Elaborating on this is the blinking-issue; for the eyelids to close around the eye they need some polies to spare to fill up the space over the eye, this is done by edge-loops around the eyes.
- For the eye to look good on the model it is probably best to keep it spherical. This is closest to live animals and easy to animate. It is convenient to start with a sphere for the eye, and model the face around it so it will fit perfectly and your character will look good from all sides. I wouldnt know of a good solution to fix the eye as it is now without making big changes to the face mesh.
I like your cartoony style so far and I hope you'll keep that :) I'm always so bad at that haha..
-
I finally found a solution to the eye. I made it just like the eyeball and stuck it on there, lol.
$imon: I don't see the 5 and 6-sided polys you were talking about, but then again, I'm not good at catching those. As for the triangles, I see those as necessary. Without them, the eye wouldn't have its shape that it needs. Anyway, here's a display render and I'll get to some renders of the morphs as soon as I finish them.
Edit: Morphs finished
-
As you venture into the subdivision modeling world (or further into any aspect of 3D for that matter), you'll find that there is a lot more emphasis needed on the foundation of whatever it is you're working on. However, it can be argued that so long as the results are satisfactory, there isn't a "wrong" way to subdivision model. Just know that not being "wrong" isn't the same as being the most right.
You can still get the shape of the eyes you want by just using loops of quads rather than odd mixes of triangles and (n+4)-gons. I attached an example of what two loops around the eyes would look like, and circled some of those 5-sided polygons that $imon mentioned.
You've managed to make some decent morphs, but I imagine if you wanted to get some more exaggerated expressions going on, you'll start finding a lot more problems with the deformations and general polygon structure. Also, don't ponies need to blink? ;)
Try morphing with a 0-level subdivision--you'll see that it looks quite horrid. Even though it seems like subdivision lets you "cheat" with deformations and smoothing, you still have to follow the general rules of the polygonal organic modeling that you've done in the past, such as emphasis on adding quad loops to joints, and having loops around the eyes, mouth, and other active areas. I personally recommend you have at least three edge loops around each joint for better deformation when animating and posing, even for simpler cartoony meshes.
I can't say it's unexpected, working from a sphere can lead to a messy infrastructure unless you have a ton of patience with box modeling. So keep at it! There are tons of articles and examples of proper edge/polygon loops and other polygonal subdivision modeling techniques available online. Once you conquer the basics then a whole new world of options open up for you.
-
I sketched my ideas on polyloops, but it looks you're progressing fast, and I understand you will not want to follow these this time as you already have morphs. But anyway... for next time ;) Green are edges and red are poles - 5-edged vertex.
There are tons of articles and examples of proper edge/polygon loops and other polygonal subdivision modeling techniques available online.
...with best which were on subdivisionmodeling.com forums, sadly not available anymore, but people managed to save most important materials which are gathered here: http://www.spinquad.com/forums/showthread.php?31428-subdivisionmodeling.com-a-corner-with-great-resources-is-down!
I just thought someone could be interested as well ;)
-
Yes, I understand. I'm definitely an "as long as it works" person. I do realize I'll have to work with some other way to make the eyes blink, such as a seperate eyelid, because making the whole head blink is obviously not going to work.
Anyway, I've made the skeleton to begin rigging and I'm already running into problems. Am I to assume that subdivisions are not weightable? because when I go to try painting my model...
*unsubdivides itself* "What the heck!?" *Stops responding* "Here we go again..." *The program has encountered a problem and needs to close... blah blah blah* "NOOOO!"
-
Looking good, Cori. When I animated my morphed goblin face I made it with eye sockets, then separate eyeballs and eyelids that were bone-animated for movement and blinking.
Of course, the eye being on a bone figure set-up assumes that the eyeball would be a proper sphere and able to rotate around on a bone without a strange bulge and burst from eye socket effect that occurs with flattened, ovoid, etc. eyes.
As for eyelids, they can be formed in the structure of your morph-object as well. I just wanted to see how the lids would work with figure bones. In my case, I had upper and lower lids on a bone that functions scissor style for blinking, with each eyelid being created based off a sphere. Again, requiring htat the general form of the eye and lids are spherical and not somehow flattened or warped.
-
Normally I would make an eyeball with an eye socket and use bones for blinking, but the problem here is the eyeball/head size ratio. If I were to try to make an eyeball as a sphere for this model, it would be so big that it wouldn't even fit inside of the head! not to mention it would probably result in a bug-eyed look. I wanted to make it as canon as possible.
Any skinning suggestions? I'm assuming I'll have to try bone influences rather than weights but... I have absolutely no idea how those work at all. Unless somebody has Skype or some instant messenger that they could walk me through it maybe?
-
As far as I recall, it's the exact same process to paint subdivisions as it is to paint polygonal models. You can only paint the cage mesh, which is why it unsubdivides itself (and it's why proper edge loops for the cage mesh is important!). But it shouldn't crash. Try setting the subdivision level of the subdivision object to 0 in the object editor before weight painting it in the figure editor, to see if that helps any.
-
You'd probably be better off sticking to weight painting for this model. Bone influences allocate vertexes to bones using a geometric limit system - ie. if a vertex falls within the inner sphere it will move with the bone, if it is beyond the outer sphere it is unaffected, and if it falls between the inner and outer spheres it is partially affected depending on distance. This can have advantages over weight painting in that you can't miss vertexes, which is fairly easy to do with weight painting, but it can be difficult to prevent unwanted overlapping of areas. For example, if using influences on a skinned hand it would be easy to have the outer influence of one finger influencing vertices from a neighbouring finger, producing unwanted results. With weight painting, you define how much vertices are influenced irrespective of their distance from the bone, providing far more control, but perhaps less consistency.
The eyeball problem is common when animating models based on toys, which generally over-exaggerate eye size. One possibility is to use a section of a sphere only, with the bone pivot point set to where the centre of the eyeball would be, even if it is outside the head. This still requires room around the eye socket for the eye ball section to move into, but possibly the eyeball section could be morphed to distort as required, so as not to project outside the head when moved to an extremity. The main advantage bones have is they can animate rotation, which generally looks better for eye movement than the linear motion morphs are limited to.
By the way, lovely model, and good organic modelling is something that takes time and patience to master, which is why I have barely attempted it! Some call it an art... I call it sheer torture!
-
As Raxx suggested, creating your eye-sphere, then arranging it on a bone, and cutting it down afterward, so that you only have the portion of sphere needed for the pony's head. No one sees the fact that the full sphere size is huge and that the bone is likely anchored far beyond the opposite side of the head.
-
I'm going to take a break from those pesky eyelids and work on skinning and run/walk sequences. Somehow the crash problem fixed itself, so I was able to skin it, only the legs are so close together that it's almost impossible not to paint one leg without paining another one! Did I mention I hate rigging quadrupeds?
-
Well, why not just use influences instead? I definetly hate most rigging in general, but I bet quads are the ultimate in being esay to hate rigging.
-
Translating a 2D image into a 3D shape always has issues, but this is quite impressively organic looking, even without subdivision.
-
I FINALLY got those stupid eyelids to work and I made a walk cycle. I'm not sure I'm entirely satisfied with how the skinning turned out though. I think the problem is that the back legs are bending oddly. I'll post a fix later
Edit: Fixed the bendy legs, but I think I'm missing a step in the sequence, I just can't figure out how to fix it. I also want to make some slight model changes since the chest looks a little square.
Edit 2: fixed chest and tried to add some movement in the hindquarters
Edit 3: Made my first canon pony, Pinkie Pie! I'm starting with the earth ponies since I already have the base, then I'll move on to unicorns when I add the horn, then the Pegasi because the wings will be somewhat difficult.
-
Hair looks really good! Can you show the mesh of them?
Hind legs even after tweaking still look painful. They're too... bendy? I'm not sure if it's a problem with joints in the wrong places or too few divisions in the mesh.
-
I'm not sure on the legs part. I'm thinking I should somehow try to get more hip movement since it looks like it's only moving from there the "heel" is supposed to be and it's not swinging like a leg normally would.
As for Pinkie's hair... you guys are going to hate my wireframe...
I finished Applejack as well. People weren't kidding about the hat being hard to fit between her ears!
Next I'll be moving on to the unicorns, starting with Rarity. Her hair will be a major challenge.
-
The forelock of pinkie pies mane in subdivision mode looks more like an extruded 'tongue' rather than an extension of the main body of her hair in my opinion. Otherwise really good, just shows me how far I have to go.
-
Those meshes look ok, from what is visible in these views. There's a few tri's at the ends of the mesh sections that appear to be modified spheres, but they aren't going to cause any major problems as it doesn't look like there will be any morphing happening in these areas. Subdivision works best on quads (4 sided faces) and can go a little odd on 3 sided faces (tri's), if you convert a basic Anim8or sphere into a subdivision and look at the 'polar regions' of the sphere you'll see what I mean. In wireframe view you can see how the subdivisions create odd shapes in tri's. Anyway, the bottom line in all things graphic is that if it looks right, it is right, and I think you've done a great job with these models.
NOTE: Re the walk cycles, as you mention the body is a little rigid, which is a very common problem when animating things that are static in real life (ie. plastic toys), since it is not always obvious how things should move. One simple method you might want to consider is to twist the body at the 'waist' in the walk cycle, so the shoulders pivot one way while the hips pivot the other way. You'll need to adjust the leg motion in a further axis to stop the them swinging out during the cycle, but I suspect it would be simpler than attempting to get the haunches themselves moving. This body-twist is actually quite natural and would definitely be a part of a detailed quadruped walk cycle, I am just suggesting that in this instance it might be an effective replacement for haunch movement, which looks like it could be quite tricky to accomplish.
-
Ok, I need HELP here. Rarity's hair? Yeah, I don't even know where to start. Definitely not a circle like I usually do. How am I going to do this?
-
The slow way, extrude and angle edges incrementally?
-
On a subtle note, when a deer is walking the forward foot slightly leads the motion of the opposite back foot: forward right foot starts moving, shortly followed by back left, then as back left is landing forward left starts moving. This gets closer into synch with the front feet moving close to the same time the faster it goes.
My take on the hair would be to take a long rectangle primitive with a number of divisions along the long axis and twist and tweak where necessary.
And a quick debate to Ensoniq5's point about tris: quads look better the smoother you want the image to look; however, since Anim8or doesn't have any creasing functions in its subdivisions (there is a field, but it doesn't seem to do anything) I find I tend to use tris in areas I want creased -> more edges = less smoothness. Sometimes that is the effect you need for certain areas.
-
I agree with WM re the method of modelling Rarity's hair, it looks more or less like a twisted ribbon, at least in this view. If you have any other views of this character (ie. if it was a plastic toy, are there any images available from different angles? The toy makers would have faced the same problem. I would check but I'm typing this at work and I'm not real comfortable surfing for images of cute unicorns... not good for my image!).
Regarding creasing in subdivisions, I normally use 'edge reinforcement' to do this. This method involves running additional vertex lines (ie cutting faces) close to, and parallel with, the line to be creased. This forces much tighter subdivision in this area allowing sharper corners at vertex points, resulting in a crease.
-
I thought I was the only brony that used anim8or.
*Brohoof (^ -^)/)
Anyway, Your model looks good from the side angle, but the rest of it doesn't look round enough. If you have any of the toy's you could use them as a reference to understand what I mean.
Namely the your legs look more like triangular prisms than cylindrical tubes.
But I would highly recommend you take a look at these 3D pony models if you haven't seen them already, they would make an excellent reference image.
http://kp-shadowsquirrel.deviantart.com/art/Pony-Model-Download-Center-215266264
Another thing that bothers me a ton is the face at the front angle. You know how I said your legs are to triangular? Well your face is too spherical. It needs to converge the closer it gets to the front of the head, because they eyes should be a lot less far apart so that your pony can have stereo vision.
-
I finished Rarity! The hair was such a pain! and I'm sure you will all agree that I've created the worst wireframe in history. The left side also looks horrible, but I might try to fix that sometime in the future after I finish the "Mane Six"
ENSONIQ5: The hip movement in the walk cycle was just what it needed! Only I'm still trying to find that missing step.
Water Music: As for the walking, I'll probably use my horse walk cycle again instead of winging it.
fromsoysauce: Yay! (\(^- ^) But unfortunately, it's a little too late to change the shape of anything since I've already made copies and models. Also, if I change the shape of the head, the eyelids will no longer work and you know I got very frustrated getting those to work in the first place.
And the hair, I did use extruded rectangles and it worked. It was just really time consuming.
-
If you say so, but I do feel a need to tell you that the face is done so strange on your model, and it bugs me a lot, and fixing it would be more than worth it.