next »

[SolarLune]

Partial cross-post from the Today I created thread.
Thanks for that tutorial, poop. Ended up with a kind of Megaman-ish character - Bulb-Man, at the end of an hour or so. Not bad at all in my book (since I stink at 3D modeling). The Skin modifier's pretty awesome!



EDIT: Another version where I fixed his feet.



@Gord - Cool bat. I like the guy the most, I think.

Aye. I need to split up the iris, pupil, and highlight, since the pupil should move within the iris somewhat.

@McMutton - Awesome modeling and texturing as always - she really looks awesome! If I may ask, why don't you add whites to your characters' eyes? Just wondering.

[Trevor Dunbar]

i don't quite understand. how much input does it take to create the model?

Not much, first you just start with a few points and edges and set the root to where you'd like a root bone to be.

Next, you just keep adding control points where joints are going to be.

now you might realize that everything is too skinny, so you change the "metaball joints" sizes with CTRL + A. If you want to change only the X or Y size, CTRL + A then X or Y.

Now you probably want to mirror the model, so you can just throw a mirror modifier above the skin mod on the mod stack.

Next, you can make your generated model much smoother by putting a subsurf mod on the bottom of your mod stack. Your stack will look like this:
Mirror -> Skin -> Sub-surf

You can model almost entirely using these, but unfortunately, at the end, you are going to have to apply your skin modifier to get any further with editing/texturing/sculpting -- so you should make a copy of your skin mod mesh with SHIFT+D in object mode and move it to a different layer with M. Just in-case you need the dynamic mesh again.

While this tool is amazing and awesome, there are some niggles. If at any point, you branch a point out into 3 or more branches, the "metaballs" will tend to get confused and create pinched or ugly mesh parts. You can fix this by messing with the vertices until the mesh looks correct and not pinched, distorted, or messed up.

[peous]

Anyone got a good tuto for using Maya (& Unity) with skinned meshes & multiple anims ?
It takes me hours... to get nothing

[Delko]

Started on a player model. This is the unfinished base mesh I made. Im pretty happy with it so far, its the first person I've ever modeled. He started life as a hexagon cylinder.

[Azure Lazuline]

Very nice base mesh, I know from experience how difficult it is to model a human. Humans are complicated! Looks like you even made the knees/elbows/shoulders ready to be rigged too.

[Delko]

Thanks, its bens really challenging so far. Here's where its at now.

[SolarLune]

@Delko - Really cool guy! That's really awesome! How many polygons do you have on him?



Another test with Blender's Skin modifier (my model's really huge for some stupid reason, hah).

[Trevor Dunbar]

That's pretty great Delko, I think you're just naturally suited for this stuff.


Solar, you going to try to export one of those into some type of game engine? Xna? Unity?
If you export to XNA, make sure to use .X directX format.
FBX format uses OpenGL material parameters, so materials are going to just look plain wrong inside DirectX. I don't understand why the exporter doesn't have some option to translate to DirectX params when exporting.


Edit: I'm trying to find a tutorial for creating multiple animations inside one .blend file, anyone know where I can find one?

[SolarLune]

Solar, you going to try to export one of those into some type of game engine? Xna? Unity?
If you export to XNA, make sure to use .X directX format.
FBX format uses OpenGL material parameters, so materials are going to just look plain wrong inside DirectX. I don't understand why the exporter doesn't have some option to translate to DirectX params when exporting.


Edit: I'm trying to find a tutorial for creating multiple animations inside one .blend file, anyone know where I can find one?

I wasn't planning on exporting them, I don't think. I'm not sure if I'll do anything with them, but if I do, I'll probably work with the BGE. Thanks for the info, though.

A quick tutorial is this:

Go into the Animation screen (the top left spinner where it usually says "Default"). Select your armature, if you've got one, and go into pose mode. Press I to create a keyframe and set the channels you want to record (location, rotation, etc). This will automatically create an animation if you don't have one already.

Anyway, in the Dopesheet editor type, with Action Editor set to the type, you can select the currently active animation or create a new one.



Press the + to add an action, and you can press the F to protect the action with a fake user. Otherwise, if the action's not being 'used' by an armature, it will be deleted.

EDIT: Oh, and that toucan's pretty cool. I think his wings could be larger and thinner, but that's pretty good!

[McMutton]

@McMutton - Awesome modeling and texturing as always - she really looks awesome! If I may ask, why don't you add whites to your characters' eyes? Just wondering.

It's just the style I've gone with.

[雪女]

She's cute! What did you use?

[Nix]

McMutton, do you work as an artist or is this just a hobby for you?

[Inanimate]

If the latter, become the former.

[Halcyon]

Thanks, its bens really challenging so far. Here's where its at now.

This is really good work, keep it up!

[McMutton]

Thanks, its bens really challenging so far. Here's where its at now.

I agree with the others; It's quite good.

This is super nifty

As to the questions: I'm using Blender, 'cause it's free.

I do it in my spare time as a hobby, but since I'm here, I'm a hopeful indie.

I forgot to post about my nifty eye rig:


Each eye has two bones, one that follows where the character looks, and another that only follows 50% of the way. The iris is rigged to the 50% bone, the pupil to the full one, and anything in-between is, well, in between the two. So I get this nice little effect.