Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Tate's renders -- Now in college Thu Mar 14, 2013 12:46 pm
So I've been using Blender to assist me in my Major Design Project. Blender is the kind of 3D modelling program that you could call 'too good to be true' if you were told how lightweight it is, that it's free, powerful, widely used, extremely compatible and packed full of features. The only thing stopping it from being too good to be true is that it has a difficulty curve so steep that it has an overhang.
So my progress with Blender isn't that awesome, and it was about half a year ago I announced to 3D that I'd be learning to use Blender. But nonetheless, the pressure of my MDP has forced me back onto it, and so here I present my first ever 'thing'.
It's supposed to be a robot, kind of a dog. It this pose it looks like a giraffe, but the blue cords are meant to bend in order for the model to have a lifelike movement.
This is a short video of the rotating model. Sorry that it gets wonky near the end, but it's only a 3 second video.
As I progress with this model, like when I rig it and give it animations like walks, glances, and grabs, I'll upload pictures and videos of those animations and poses.
Last edited by Potatrobot on Wed Feb 19, 2014 6:42 am; edited 3 times in total
Gelatino95 Silver Spice
Posts : 3501 Upvotes: : 9 Join date : 2010-06-27 Age : 28 Location : Dinosaur Planet
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Thu Mar 14, 2013 9:45 pm
Noice
I've always pondered about how much work goes into animating 3D models
Now I kind of know
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Tue May 07, 2013 6:12 am
I've made a much better piece of footage of the model now, using empties and parenting, as well as extrapolation. And yes, I could have put the camera further back, but once I'd started the render it would have been counter-productive to waste the effort my computer made.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri May 24, 2013 3:49 pm
Update. I made a rig for the model. The only parts I haven't added to the armature yet are the triangular graspers, and that will come soon. None of the mesh has been assigned to the armature yet.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Sat May 25, 2013 4:58 pm
Added the graspers to the rig, and created a bunch of vertex groups that match the names of all the bones. I started assigning the vertices on the front left leg to the bones there, and added rotation constraints so that the bones can't rotate onto themselves. This is a screenshot of the Blender window with the left leg dragged up with AutoIK.
I don't expect you to know what AutoIK is. IK stands for Inverse Kinematics, which makes sense considering what it is. Normally, posing an armature would require you to rotate the base bone, then the next bone, and so on and so forth until you rotate the last bone into position. Unless you know exactly what the finished pose should look like, this is tedious, stupid, and requires trial and error.
IK allows you to drag the end bone to a spot and the other bones just follow it along. It's like taking somebody by the hand and moving it around. A great time saver.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Wed Jun 12, 2013 8:21 am
Beyond this dog robot thing in my major design project, I'm also using blender to get me through a physics assignment. I whipped up a model of a cathode ray tube, and this is a still render of the result.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Mon Jun 17, 2013 5:44 am
This is the final animated result.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Sat Jun 29, 2013 4:16 pm
This is my first successful render of a Spore creature. I've noticed that when a creature is exported, the slider adjustments are ignored (that is, the adjustments you make on the sliders in the creature creator). The detail parts were in their original shapes, so I had to go to each one and roughly scale it by a half in the local Z axis. I deleted the once-compulsory mouth parts.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Mon Jul 01, 2013 3:45 am
This is my first piece of completed greenscreen footage. Quality is much higher than the video's.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Sat Jul 13, 2013 4:10 am
Since the completion of the above footage, I have gone on to produce ten more shots of unique animated footage that I have successfully imposed on the footage that I filmed for my MDP. The project is done, and I will upload samples of animation later today.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:58 pm
OK so stuff those extra shots, I'll upload when I've received my final submission mark. My internal mark for the project was 78/80, so after I submit the edited folio for external marking, I'll expect 100% for it.
In the meantime, guess who I'm working on?
Spoiler:
The thing about exporting Spore creations is that most of the slider values for the parts aren't taken into consideration, so a load of parts appear as they do in the parts menu in the creature creator, not as they do on the finished creation. So my first task was readjusting the pincers to normal size, and separating all the disjointed faces that make up the end of the gun into its three component parts and grouping them separately, so that I can change it into a better piece.
I've also been deleting parts that were originally used to keep other parts in place, because they don't serve a purpose any more. I'll probably end up deleting all the useless parts anyway, so I'll have a naked Flank. Later on in life, once I learn to model clothes, I'll give this guy a wardrobe.
3D Admin
Posts : 879 Upvotes: : 8 Join date : 2010-07-01 Location : New Mexico, USA
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Tue Jul 30, 2013 7:15 pm
Just a suggestion here, but why not try using the compositor to add some glowing effects to the lights? Not that anything looks bad right now at all, though.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Wed Jul 31, 2013 2:07 am
Well, my main reason for not doing that is because I don't know how to do it. My second reason is that by the time I delete all the extraneous parts, there'll only be one glowing light and that's on the cannon. But I'm going to remodel that part, so the light will probably move around before I'm done, and I'll probably end up changing its colour. But, when that's done, I'll add the glow effect.
So here's an update on what I've done so far. In hindsight it might have been better if I just started out with a version of Flank without all this captain's armour on, but I'd already started so I'll finish it. Progress is progress, after all.
So far, the boots are the only part of Flank's armour that I haven't deleted yet, because I will admit that they look cool, so I'll probably use them as a template to make a more boot-like pair of boots for him. I've reduced that collection of parts on his chest to a small circle, which I know I'll have to edit later on (it's like a camera lens, or just a robotic eye, but it has to look more elaborate than that). The white objects on his head are his new eyes. I'll have to develop a ruby-like texture for them, since the solid pink colour of the outfitter part I used to make them at first just wouldn't do.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Mon Aug 12, 2013 7:24 am
So this is it. I finished my project a while ago, but now that I've submitted it for marking (second, external marking, that is) I'm going to show you lot what I did with blender and this simple idea.
3D Admin
Posts : 879 Upvotes: : 8 Join date : 2010-07-01 Location : New Mexico, USA
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Mon Aug 12, 2013 7:29 pm
Nice work composting the little dog into the scene, and acting/having a friend acting out the response, that was done very well.
One question, though, did you use the skinning system in blender for making the neck bend smoothly?
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Tue Aug 13, 2013 4:40 am
All I really did was set the blue areas of the dog smooth, and the neck bones did all the rest.
EDIT: Flank update.
I've removed all the armour from Flank, and I've moved his cannon off his body. The reason for this is that because I have a chance to recreate the weapon without the constraints of the Spore creature creator, I'll use that to make a better version of it. Starting with its mount, which was originally placed between his neck and shoulder, I've decided to move it to his upper back and design a series of armatures that hold up the cannon. Then, I'll redesign the cannon itself.
I've also moved his wings further down his back to make room for the cannon's mount, and to better reflect where his shoulder blades would be. Also visible in the image is the aptly, but still ham-fistedly named chest lens. This isn't the final design for it; it's far from complete. Any suggestions for designs would be appreciated.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Mon Sep 16, 2013 2:18 am
I was supposed to upload this ages ago but I kept forgetting.
I had a shot at rigging the Mehlrite creature. It's pretty basic, and it's not even completely rigged, but it does function.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Wed Feb 19, 2014 6:59 am
Now that I'm in college I'm learning new skills fast. Since it's what the school teaches, I'm using Maya instead of Blender. This is a render shot of a blank room with some models I've made inside. Pictured are dice and coins, a barrel and a tap, and a grape vine, which has some odd shadows from the leaves. That might be due to the specular map on them.
EDIT: Here is the first picture with a tiled brick texture I made today.
Sean1M Pink Spice
Posts : 205 Upvotes: : 1 Join date : 2012-02-01 Age : 30 Location : Australia
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Wed Feb 19, 2014 9:07 am
Sort of a pirate theme you have going here. Nice work.
Kitty Silver Spice
Posts : 3148 Upvotes: : 58 Join date : 2010-09-11 Age : 27 Location : Waterfall, Underground
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Wed Feb 19, 2014 11:01 am
Sean1M wrote:
Sort of a pirate theme you have going here. Nice work.
not quite.
Sean1M Pink Spice
Posts : 205 Upvotes: : 1 Join date : 2012-02-01 Age : 30 Location : Australia
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Wed Feb 19, 2014 1:31 pm
Ah, I see. Still I'm sure a pirate would like to get ahold of those barrels.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri Apr 04, 2014 4:33 am
Group project sees me building a celestial calendar like the one in Avatar: The Last Airbender. This is what I've made so far.
Like in the show, the sun and moon are mounted on these circular rails, which continue under the floor as seen in picture 2. The lighting in the room will come from the sun and moon, with the sun giving an orange glow and the moon a bright, pale blue. The room will be set to dusk to showcase both sun and moon, and to juxtapose the time of day outside the room, which will be dawn.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Tue Jun 10, 2014 4:13 am
Long overdue, but here are some pictures of what I accomplished for my calendar room.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri Jun 27, 2014 3:13 pm
Massive update, considering how much I've been doing in college. Here I will show you what I achieved after the calendar room.
We did character design. In this module we took orthographics of a viking character base (like the ones from How to Train your Dragon) and used them to build a model of the viking. Here I learned about how to eliminate triangles to leave only quads behind (which is better for some reason that's probably justified) and how to model body parts. After we finished, we had a choice: either add details to our viking model to make a different character, or partner up and transform the fat viking into a more anatomically realistic superhero character and put them together in something like a battle pose.
I chose the latter. Superheroes are cool. I'm not really into superheroes, unless they are Iron Man, and luckily I already had ideas for such a character, created for a superhero roleplay most of us would have heard about. I just never got to use them. My partner eventually decided to make his character into Frieza from Dragonball Z.
After five minutes of trying to fit the awful, inefficient topology of my viking to a set of orthographics I gave up and found a channel with virtually every tutorial I needed to make these characters. Several weeks of work later, I can present this to you.
Render shot.
Explanation dump:
This is Lucia and Darcy, who I originally created in the anime face generator, so you can imagine how detailed and relatable their personalities were like at time of conception. Their black and white duality was pretty much all there was to them, in a metaphorical sense too, I guess. Now that I've given them more thought, that has improved and they're even in a roleplay now. Yay. Lucia's power is photokinesis, so she can produce light and launch it off herself a bit like firebending. Intense use of the power can cause heating which is why she has an orange flame motif. Even now I still doubt that I can properly explain how her power to shoot light at things even causes damage, considering that the only way to do so is to give it the power of a proper laser weapon, but that kind of burning damage is only achieved when it's used with intensity; how does it cause damage otherwise? I don't know, it's been done before in other stories. She can also partially transmute into light, allowing her to move at light speed in a straight line until she bounces off something to change her course.
Darcy's power is umbrokinesis, or the ability to control shadows. This is even more of a stretch than Lucia's power because the shade has hurt nobody, ever. I can explain it, however. If you've seen Howl's Moving Castle or Spirited Away you'll probably have seen a kind of dark blob that can shapeshift. This is what I imagine Darcy's shadow powers are like. Regardless she uses it to form physical, shadowy constructs from nearby and attacks with them, somewhat like waterbending since this is Avatar now I guess. Intense use of the power causes rapid cooling, hence the ice motif. She can partially melt into these shadows and weave between shady areas, matching Lucia's speed.
I realise now that it's probably better that I base these powers off magic, rather than science, which is the usual route. These powers have no place in any scientific medium but then neither are most superpowers.
Turnaround.
I actually had to render this out twice, because the light source in Lucia's hand stayed put while everything else turned around.
Then we have the joint efforts. The original idea for the superhero guys was to put them together in something like this.
However we had very little time to put them together in a scene and pose them, and three quarters of that time was spent trying to get them up to the right scale in one piece. So we settled for basic poses - me keeping the poses I did for the turnaround and my partner posing Frieza to look like he's about to summon some huge power but it looks like he's very startled
So there you have it. Character module has finally ended (finally for me, since I needed a week's extension to complete the task others already had), and now we're moving onto animation. We've gone over the 12 basic principles of animation and we were practising them this week. This is what I've done so far.
There was supposed to be a 5th cannon video with a plank of wood, but I didn't finish that. I would also have done a playblast of all five objects shooting out at once, because that looks funny.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri Jul 25, 2014 7:42 am
Hobo animation! Currently my best animation (because it has sound), this was a quick project we did for the animation course, starting last week. Rendering was difficult, but it's up. In the background is a stop sign asset that I did a while ago. I kind of like it, because I set up the texture psd to have layers with different signs, including blue STOP, red STOP, and red SOP, which got a few laughs.