Two knights battle

[the_podman]

oops, forgot to explain the thread title. Basically, she's going to be the main character in an animation where she will fight another knight/warrior (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=147967)(my first completed model). I've already rigged and finished animating ALL the cycles for the enemy. You can download the cycle test here:

CYCLE TEST MOVIE(run, walk, swordslashes, etc.) (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/KnightMOVIEraw.exe)



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Knight1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Knight2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Knight3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Knight4.jpg

[Mishin]

these are great- I like the form of the girl - i dont have much to critique since im only learning good low poly modeling now - but i know these are pleasing- the only one thing i can say would be for the knights animation. When he thrusts his sword foward - the swords doesnt move desireably- maybe that was an issue in the rig - im not sure - anyway its really nice

[the_podman]

Hey, thanks man. You're absolutely right. I did something really dumb with the rigg, I branched a joint out from his wrist and skinned the sword to a seperate joint when I should've just constrainted the sword to the wrist. The result is that the local rotation axis for the sword changes and I have to key the sword joint to compensate. Too many keys next to each other causes a jerky-like movement. Hmmm, I'm gonna redo that animation again then with a new sword binded to the wrist.

Thanks again for the feedback.
-pod

[Prs-Phil]

nice, but I would make her croch a bit more subtle because she looks like she´s got something ;) in there. I´d also make her legs stronger, they look rather weak, like they could hardley carry her body with that heavy armor.

Her breasts are very flat and have a very dense mesh.

The feet look a bit wonky, try to define them better and make them longer.

Her fingers are very long compared to the thumb.

I´ll have a look at the ani later :)

[the_podman]

hehe. I see the crotch now. She's got a little package. Ok, I fix that. She'll probably be wearing skirt-type armour anyway so you won't see it. The thumb has a skeleton in it and is bent inward at an extreme angle, it's actually a lot longer and thiner than it seems. I originally made her legs a lot longer, but it didn't seem right so I shortened em. I know the whole long legs is sexier thinking cause I see it all the time in games and also, I just finished a clay sculpting course and my teacher kept adding more clay to the height of my peice :) .."make her 9 heads tall, rod!"

The breast are purposefully understated. Recently, I just finished this game called "Kunoichi" (http://kunoichi.jp/) for the PS2(I think it's called "Nightshade" in English) and I was really impressed by the design and animation especially to the main character, Hibana. She's got this nimble and skinny slinky-like body with smaller breasts and is animated extremely well. So, I guess I was trying to emulate those proportions. I didn't give my model thick armour because of the animation I have in mind for her.

Thanks for all the useful tips so far and thanks for looking!
-pod
:thumbsup:

[Frank Dodd]

Very nice models! Other than what has already been pointed out I think the structure of the female character looks great as does the knight, the female should look really good once textured, it might be interesting to see some expressivness on her face though!?

[Freakychakra]

Hi Podman

It is good to be back on CGTalk and see that you are working on a cool project.
I like the style of the Knight!

[RKurczewski]

If anything then her arm looks a bit sticky but that might be just combination of pose and armour. Great job- awaiting textures.

[the_podman]

FreakyChakra! Nice to see you back on cgtalk. I was wondering where you went off to. How's the Kai project going? I watch that cool trailer all the time :)

btw, fixed the Knight "sword thrust" animation(thank you Mishin!!)

Here's an update. Almost finished the modeling. I just have a couple of anal ajustments to make and I still have to model the sword. I fixed the feet(thanks) and adjusted some strange proportions.

Made the legs longer(thank you, Prs-Phil)

I did a test render without any textures to test out the normal shadows and some color changes. Made a ton of normal adjustments on the face, especially.

She currently stands at 3200 polys total. Haven't finished optimizing it yet and I am still up in the air about whether I should experiment with normal mapping. She looks pretty detailed already so maybe not.

Ok, on to the test rigg and dreaded textures. This is only my second character model, ever, so bear with me ;)

-podman
:)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/knightgirl4.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/4.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/5.jpg

[the_podman]

**edited**


Modeled "female body" base mesh first:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/woman1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/woman2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/woman5.jpg

[Sizzling]

nice. I put my money on the girl!

good improvement on the legs. I cant be that easy to shop her legs off.
Are you thinking to put them in a setting or are they going to fight over a single plane?

[the_podman]

Thanks. I am making a castle interior for my "modeling environments for games" class so I will try and put it in that environment. I'm trying to make it very game-like so she'll have all the usual cycles that are common to 3rd person platformers like walk, run, jump, block, double-jump., etc. Then, through non-linear animation techniques, I'm going to put together "clips" that mimic an actual realtime game experience(if I am feeling more ambitious, I'll actually run it in realtime via UnrealEd's matinee).

Her legs are actually going to be covered with chainmail which will be more apparent in the textures.

Thanks for looking,
-pod
:)

[G0st]

im still new to modeling but i must say i dont really have anything to crit here, the model looks very good, the topology is solid and you have a great theme going on. Like they say, "the skin can make it or break it" and im pretty sure your going to make it

[the_podman]

Ok, after an exhausting battle with the textures, I've finally got some work to post. It's not much and this is my first time to paint a face texture in Photoshop, so bear with my slow speed. :D

I've remodeled the face a little and I really want to it to look good before moving on. Here's what it looks like so far. Countless hours worth of work!:scream:
I gotta say that painting in Photoshop has got to be one of the hardest things for me(I can paint in old fashioned oil paints and acrylic but digital painting is still fairly new to me) and I've watched lots of tuts from here and polycount to get me started.:)

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. I need it badly!

Face and body entirely unwrapped using DeepUV, an app I cannot live without!

Thanks all,:)
-pod

**pics deleted**

[yoff]

I find it hard to see the eyebrows. It may be a consequence of the ligthing, but they seem to be lost inside the eyesocket...

Anyway, really nice model. The face texure works quite well. Maybe some warmer tones in the flesh?

[the_podman]

Ok, fixed the eyebrows, THANK YOU. I've been really having a hell of a time painting hair. Seriously, I've been painting hair for a week now and I still can't seem to get it right. Some feedback is mucho appreciated.

-pod
Here's where I'm at now with the head texture sheet:

**PICS DELETED**

[yoff]

The skin tone in her face seem much colder than that on her neck.
Her lips seem very dark as does the underside of her face, but this may again be the lighting...

I really like the hair, nice alphas :)

[yoff]

Ok, I just read your post again and realized that you might like somehing more constructive on the hair.

Generally I think you've got the volume of it, perhaps adding small strands or hints of individual hairs would add to the quality?

[the_podman]

Thankyou, Yoff. I fixed up the skin tone problem(turns out I had two seperate materials for the face and neck area). It's funny how you don't notice blatent mistake after staring at the peice for weeks.

I am added some individual strands of hair. Good advice. Hmm, trying to paint it with tablet but it keeps looking like "straw". I'll have to experiment with the brushes.

More progress(very slow, as this is only my second model) to come. Thanks for looking.

-pod

[the_podman]

Ok. here's my FINAL head. I've been working on just the head now for almost 2 weeks. I've got to move on. I gave her a complete nose job(remodeled it) and put more color in her face. Also tried to pump up some highlights in the hair and add individual strands(thanks).

Just wanted to post the head for last minute advice before starting on texture sheet #2.

Thanks all for looking,
-pod


**pics deleted**
They were too sucky for the public ;)

[JeePee]

great work man i admire your presistance with your first texture job, i have difficulties with it too like you did in the start. you're a good inspiration for me not to quit texturing and just start on modelling instead again next time

great work on the face, it looks very nice. the hairbands are a nice addition

[the_podman]

Thank you JeePee for your very kind words. I'm taking a very methodical and careful approach even if it takes me longer to finish a character, I want to get it right. This forum so far has been a crucial asset in my learning experience and crits from both pros and newbies(such as myself) are very much appreciated.

Well, I actually remodel parts of her face and this is just a smalll update. I'm testing out some animations on her before continuing the texturing(want to make sure she'll deform properly as I'm going to be animating her quite a bit.)

Thanks for looking and all crits are very much welcome and needed!

-pod


*FIXED pic UPDATED 11/16/04

11/20/04
Uggghh! Horrible picture rightfully deleted!
-pod

[yoff]

Very nice textures! The nose now seem to have a quite narrow top (erh..front facing flat plane), especially between the eyes, but I guess some people look like that...

Whats with the "d"s? :)

[AndyBa]

Something is wrong with the lights or textures.

It looks overburned.
I mentioned it because I had this problem when my monitor was too dark. :)
And I didn't even know that my models looked different on other monitors.

[the_podman]

damn! Are the "d's" that obvious? Alrighty, gotta change that.
I'll work on making the bridge of the nose more pronounced, someone told me just the opposite a few days ago and I guess I botched her nosejob a bit. :shrug:

My lighting is a bit strange, and it's funny that you mentioned the dark monitor problem, Andy. Recently, I brought my work into the school lab to work on it, and I noticed a lot of tiny little bits of color that were not showing up on my lcd(even though it's a high quality sony digital) at home. Also, they seemed much more saturated than they appear at home. My eyes don't see a lot of color(inherited color blindness, I'm afraid) and I have this tendancy to blow out the contrast of my textures. Trying to solve all of these issues with your guy's help. Anything I can do it photoshop with my textures to sort of fix these things? Or perhaps some kind of monitor calibration software I can use? I've posted one of two final texture sheets. Please advise me what I should do with them? THANK YOU VERY much, AndyBa, if you hadn't pointed this out, I'd have probably never noticed this!:applause:



Also, can anyone give me a little direction on where to go with the specular map as I have no clue.


Another problem I'm having is trying to set up some neutral lighting in Maya. Anyone know how to get a nice universal illumination around the whole character without creating too many hard shadows that obscure the texture work or make them look different then they actually are. I've taken out all the lighting and only mapped "color" textures on the mesh and left the lighting to the default Maya settings with a touch of ambient lighting. Does it look any better? What should I do? hmm.. Should I dial down the contrast? Maybe start over some parts? What do you think? Are the Yankees gonna win the world series next year?


Man, I need a lot of help. I thought my second character would be easier than this. Oh, well.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/sick.gif


Thanks guys for all your input!!

-pod


**OLD PICS DELETED**

[dpizzle]

i can't wait to see this finished, pod

keep posting updates for us

[the_podman]

Thanks, dpizzle. It's been a real struggle but I hope to finish her by the end of November. I feel the same about your ToxicSpaceAvengerGuy dude. Ever got to texturing that guy?

-pod
:)

[dpizzle]

hah, no not yet, but i was actually about to start workin on him again.

thanks for asking though :D

[ImUrPeTii]

hey pod,ur new craft?

Hm I think the model should by fixed,the neck is a bit short for a nice girl,and also the pose of modeling is a important way for enhance vfx.When u are unwrapping the UV set,pay more patience on this as the UV will great help texturing work.

[Loki_5]

Erm, The sholder plate/neck guard looks in the wrong place.

If your opponent is right handed (which it seems to be) then there srongest slash will come from (the attackers) right to the left (of the defending party) so with the plate where it is then it'll make a nice chopping board for her neck.

Also with the plate where it is it'll get in the way if she trys to lift her sword arm above her head.

If it go's on the other side, then it matches with the re-enforced fore arm plates, and you've got a totally re-enforced arm (like a more monuverable/ versitile sheild).
You could even add extra armour to the left leg?

[the_podman]

An excellent point there, Loki. I'll flip those parts and post a render soon. Now that I look at it, I realize I'm going to run into issues when the arm has to be in an extreme pose(and it most likely will, seeing it's the primary motion arm).

Thanks a million. A simple but important crit!

-pod

[the_podman]

Here's the render with the shoulder plate fliped. It makes much better design sense now. Thank you.

There will also be more armor on the lower body, it appears skimpy at the moment because I plan on "painting" most of that portion. I might even use very small normal maps to get more depth into them, however, I'm trying not to add any more geo because I will exceed my poly budget of 5500 tris.

Keep em coming ppl, thanks! I can take brutal and honest crits :)
Since this is only my second model, I'm still feeling my way through the process.

-pod
My amatuer penciled portrait (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=182460)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/reversed.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/reversed2.jpg

[MR BINK]

glad to see you are still plugin away podman, just a hint you might wanna try and overlay someactual photos of a womans face to get some subtle detail in the there as well the hair looks liek it could use a wee bit more contrast looks kinda blurry.


Regarding the armour you should look for some metal painting tutorials on the net and I know you don't want to change your model but seems like there should be something covering her wrist joint, I know that that is a pain to rig but if she is going to have forearm armour like that you should find a way to protect her wrist.

cheers man, keep workin'

[the_podman]

Thanks, Bink. I appreciate your input. I never thought of using photo overlays for the face, I'll give it a shot.

As for the wrist, I actually have a whole other peice, but I hid it because I was working on the hand texture. The rigging is actually quite easy for me, I've rigged lots of characters now plus I'm using MAYA which has a robust set of rigging features for strange little peices and such that "branch-out" of a typical biped rigg.

Cool, man. Thanks:thumbsup:
-pod
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/current3.jpg

[JeePee]

Edit: nevermind my previous comment, it's looking good

[supernekosan]

the only ting i got to say about the full armored knight....try to make is sword more eavy...it look as light as a feater..it can add a lot beter motion if its sword look heavy as hell..and the impac will look more powerfull..but you know I ame not realy good in animation!!

[the_podman]

Thank you, Supernekosan,:). Yes, animation is quite hard, I rarely see it on the forum. I realize the sword is too light. A lot of the jerky movement had to do with a not so good rigg(it was my first model/texture/rigg/animation). I've since then learnt how to build a better more intuative rigg and also I'm using Motion Builder for this next peice when it's finished so I hope the animation on her will be much better. Well, I hope, anyhow ^_^;

Thanks,
-pod

[ush]

It's looking better and better.I like textrue of her armor.
I'm looking forward your next image post.:)
Nice job keep working.:thumbsup:

[the_podman]

Here's an update of where I am right now with the textures. Thankyou, ush, for looking!

PICS:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/current5.jpg


****OLDER PICS DELETED****


Crits always welcome and very needed!

Thanks all,
-pod
:)

[marc001]

Her eyelashes should be longer and thicker, irises can be larger, add eyelids, make the highlight in the eye larger, and the white of her eye shouldn't be so red. The blue armor can pick up some of that red bounce light. Similar to what you painted under her breast there's some bounced blue light. When in doubt use Photoshop's color sampler to find colors in photos.

[Johny]

the character is awesomely modeled, the only problem is the color of the textures..they make a some sort of confusion, cause mixing sea blue with red is a bit...dunoo. ya know what i mean :P , why instead of that blue , make it a metal without color and then in the highlights add a slight blueish color ?

[the_podman]

Hey, thanks guys! Excellent advice. I will fix the eyes and lashes. Yeah, I felt the lashes were a bit short, and I'll punch up that highlight on the eyes. Also didn't realize the whites were so red. I've got this thing with my eyes, a little color blind, I'm afraid. So sometimes color comes across more subtle than it actually is.

Ok, johnnyII, I want to try your suggestion. How should I go about this? I'm still new to texture painting and this is only my second set so I need a bit of guidance. Should I desaturate the blue and burn in some slight blue highlights? Just not sure how to proceed.

Color. It's my biggest bane! That's why I work in greyscale usually, then add color later. I've attended art school in NY and I understand color theory and all, but I still struggle with it. :(

ok, here's my checklist:

1. Tone down red/blue color. Maybe remove the blue alltogether.(touch of blue highlight)

2. Eyelashes longer and thicker.

3. Iris bigger, highlight is eyes larger.

4. Whites in eyes not so red

5. Add eyelids (hmmm, I'll try. painting the face so far was a big pain for me)


Kewl! Lots to work from now with such rich feedback. Keep em coming and thanks! I'll try and finish up an update for tonight.

-pod

[Johny]

hey glad to know ur noting what to improve :D i really dig this character and hope to see it finished :)

anyways , heres some thing that if ya want might try on ur metal, this is just something i panted very quickly to show ya what i mean .

[the_podman]

Aha! I think I'm feeling ya now, Johnny boy.

Ok, this helps a lot. I will try that. Update will be posted soon.

Thanks,
-pod:thumbsup:

[the_podman]

I posted these on CGchat. Just to make crits easier, here are two bink video turntable renders:

http://s40829.sites45.storefront-hosting.com/Rodney/knight_gal_bink_turntable.exe

http://s40829.sites45.storefront-hosting.com/Rodney/face_bink.exe

[ush]

I've seen your turn table work.:)
This is not crit,but just an opinion.

It's really depend on what kind of character you want to make,
but if you want to make real oriented character,your character's ears are slight flat compare to the real human.(I mean a little parallel with the head.)

It's really hard to comment human type character,because people who make character
must have own image.:D Especially,catoony or fantasy characters.

I think you are doing really fantastic work though.
I like your character pretty much.:)
It'll very great when it is animated.:thumbsup:

[-KDX-]

hey that BNK video is awesome, how do you get that...is it a free app or what??

nice model and texturing btw, ^^ good rigging it seems too.

-KDX-

[the_podman]

Bink video is free and can be obtained at: www.radgametools.com (http://www.radgametools.com)

It has become an industry standard in the gaming world. What makes it so impressive is it's amazing compression at almost DVD like quality! I can compress a 1gig .mov file with no compression to 19MB with barely any quality loss. Plus, the player is embedded in the file so no need to install codecs and such. I prefer it over divx and quicktime because you can upload a much clearer picture for crits.

Thanks for looking. More soon. I really want to wrap this model up soon.

-podman:)

[-KDX-]

thank ya.

I knew Blizzard used it for Warcraft games, but didn't know much about it really...

damn I got alot to learn about the game industry...omg...I shoulda went to school for it. Now I am debating doing just that...but it's SOoooOo expensive if you are not fresh outta HS.

-KDX-

[the_podman]

Not to get "off topic" here, but I only took 3 classes at NYU's continuing ed, and 2 of them kinda sucked.(the only reason why I maintain "student" status over there is to make use of the student license of Maya). Most of what I've learned has been on my own and with the help of fine communities such as this one. I think it takes some stubborn tenacity to do it on your own, but I'm hoping it can be done. I'm building my reel right now and just using learning resources like training DVDs, books, etc. and online research on 3d as it applies to the "gaming" world. Helps to have a passion for games, too, as playing and looking at game art pushes me to try and imitate it. I officially started 3d anything in October of 2003, so it's barely been over a year for me.
Although I would've loved to have taken "3d art" in my college days, it was simply non-existent in 1992-3, so at the ripe age of 30, I'm trying to get in there with all those much younger folk fresh outta undergrad programs.

Actually, to tell you the truth, the "tech" hurdle is not that hard to jump. Once you get the hang of the basics, it's the "art" side that will truly make or break the demo reel. Drawing and sculpting classes in pencil and clay have helped me much more than anything, since it's essentailly the same skills, just transferred onto a PC app. So I'm pushing everything I've got into aesthetics of the reel rather than technical achievements.

-pod
:)

[-KDX-]

well I have an animation degree, but they just taught me the very basics of how to use Maya and simply animation principals...not anything specifically geared toward gaming, cinema, or even simulations. I did have alot of free time to work on nothing but cg, but now I got a full time job to occupy most of my time.

I just need to get on it, ^^
Thanks tho for the kind words...I hope we both get a nice demo reel done asap!!

-KDX-

[the_podman]

A little more texture work done. Not much due to a cold...sniff. Changed the lighting too. Let me know if you like the old lighting better. I'm using a G.I. script for lighting now(thanks, Tukata). Trying to keep the lighting pretty neutral, though, seeing she's going to be part of a machinima via UnrealEd and the engine's got limited vertex lighting.

Whaddayathink?


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/CurrentA.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/CurrentB.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Texture_A.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Texture_B.jpg

[ush]

Take care of your health:)
I like this version of lighting.
Maybe you know this but,without specularmap,sometimes very high specular of the texture makes things a little odd look in the game,when you animated.It pretty depends on light position and scene though:D so be careful.:)

Your metallic expression is so nice.:applause:
Great texture work.

[the_podman]

Thank you, ush. Yes, this is something I am aware of(she may look strange in a dark room. lol), The reason why I am painting it this way is because I am using her in a realtime "machinima" that will will be running on UnrealEd version 2004. Currently, the character models in UnrealED support limited spec and NO bump maps. So, a lot of the detail has to be "painted" and bumps need to be "baked". I also noticed that the character model's themselves give off ambient glow, so they don't really cast high shadow detail(again, due the "vertex lighting" nature of the engine).
I have "examined" the epic textures very closely to try and match the painting style so that she'll look ok in the engine and have even run some regular "mesh" tests in-game.

Although I would haved loved to use the some of the newer engine's that support bump and better lighting(like Doom 3 engine or Half Life engine), I am not familiar with those yet and I have become quite comfortable with UnrealEd.

Here's a shot ingame test, no skeleton yet. Animation will be done with Maya and Motion Builder. The spec does seems a little on the "hot" side, but I have not created the engine shader for her armor yet.
I'll test out some lower contrast versions when texturing is complete ;)
Thanks, ush. Nice to know you are still viewing my thread!

-pod:)
(Tare panda just for fun, my early maya work. hehe)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Unrealed_test.jpg

[ush]

Thank you, ush. Yes, this is something I am aware of(she may look strange in a dark room. lol), The reason why I am painting it this way is because I am using her in a realtime "machinima" that will will be running on UnrealEd version 2004.
the_podman,thanks for the info,I didn't know about this.
I'm kind of an old fashioned person:blush:
I serched the web about "machinima" and I got a little information about this now.:)
I will take time and search more about this later.

BTW:The image looks nice for me. It'll be more gorgeous after tweak.:) :)
And nice tare panda too.:D

[the_podman]

Hi, all that are still viewing this! I need advice on the "shin armour". I started a sorta ornate design for it, but I don't know if it's really working from a design point of view. It's not finished, but before I pour hours of work into it. I need to know what you guys and gals think.


Choose between A, B, and C. Which was looks the most aesthetically pleasing?

Whatever the average is, I'll go with it. Pretty simple, it's a multiple choice question. hehe:)

Thanks,
-pod


A.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/image_A_body.jpg



B.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/image_B_body.jpg


C.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/image_C_body.jpg

[ush]

Those three pics are all looking good,so it's difficult to choose.:D

I want to see　ｗhole body image with those three shin armours,if I could.
That going to be good help to have entire impression of this character with shin armours.:)

Thank you very much.:)

[-KDX-]

*A*

and btw, nice job once again on the textures..=)

-KDX-

[Waugh]

I'd go for *A*, but with the pattern a little bit tarnished, or stick to *C* if you head for classical 'standard' armor.

I'd also add some more shadows on the 'skirt', under the front part...

Nice work, overall !

Keep it up,

Waugh

[the_podman]

Reposted full body pics for Ush :)

[NeptuneImaging]

Hey, Podman,

Nice model you got going here. Personally, I wanted to do a Machinima film too using the DOOM3 Engine (hence my character's high polygon count and my stress on next generation standards like extensive bump mapping), but I have no programming experience whatsoever. My character, like yours, I take my time on it (I posted some updated renders). And, next week finish my associates program in 3d modeling and animation at age 20. I guess learning about 3D design early in my life helped alot...

Anyway, If you still need help with the "cage" like texture...i will be happy to help.

[ush]

Reposted full body pics for Ush :)He He,thank you very much.:)
I like "a" and "c".

When I saw only leg image I thought "a" image is too strong.
But with the body,it looks good.

And I also like simple one,so I like "c" too.

"b" one is a little hard to recognize the pattern.
so it's slight wasteful I think.:)


These are just my opinions.:D
Good work.

[yoff]

I second Ush, I really like A but if that is your choice I feel the pattern should perhaps also be found on the arms. C is fine also, while B is somewhat lost...

[-KDX-]

thats a good point. If you do that for the legs, maybe you should put something similar (but not as pronounced) on the legs?

-KDX-

[the_podman]

Thanks, everyone. I'll do that for the FOREARM peices then. I needed to rework those, anyway, but yes, it would have to be consistent somehow. One of the problems with doing textures on a "peice by peice" basis is maintaining consistency.(told myself I wouldn't do that with this peice. do'h!)

Congratulations, HaloAnimator! You have a big advantage right now, being 20. You've got lots of time to learn. I'm already 30 and I just started last year:rolleyes: . Hope there is room for some older guys and gals in the bizz.

Here's a finished version of A. I still feel it needs something for the whiter parts, like another overlay of "brushed" metal or something, however, I'm going to move on to the rest of the character or I'll be on the legs forever!

After the legs, just the sword and shield and I'm done texturing, yay! Can't wait for animation. My goal is to get her running in UnrealEd's matinee.

Very inspired by two works. "ScraplandUT (http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=411591&highlight=machinima)" machinima that the guys at folklore did.
And, the really cool looking "Kai' Death of Dreams (http://rdecosta.no-ip.com/kaiopera/index.cfm?c=Images)" that FreakyChakra (http://www.cgtalk.com/member.php?userid=69842) is modeling character's for. If you check those out, you'll have an idea of what I'm trying to do.


Thanks for your attention and I'll try to get a proper update done soon.
-pod:)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Shin.jpg

[NeptuneImaging]

Hey podman, I do this for the passion. Maybe one day Rayder of the Future can meet your knight of the past. That would be cool. By the way, I updated my character...

[the_podman]

Not really sure why the feet took so long, but here they are. Ok, body is done. Sword and Sheild and pose are next post.

-podman

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/foot_A.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/foot_B.jpg

Here's the working UVmap before compression into the texture sheet:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/foot_UVmap.jpg

[-KDX-]

super bad.

I likes.

-KDX-

[dpizzle]

pod, this chick is lookin sweet.
your texture work is improving with every new post.
i love it

keep up the good work

[Johny]

hey podman, ur texture skill is improving and keeps on improving :D i really want to see this finished :D


good luck and keep the good work up ;)

[ush]

Really good looking texture.
I like that very much.

Looking forward sword and sheild.:)

[the_podman]

Thanks all for words of encouragement! I'm really trying to make it to the final stretch at this point. 2+ months on textures does NOT meet typical production deadlines, but, I guess I'll have to work on efficiency in my next model.

Here's a finished sheath. Used LOTS of ps lighting effects with multiple colored lights on different copies, then blended them together. Also did a ton of experimentation with ALPHA CHANNELS in photoshop.

hmmm, I guess I lied. The next post will be done! Working on her skeleton and rigg right now also. Trying to set up a "constraint" system for her to be able to pull the sword in and out of her sheath. The poly tail will be joints driven by dynamics which will be baked into regular FK keyframes. I really want to start animating her in Motion Builder soon. She's been in this pose for months now. :rolleyes:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/sheath.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/SheathUV.jpg

**EDIT**
I guess it's a good enough sword:shrug: Been wrestling with "painting" a blade all day.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/sword_done.jpg

[JasonHall]

Looking good!
Two months is a tad long for a production schedule, but I think you've learned a lot from the process. You'll be like the Flash when you texture your next model. :thumbsup:
Can't wait to see the animation.

[ush]

Wow,looking gorgeous.
Indeed,can't wait to see the animation.:thumbsup:

[the_podman]

Hehe. Thanks, ush and funguspuddle! All you fellows motivate me!:)

Well, the shield is done. I kinda went overboard on the details. My PS file is almost 75MB for the shield alone.

I need help again.

Tell me which is better design, A or B:



A

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/sheildA.jpg


B
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/sheildB.jpg



Here's what it looks on the mesh:


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/sheild.jpg




Thanks in advance:) :) :)

-Rodney

[JasonHall]

I personally prefer "B". I think that the other one has too much going on. All of my attention is drawn to the four "arrow" designs instead of the shield as a whole. I notice that you said you were having trouble with the sword. That makes two of us! I worked on mine all day... I think yours turned out pretty good, and it has a nice scabbard too! Really good job on that.:thumbsup:

[JeePee]

i also prefer b for the same reason and i would lessen the shadow between the outer metal ring and the inside, it gives the impression that ring is realy thick...too thick imo

[ush]

Yes,me too.
The wood texture looks nice and "B" is pulling out that goodness.
I like "B".:)

[the_podman]

Thanks, guys! I'll go with "B".

Building the skeleton right now. It's taking me a bit longer because everything will be "bone" driven. So the hierarchy will be a little complex. Here's what the final skeleton looks like. I may have to add some extra joints for her skirt, but we'll see how well it deforms. Also, I have to see how well UnrealED will perform will all these joints. It's a bit heavy.

-pod:)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Skeleton1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Skeleton2.jpg

[kukukiki74]

hey podman! thats really nice work! i love the texture work!! I can't wait to see it fully rigged! Good job!

[AndyBa]

Indeed beautiful textures!!!
I like the shield. :)

[Mizu]

model looks great, textures too, you're getting a lot of experience at this. keep it up

[the_podman]

Thanks, everyone for all the nice crits! Still struggling with this one.:argh:

Having lots of weighing problems with the "skinning". One of things I personally do not like about Maya is the "artisan" style weight painting. For low-poly, it's a bit inefficient, because it leaves you with so many odd and uneven values. Even with the component editor, it's frustrating when distributing wieghts across the mesh. Also, I set a pretty high drop-off weight and I STILL get a pony tail joint influencing a foot?!?!? Argghh.

I wonder if there is a way I can bring it into 3dsmax and use their "capsule" style weighting system(which I prefer much much more). Probelm with the .3dsmax exporter for Maya, is that it's a "one way" trip.

There's also Maya's Rigid bind and flexors, but, unfortunately, game engine will not translate this.

Here's a pretty ugly pose, sorry:shrug:

Anyhew, I'll keep hammering away till it's done!:wip:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Rigg_test.jpg

[the_podman]

hmmmmmmmm.. something has seriously gone wrong with my rigg. :sad:

Looks very painful. Ahhh, sh*t, looks like I'm rebuilding my skeleton. Got some "orientation" issues. Stupid podman:D argggh, note to self: "check joint orientations before skinning".

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/rigg_failure.jpg




Alright, I did something totally dumb. I skinned her up before setting up IKs and Controllers for the skeleton. Reason why I did this was for export into Motion Builder. hmmm, now I'm thinking I want to build a "maya only" rigg.

-podman
I'm keepin on truckin....


***EDIT***
ok, here's my new skeleton. This time, all the IKs and back controllers, etc. work properly...Sigh... to do all that skinning again.. So much work...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/rigg_attempt2.jpg

[dpizzle]

ahh that sucks man...

well at least you got it worked out now

[the_podman]

Not sure if anyone's interested in this. But I put up my original .psd file for the shield for download. The layer's are not labeled or anything, but I think it really shows the effects of what you can do with PS lighting effects. I had a different approach to this texture. I didn't use my Wacom as much as experiment with PS's tools.
I also used many alphas in the Channels.


It's uncollapsed and not resized in this file.

Download here:
http://s40829.sites45.storefront-hosting.com/Rodney/sheild.psd

[BananaSalat]

Hey thats great ! :applause:

Much thanks for the .psd file. :bounce:

Ah and by the way, nice model + texture. Iam looking at you thread for a long time now and i must say nice work

[jaydmax]

Cool model Podman. Your texture work is really cool. IMO I prefer "B" the best. A is a little too much C is a little to plan. B is just right...

I have an off topic question about NYU. Are you taking the game development certificate? Because im looking to start this coming Feb. and was just wondering if the classes you were referring to when you said they where of no help to you. Is the 2 classes part of that certificate of just the Maya classes that they offer? I too am a 31 year old looking to break in the industry or start my own company (which would be extremely risky and expensive).
Anyway keep up the greate work.

[the_podman]

Hello. Well, after 2 failed attempts and almost throwing my PC out my window, I calmed myself down and finally got her skinned weighted pretty good! There are still some minor "cliping" issues but I guess that is to be expected with low poly riggs. The great news is that she exports into UnrealEd with NO problems in the mesh or test animation!! Yay!

Thanks to everyone who's helped me on this project! It's been a long uphill battle and it would'nt have turned out as good without you fine guys and gals!

Mishin, Prs-Phil, Frank Dodd, Freakychakra, _RK_, Sizzling, G0st, Yoff, JeePee, AndyBa, dpizzle, ImUrPeTii, Loki_5, MR BINK, supernekosan, marc001, johnyII, -KDX-, Waugh, HaloAnimator, funguspuddle, kukukikki74, Mizu, BananaSalat, jaydmax, and ush!...

did I leave anyone out?

Some poses for the animation I have in mind:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/pose1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/pose2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/pose3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/pose4.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/pose5.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/pose6.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/pose7.jpg


:) :) :)

[the_podman]

Alright, the first cycles are in progress. Idle/fidget and Taking out the sword.
I'm using a very useful pluging from Keagan(http://www.keegan3d.com/) from his plugins pack(highly recommended tools for Maya users) called "C3". It allows you to create "quick select" buttons for all your controllers similar to Motion Builder's setup. Here's a screenshot:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/keagan_shot.jpg




Please crit anything on these cycles and thanks for looking. They are "bink" files but are quite small and will play on any pc with .avi playback without any software install. Sorry about the "high res", I'm doing render testing at the same time.

Controls are:
SPACEBAR = Pause/Playback animation
period = still step animation
esc = quit bink player

DOWNLOAD HERE:

TAKE OUT SWORD CYCLE (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/take_out_sword_active_idle.exe) (1.3 MB)



-pod

[the_podman]

EDITED****

[the_podman]

Here are all the clips so far blending into one animation(gotta love Maya's trax editor!):

ANIMATION CLIPS (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/KES_movie_part_1_RAW.exe)



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/animation_still.jpg

[Lee3dee]

wow, looks really sweet Podman! :D

the links are broken :(

"Account for domain s40829.sites45.storefront-hosting.com has been suspended"

[G0st]

pod im probably going to pester you in the later future for animation tips in maya, i cant even rig, i use CS in max to do animations.

Looking good (fix animations though!!!)

[the_podman]

Hey, thanks!

Sure, GOst! Anytime ;) I was trying to learn CS a few months back but gave up:shrug: I guess we'll learn from each other one day. Seen lots of kickass work done in CS plus it's less technical than animating in Maya and MAX'S skinning system is Waaaaaaaaaaay better IMO.:thumbsup:


Sorry, my server crapped out on me. Noooo. gotta find web space somewhere. I'll post once they are up again.


-pod:)

[yoff]

Wow, really nice poses! I sure look forward to see those animations http://cgtalk.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[DevilHacker]

Sorry, my server crapped out on me. Noooo. gotta find web space somewhere. I'll post once they are up again.

Hey pod, looks like its coming along nicely…

As for a web host…
You might want to look at PowWeb (http://powweb.com/). They give ya 5 gigs of traffic a day!
:thumbsup:


[EDIT] It seems they are having a sale that ends 2day, were you get 14 months free when you sign up for 2 years... Not Bad...

[the_podman]

Hey pod, looks like its coming along nicely…



As for a web host…
You might want to look at PowWeb (http://powweb.com/). They give ya 5 gigs of traffic a day!
:thumbsup:




[EDIT] It seems they are having a sale that ends 2day, were you get 14 months free when you sign up for 2 years... Not Bad...




Hey, cool!! Thanks for the headsup. I'm gonna try and get this just as soon as I kick my flu. :( .... New York winter's really bumming me out.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/sick.gif

[NeptuneImaging]

Hey pod, how is everything, long time no see....

nice animation dude...I am still trying to make my model super detailed (I have given up on it) and now making a new model...

[the_podman]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/animation_stills.jpg


Mmmkay, I got some webspace and now the animation links are working.

Here's a rundown of all the motion I got done:

WALK (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/WalkFRONT_raw.exe)

IDLE (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/IdleTest2.exe)

TAKE OUT SWORD to ACTIVE IDLE (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/take_out_sword_active_idle.exe)

MERGED CLIPS(older one) (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/KES_movie_part_1_RAW.exe)

Here's a little looky at the rigg:

RIGG (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/take_out_sword_active_idle_RIGG.exe)



Thanks,
-pod:)

[goofslapper.com]

I really like your pallet for the girl looks nice.

[the_podman]

I ironed out lots of the stiffness in the animation and redid several of the cycles. Mainly, the "sword put back in scabbard" clip, which the original "clip" was just the the "sword take out from scabbard" clip running in reverse(looked kinda cheesy). I spent 2 days on that cycle alone. Since I spent so long on the model, I might as well be anal about the animation as well :P

REVISED CYCLE TEST (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/cycletestNEW.exe)

[marque-pierre]

Wow, this is excellent! I absolutely love the textures on the girl. The details, the colours, the level of cartoony vs. realism, everything! Only thing I don't completely agree with is her face. It seems a bit low detail compared to the rest of her. And the eyes stare a bit. I wonder how to change that...

[the_podman]

:) :) :) Hey, thanks! I have never really been happy with the face. It was something that taunted me for weeks. I spent 3 weeks alone just painting the face. It was my first. I redid the whole thing about 5 times until I finally settled with one that didn't completely suck.
I've tried to fix the eyes by making the whites less strong and by "squinting" her eyes a bit so she's not so "bugg-eyed".

Thanks for the comments. I'm taking a break from the realistic type characters and am trying out some toon shaded (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=210603)one's now :) I want to make some quick characters for now because I'm trying to build an animation reel.

-pod:) :) :)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Kes_face_closeup.jpg

[Athey]

The texturing is really beautiful. Her face kinda bugs me a bit. I think the cheeks go out a little too much, but I think it's pretty safe to say you're at a point where you're not gonna go back and change it.

I think the thing that bugs me that you could easily adjust is the eyes. They seem too white and her iris is a little too small. Just some easy texture tweaking to be done to fix that.

Aside from that, she's beautiful. The textures are really fantastic.
Her walk seemed like it could use a little more tweaking, but walks are a pain (I can't animate to save my life... fortunetly I'm not an animator - hah).

I think in the animations, the head seems a bit too static. I know there aren't any morphs or anything, but you can probably still get a little more life into the head even without any.

Great work though. Keep it up! ^_^

[the_podman]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/walk_still_sequence.jpg


Thank you Athey for the very honest crits. I appreciate your modeling and texturing work
very much and looked at lots of your peices before I began this project waaay back.

The face was painted, repainted, modeled, remolded dozens of times, even to the point where I would trash the whole thing and start again. Stubborn tenacity was the only thing that kept me from abandoning this whole character in the modeling stage. :)

Yes, walks are a VERY difficult cycle to create. Especially on a realistic-type character. It's hard to get the motions to look natural.

I've actually spent about 3 days tweaking the "walk" and I think this version is much better. I put more detail into clavicle motions and follow through swings. I also used my IK/FK arms in "IK" mode this time so the interpolation looks better with the swings.

Here is the new version. It's BINK video again, this time Full Screen. To exit the player, hit ESC key and to still step, press "spacebar".

Thanks again for the help! I will not give up on the face :)

NEWEST WALK CYCLE REVISION (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/walk_test_ver_4.exe)

[the_podman]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Run_Test_Still.jpg (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/Kes_Run.exe)



Hi, all!

Well, this thread's dying faster than Ashley Simpson's music career. :) I wonder if I should migrate the thread over into animation:WIP, however, it's a virtual ghostown in there with less than 1000 posts.

I finished a run cycle. This one was quite hard. I spent 3 solid days on it. One thing to note. The ponytail is not moving right now. It's joint skinned but the animation is driven by dynamics(Maya hair, will be baked into FK keyticks later) and will not react accordingly until I create the translate clips on another layer(she's running in place).

Thanks for hangin in there for me :)
-Rod



RUN CYCLE DOWNLOAD (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/Kes_Run.exe)

"spacebar" = pause/resume
"esc" = exit player
"." = still step frame

[JasonHall]

Hey Podman! Looking good so far. :thumbsup: But, I suppose you really want some critiques.

So, here they go:

On the walk cycle, you've got some weird texture popping. Look between the breast plate and the shoulder pad. It is also on the other side. Her skirt also goes through her right leg. I think those are weight painting issues. Shouldn't be too hard to fix. As far as the animation goes, I think you need to work on the legs. For a walk, keep them straight. Right now it almost looks like she crouches when she walks. I think the rest of the cycle looks great! :)

On the run cycle, it doesn't look like she's working too hard at running. Looks more like a jog. Try moving her feet just a little bit further in front of her when she is stepping (that was my first impression. Now that I've seen it a second time, I don't know if you need to do that. :shrug: Guess you can always try it and see). If you want her to run faster, think of it this way: every step she is pushing off of the ground. Of course that would be more of a "run for your life, there is a monster behind me" kind of run. I think this run cycle is looking really good though. :)

I'm just being nit-picky about a lot of this stuff. Overall, great character and animations!

Go ahead and post in the animation section. It needs some posts!

[the_podman]

Thanks, my friend. As I was building her walk cycle, I put some personallity into it by making her step forward with a little strut but I might have pushed it too far. She does actually translate down a little as she takes a step, but perhaps I exaggerated it a bit too much.

You are not the first to say the run looks like a jog. I will implement those changes in the next pass. I think she's not arching enough forward so I will change that also.

The skinning issues I'm aware of and I am waiting to get home to use my Wacom to fix em. I just need to go into those verts and carefully massage the weights because some of them are not averaged enough. The problem with painting weights is that they look fine with certain cycles, then you notice geo intersections and you go in and paint em a different way, only to realize that the intersections reappear on your previous cycles. The trick is to paint an "acceptable" balance between the two and to establish "priority poses". I just hate Maya's artisan. It's not the smartest weighing tool out there and skinning is one of my most dreaded processes.

Thanks for looking as always!
-pod:beer:

[the_podman]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/forwardslashA.jpg

This one was very hard. Been polishing it for a week now. The IK/FK rigg was essential for this cycle, especially in the arms which I switched to FK for most of the frames. After working with Animanium and MotionBuilder, I'm really starting to see those packages' animation advantages. Still searching for the perfect biped rigg setup for Maya. The best I've come across has been Advanced Skeleton (http://www.animationstudios.com.au/) but they charge you for it. Would love to know how they built that one.

Soon as I finish some more cycles, I'll work on those eye/face texture tips Athey mentioned.


FORWARD SLASH (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/forward_slash.exe) <===download

esc..............exit player
spacebar......pause/play

[Neil]

you got some talent with shading metal. nicely done.

[wootwoot2000]

Hey podman, great thread! I downloaded your animation clips, and noticed a few things are off.
Her head should be directed towards her target at all times,especially when doing the forward slash and the take out swords anims.
Try not to make her bob up and down too much and get her wrist IKs to float more as i see sometimes it tends to stay in one position.That would make her less like a marrionette.
in making sure that your animation keys are arcs from one key to the next, is something to consider too.

a few tips for tackling popping issues would be to check replace instead of add in the paint skin attribute section. and paint the whole horizontal section of that area thats popping the same amount. and make sure that each of those vertices in the horizontal section are incluenced by the same number of joints. most often the one thats closest to it and the one just above or below it. Opening up the component editor would allow you to do this easily too.

other than those animation problems, i think the quality of your texture is superb!
Although i agree with the comment about the eyes by Athey, you might want to paint in on the white of the eyes, the curincula bits or just darken and redden the ends to make the eyes apart of the body. and the white part would actually be a dark grey.

excellent job!

[the_podman]

Hey, thanks Will! I will get right on those. The head bobbing is very much due to a stupid way I rigged the head. I should have used a "look at" constraint and have that controller translate instead of rotate. I try and counter-key them so it looks a little more stable on her shoulders.

Originally had some follow-through motions on her wrist, but they looked too weak and girly, however, I suppose it would seem now they are too stiff. eeek. I'll go back and dump those clips back in the timeline and check em out. Which cycles in particular looked like they needed more "float" on the wrist?

I appreciate you looking at the animations, really trying to get the motions perfect. Sometimes I spend hours in the graph editor tweaking curves.
Sigh... Is animation ever really done?

thanks,
-pod:)

[wootwoot2000]

You can improve the walk anim by giving the wrists a subtle approach, and have very little secondary action. It doesnt need to be obvious but even the slightest movement is enough to subliminally tell our brain that its being done. Like in your walk cycle, her right wrist doesnt have to sway in when it comes forward, it could be less apparent and in the tail end you can add a little bit of secondary to make it look like its dragging as it goes back.
You definitely have a sense of all the anatomical motions.

I guess float is the wrong word for it, but in the forward slash, the hand holding the sword seems to bobb up and down. If you can imagine the sword as something the character needs to hold at a certain position/height, the rest of her body would have to addapt to it.
So the less movement on the hand/sword would make this more believable. Help her keep the sword up right. when she brings it up and back, she needs to keep that sword balanced when its up there (let it rotate back around 90 degress(full appex of jump)....then slow in about 5deg bringing it to a stop. Her weight needs to be distributed oppositely so her back needs to be straight. Coming down, she would hold that pose for a few frames and before she hits the ground, her swing should hardly be seen,id say maybe only like 5-10 frames or even lessdepending on what fps youre animating at. And then she would be at the last keyframe pose of the forward slash.
Hard to say without me doing it myself, but thats all I got for now.

Cheers

[the_podman]

Ok, I understand. Good points, there. It's gonna be a pain to adjust the forward slash, but I'll give it a go. Maya's riggs are not "full body IK" so changing timing on torso/upperbody weight distrubutions require repositioning and keying several controllers.

The bobbing is actually another clip.(active idle) I was testing to see how well my clips "blended" into each other. I have 2 versions of "idle", one has less movement. Perhaps the subtle one works better blended into this one. Most games don't have "twean" clips to blend cycles.(They sorta just abruptly cut to the next action) I've seen some that have some excellent seemless transitions(Prince of Persia, Ico, Mark of Kri) and I have one or two twean clips made for certain cycles, but man, making those are a pain.

The wrist swaying in the "walk" is too much, I agree with you. I'll add it to my checklist of corrections.

I got another version of this character into MotionBuilder and I'm really anxious to use Kaydara's "control riggs" to create some cycles. The realtime playback alone would save me hours of time. Still in the process of learning it though, so until I really get the hang of it, it's all Maya for now.

Thanks. :)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/Kes_MotionBuilder.jpg

[the_podman]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/4_hit.jpg (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/Kes_4_Hit_Combo.exe)


Here's a SLASH 4-HIT COMBO (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/Kes_4_Hit_Combo.exe). This was VERY difficult. Originally, it was going to be a 5 hit combo but after almost 2 solid weeks on this cycle, I cut it down to 4.

I did some more "cycle blend" tests with this one, so it's blended with some of my other cycles I've finished. Maya's trax editor is a great way of testing whether or not your game cycles will seemlessly integrate with each other. You can store poses, clips, all in true NLA style. Since game engine doesn't evaluate "translates" in the actual animation, you can place them in another layer keeping it nice an clean for export.

Here's a shot of what the different cycles look like in Trax:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v97/the_podman/trax.jpg


Of course, you can do all this in 3dsMax as well via the MOTION MIXER (http://mtlstream02.discreet.com/streaming/ms/mixer.wmv) which is awesome, btw. It's an excellent Non Linear Animation tool within Max with a lot of cool features that aren't in Maya's trax. Well, at least not yet(Discreet and Alias are always trying to one up each other) Only downside to Motion Mixer is that you can only use Character Studio riggs within it. XSI also has these features as well.

Well, I'm off to sleep now. Tommorow I will attempt to do some actual "realtime" testing with UnrealEd. I'll post a realtime version soon. I want to do a couple more cycles before I stick a fork in this project, still gotta do "jump" and "double-jump" along with some others.

Thanks for looking, guys and gals.

4-HIT COMBO BINK FILE (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/Kes_4_Hit_Combo.exe) <=====download here

4-HIT COMBO (low res quicktime) (http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/Kes_4_Hit_Combo.mov) <=====download here


:) :) :)

[constructofamind]

Very nice work thus far, Pod. I'm very impressed.

The one thing that jumped out at me right away, however, was the "slash" animation. It looks like the sword weighs nothing to the female warrior. I'd try adding a little heft to the blade and see if that doesn't give the scene a little more believeability (is that a word?).

Other than that nit-picky detail, congradulations on an animation that seems to be going fantasitcally.

[the_podman]

I'm honored to be your first post, Blake. Thanks for the crits. Yeah, I'm trying to get better at animation, but I've abandoned the motions on her for now in favor of another character.

Problem with doing modeling/texturing/rigging/animation all at once is you end up spreading yourself really thin across all skills. I struggle with everything. Modeling is the only thing for me that's just starting to get in a groove. Would love to get a game job this year, but I still may not be ready for prime time :( Not even 2 years of 3d for me so far under my belt.

Still, something I'm striving to achieve is to be one of them all rounders. Almost a half a year went into this character alone. Now I can't even look at her these days. :)

I did manage to compile one last showcase animation for my demo reel. You can download it here:

http://rodbrett.com/Rodney/KES.exe


Thanks for looking
=Rod

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