WIP: Character: Batman - Lo-Poly

[topF]

not bad so far but may you can post a smoothed version and maybe you could make the hands and feets a bit bigger?

[Beaneh]

this should have been posted in the gameart and design forum if it's a game model, wires and a poly count would be nice as well..

[dmcgrath]

Thanks for the replies so far guys.

topF:
I might make the hands and feet bigger still. But the smoothed version doesn't read as well until I get it rigged.

Beaneh:
I don't have any specific gearing towards a game designed character, but the low poly is suitable for it (1600 Polys - Quads)

A screenshot of some blendshapes, 27 in all - but I'll probably consolidate it down to 20 or so.
http://www.spatiallight.net/challenge/27Blends.jpg

Also a s'shot of the wireframe.
http://www.spatiallight.net/challenge/batsWirePersp01.jpg

[dmcgrath]

Here is what I have been working on the most.
http://www.spatiallight.net/challenge/blendControl1.jpg
It a MEL script GUI I wrote that connects all of my blendshapes to buttons. When I push one, it sets the blendshape and then sets the keyframes. It also resets all the other blendshapes back to default, so they don't overlap.
I was able to block out a LARGE chunk dialogue (about 32 sec.) in under two hours.
There is still a lot of tweaking that would need to be done ( I haven't even rigged him with bones yet), but the push buttons work great for roughing out the animation.




Here is a small example, about 1.1 Mb (Divx 5.05 Codec) (http://www.spatiallight.net/challenge/batTalkTest01.avi)



More to come, soon!

[Beaneh]

lmao, thats perfect, can't wait to see a full animation of this..

[dmcgrath]

Thanks Beanah, yeah I love this monologue, it's from the old "The Tick" cartoons by Ben Edlund ( I don't know if you know of them ).

Here is my first pic I drew (of Batman, ever) a few days ago, it was the inspiration to start making this animation.

http://www.spatiallight.net/challenge/batmanSearching.jpg

[AlbertoGarcia]

It's looking good. Your modelling is very close to the sketches. Can you explain how you did that GUI?

[dmcgrath]

by compadrito Can you explain how you did that GUI?

I'll probably build a tutorial if there are enough requests. I'll try and do a step by step from start to finish, at least the setup part.
But here is a little insight to what I'm trying to do.

Building a GUI is pretty complex your first time out, there are some really good resources online though, just check the Maya section here, it's what I do.

After I have the look of what I want, I often just try something manually (with the Echo All Commands turned on in the Script Editor). Then I extracted the necessary elements and turned them into a procedure.
Example:


//For the button "Cowl Scowl"

button -width 80 -height 30 -label "Cowl Scowl" -command setBlend_cowlScowl_1;

proc setBlend_cowlScowl_1()
{
resetBlends_1;
setAttr "batHeadBlendshape_1.cowlScowl_1" 1;
setKeyframe batHeadBlendshape_1.cowlScowl_1;
}

// the procedure (nested in this one) called resetBlends1;
//Resests all the blendshapes nodes to zero.
//And then the rest of the procedure, sets cowlScowl_1 to
//"1" (its MAX setting) and keys it at the current frame.



I hope that helped a little.

More to come!

[dmcgrath]

Sorry, I'm just re-subscribing to my own thread.

[YankyBJeans]

I am very interested in your method of scripting and animating facial movement. You should definitely do a tutorial or at least document it more in this thread. While I dont like using blendshapes (i use influence curves and clusters) I would benefit a lot from the scripting end (modify it to suit my needs) and especially the gui/window part.

Yanky

Keep it up!

[dmcgrath]

This is the building I worked on recently, Not much to show yet. I'll toss out some more animations soon, hopefully.

http://www.spatiallight.net/3d_images/files/batsBuilding01.jpg

I am very interested in your method of scripting and animating facial movement. You should definitely do a tutorial or at least document it more in this thread. While I dont like using blendshapes (i use influence curves and clusters) I would benefit a lot from the scripting end (modify it to suit my needs) and especially the gui/window part.


yanky, I will probably post some stuff up there soon, also. Its something I just kind of stumbled on, I've never tried it before, and it works pretty fast. But so far I haven't "developed" it any further. Thanks for the encouragement.

[dmcgrath]

Sorry it's been so long btw posts I am looking for a job, and it's been a letdown so far. Oh, well, I'll keep plugging away and hopefully something will happen.

http://www.spatiallight.net/movies_images/files/batmanScene01.jpg

My next step, I added some movement for now, and also trying to match the perspective of my original drawings.

Here is the Playblast - (Dvix 5.05 - 1.7Mb) (http://www.spatiallight.net/movies_images/files/batmanScene_01.avi)

[edit]Ha - Ha - I just noticed, I made 1500 posts! (Cookies for everyone!)[edit]

[Jimmy_Dublo]

lmao this is very cool. Nice cartoony batman, looks very good.

Try smoothing out the chin n stuff abit. But seeing its a WIP This will be good in the end.

Nice.

[mimo8]

like it!

when I saw the still of the blendshapes I thought for a cartoony character they could go more into a extreme but in the liptest and the playblast he really seems beliveable

keep it up

[killian]

very nice, i like the gui.

have you tried playing with the soft/hard edges to smooth out the model.i think this will help and doent add any more polygons, im a low poly modeller too!

(if you dont know: go edit polygons-normals-soften/harden)

can i see your texture sheet and what sizs did you use?

nice work keep going

killian

[dmcgrath]

killian and Jimmy_Dublo - I did the soften on the polys already, thanks. The renders look much better, I just haven't posted any yet, but I will.


mimo8 - I also have a joint in his jaw that you can further tweak the face movements. It seems to work pretty well.

Thanks again to all comments. :)

http://www.spatiallight.net/3d_images/files/batConfused01.jpg

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