Ferocious, scary alien monster

[hypercube]

bling bling! ya got me. :D

He is adorable though, meant to comment in the other thread but forgot. Maybe I've just been around the stuff too much, but you almost expect that he COULD turn into a ferocious, scary alien monster when no one's looking. Maybe if he drinks the jekyll formula like Tweety. :p

[Rogue]

Alas, there's just no room for cute, funny little characters in a alien monster world. :)

Here's what generally happens when no one is looking, though.

[Rogue]

A jekyll/hyde formala would be funny...hmmmmm...

[Array]

Wow, very impressive. What did you use to create this? Lightwave? If so, what did you use for rigging?

[Rogue]

Thanks guys. I'm glad there are a few that still like the cartoony ones.

Array: Yes, Lightwave. How'd you guess? As far as the rigging goes, I used bones and tweaked the weight maps until my fingers bled. :) Weight maps rock! I have another cat that I setup that you can really move things to the extremes and it holds up. I'm proud of that setup. Anyways, the bone layout is fairly simple, it's the weight maps that give me the control. IK for the legs, FK for the arms and torso. Everything that is animated is doneso with objects (be it the character or nulls), the only exception is the fingers....still grab bones there. All the objects, and bones for that matter, are laid out in a systematic, organized manner so that selecting them is easy. You can even toggle with the arrow keys to quickly jump to the next object in the chain. Facial expressions are done with endoporphs. Endomorphs also rock! :)

Probably more than you were asking about, but it's a fun and easy setup to animate.

Again, thanks for your comments. Glad you like it.

[Brett H.]

I really like it. I do have one crit though. The thing that usually makes this type of character work the best is the EYES. They need more "feel" to them. Are they modelled, or are they just image mapped spheres? I really think you could make this guy come alive with good eyes. Model the cornea and iris separately, and use refraction to create a "real" eye.

Really cool character though, it's nice to see some different stuff.

Brett

[nick_hiatt]

nice model
are you gonna animate him?
-
www.outofbody.tv/NH_Main.html

[Rogue]

Thanks for the kind words gentlemen.

Brett H: I agree with you on the eyes. I'd really like to get that 'A Bug's Life' eyes. I'm aware of the technique you're talking about, but have never done it before. Here's my problem: the eyes are not completely round. I can't get them perfectly round and get the exagerated eye lid effects I'm going for. Therefor, I can't animate the eyes as seperate objects. At the moment, it is an image map, tied to a texture null, that is goaled to an Eye Null so that I may animate the eye null that serves as a focal point. However, it may be possible to do as you say with a seperate piece of geometry, that is highly subdivided, an apply an image for a displacement map to the geometry. If that failed, I could try a bump map, but most likely would not yield the best results. Thank you for bringing that up, as I would have been lazy and let it slide. :)

If I could ask of you a favor. Could you give me a link to a site that has some good reference for this technique and also some eye anatomy. My appreciation in advance.

nick_hiatt: You bet I am. I've already done some tests with him in a scene with my other cat. I'm getting ready to do a short with the two. It's a short short :), but should be funny. Then I'm moving on to an actual short story. Who knows how long that'll take or if it'll ever see the light of day. :)

Thanks again for your responses.

[tsmit47]

I think it is a great character!!


FOR ME TO POOP ON!!! :airguitar


Can I have a raise now?

[luigi]

its not a alien but is very adorable.


a great job.


lot of personality

:eek: :eek: :eek:

[Phrank]

hey man, what a nice model! very cool comic style, love the expressions :bounce:
I agree to brett what affects the eyes.

cya Phrank

[tobalno3]

awwwwww....how tweet

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