Character: Martin Bird

[Annuostivix]

im impressed with the wings, I couldn't do that with my abilities. Well, I don't havy any crits, I cant wait to see it textured though.

[Facial Deluxe]

Awesome ! A part from a technicaly perfect rig (that you know how to make), did you also use endomorph for wings deformations ?

[Firas]

:buttrock: can u do a tutroial for wings rig?:love:

[Araval]

Wow..!
I agree - its excellent rig:applause:
I wait for animation - Keep that way!

[wok]

Well done Jonny! Fantastic!:applause: Great modeling and rigging! Can't wait to see the final textured character! If ya dont mind?? Whats if for?? Could only imagine what the environment would look like!

[wgreenlee1]

Looking good.
No crits here.
Love the look on his face!

[Julez4001]

Will you show the Rig?


VERY NICE DESIGN too.
The character's face pops out very well.


Bravo!

[New]

Very very nice ;D

[ds]

excellent wings,

cant wait to see more animation,
Hope he eventually talks.

:applause: :bounce:

[Shadowed_link]

Like everyone else,
was particularly impressed with the wings,
cute dolphiny kinda face, your character,
already has a lot of character. love it.

I'd love to see it with textures. :thumbsup:

[SM-Kevin]

your work is simply stunning!!!!

[Fasty]

Perfect, the wings look great and the model is so nice! :thumbsup: Can't wait to see more of this guy! :D

[proton]

that is amazing!

[Solesurvivor]

fantastic, 2 thumbs up :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[mbaldwin]

I humbly bow to you, great sensei!

[Survivor_2k]

Good job man! :applause: :thumbsup:

[terryford]

Very nice work, I'd like to know how the wings were constructed...


Regards,
Terry

[draconix]

Very cool.

The wing design is great so far, the head features are interesting, overall :thumbsup:

[Rabid pitbull]

Excellent!! that is great , wings seem to be the most difficult appendages to model/rig and animate. i also agree any form of tutorial regaurding the wings on this little guy would be a great benifit to us all.

[The Magic Pen]

Excellent rigging :thumbsup:

[moroten]

Good job! Now gratify yourself by heading down to the Al Fresco cafe down on Rundle St and get yourself one of their lovely foccaccias. :drool: Just to pat yourself on the back... (( I love Adelaide since my visit there back in '01... ))

-D

[jackman]

maybe you're bored to hear this, but.........
cool rigging man !!! especially the wings

more stories on the wing will be nice
ooo.....master.........tell us more.....
:thumbsup:

[Wegg]

Very nice.

[WhiteBlaizer]

That's very nice. Texturice it! :thumbsup:

[Gamoron]

I'd really love to see how you rigged that Bird. incredible. Looking forward to the finished work.

[4dartist]

Damn Nice work! The riggin on the wings looks perfect, atleast when he unfolds it.. a good test would be flying to see if you could get the flux they need. Looks very nice indeed. The only part that bugs me is at the elbow in the wing, on the top side there is a hardedge of the blue against the white, and from far away it looks like bad geometry or something but closer in some of the renders it looks just like a blue spot, not sure if you can see what im talkin' about but it still looks great eitherway! haha! :applause: :applause: :applause:

[CGethan]

:bounce:
I like it !
very nice~

[proton]

Find out more about Jonny here:

http://www.lightwave3d.com/profiles/JonnyGorden/index.html

[aazimkhan]

Really well done Rig. thats awesome!

yeah we do want to know how u did that rig,?!??

[Nicodemus]

It's at times like this one artist must look at another and honestly say.....I hate you!!!.....lol.....that really looks great. I cannot wait to see the final result.

[Larry_g1s]

Man great job! I'm always impressed when I see your work. I'm a fellow LightWave'r and find it very inspirering.

I can't wait to see some animations. :bounce:

[squintik]

Yeah ! Great job ! I also hope for a tutorial :) (I never saw tutorials for this and your wings looks very good :) :thumbsup:

[William GUiLE]

Very good modeling, the animation is impressive.:applause:

[RPG2006]

Excellent work Kretin, I usually cop out on modeling the feathers and just go for texuremaps, no where near as nice. Would love to see a bit of a tutorial on how you approached it.

Regarding the texturing, after much searching a while back, I found an excellent containing Hi-res photos of brid wings from both top and bottom. Might be of interest. The url is

http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/wingphotos.html

RPG though

[baby]

very good bird..

were you inspired by Stuart Little II ?!?




one question : is your name realy Kretin ?!?!? :D :D

I'm sure you wouldn't like to know what it means in french ;)
well what it sounds like in fact...

[baby]

Mr bean !!!

your site is a bit "morbid" but thanx !!! excellent references !!!!

[Willax]

My my that is one good looking bird. :thumbsup:

[Dreamwave]

veeeeeeeeery nice wing fold!

[wiemer]

this bird really got friendly expression! Birds tend to be a bit evil, but this one is really sweet!

great job


gr. wiemer

[Qslugs]

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

Show us the damn rig man!!!!





pretty please!!

[Lukashi]

Yes i would also like to see the rig, im going to be modelling a bird myself and am very intrested!!!

[Qslugs]

Dude! it's the Dude! Over the line!

[Squeakypics]

Now THAT is what 3D should be all about!!
Very inspiring.

Huge Regards
Dave

[kretin]

Wow, thanks everyone :) I didn't think I'd get this many replies, especially this early...

Facial Deluxe: Yep the wing deformation is a combination of bones and morphs.

Firas: Yep, looks like I may have to create a tute :P

wok: It's a character for the video series I've been working on, Gaithers Pond. You can see more of the work I've done for it here (http://www.zerogravity.com.au/jonny) (the 3 most recent thumbnails).
For the last video I created 1 new character and redeveloped all the sets. I'm hoping to recreate all the pre-existing characters for the next video, as many were first created quite a long time ago (not by me).

Julez4001: Yep, I'll post a pic of the rig and a brief run through in a bit.

d_s: Yes, he'll definitely talk. All the facial morphs are complete...

Shadowed_link: Haha, I didn't realise till you mentioned it, but it is a little dolphin like without the textures. Damn I could've just stolen the head from a dolphin I made a couple of months ago...

Rabid pitbull: Yes, the wings were tricky, but ultimately easier than I imagined they'd be. The most difficult part was making sure they were as easy to control/animate as possible, as it'll be used by multiple animators, so I had to make it unbreakable (or as close as possible).

moroten: Lol :) You'll have to look me up next time you're here...

4dartist: Yep, they flux nicely. Also each feather is weighted so, using a displacement map, I can get them fluttering in the wind.
Yep, there is what looks like bad intersection there (actually the wrist) but it's cool, it'll be hidden by texturing.

Proton: Thanks, you da man :applause:

mrbean: Thanks, the large flat polys will be textured feathers, but I needed to create the other feathers so each feather could keep it's volume when the wings fold.
Yep, used pics from that site extensively during modelling, and will also for texturing. It's a great site.

baby: Very much so. Margalo is my benchmark in a way. I was so impressed when I saw SL2, with both Margalo and the falcon. Unfortunately I can't feather the whole bird the way they did, but hopefully the end product will be close, although I'm going a little cartoonier than they did.
Kretin started out as my tag (graffiti name in my wilder youth) and just kinda stuck around as a user name, cause even though my name is spelled differently to usual (Jonn instead of John) it's usually taken when I try to use it as a user name. Whatsit mean in french?? go on, tell me... j'mapel kretin. that's about all I remember from high school french (except the spelling :P)... Ooh I can count up to 10 too :)

Thanks again to everyone that I didn't directly reply to, you've all made my week :thumbsup:

Ok... rig pic on it's way...

[Titus]

Hey Kretin,

I just saw the Manzanita Sol snake on TV and was wondering who made that. Nice Job!.

[kretin]

Here's a brief run through of what I've done so far...

Day 1: Body modelling and template feather creation (creating the feather UV map before cloning/placement) and some feather placement.

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinDay1.jpg

Day 2: Feather placement
This is where I worked out which feathers I would model, and which ones I would texture. The placement was done, making sure the feathers were in the right places as well as making sure they'd overlap nicely when folded. Each feather is on a slight angle so they overlap properly without too much adjustment.

I positioned the feathers in a morph. This meant that the base model had all the feathers in the same place/scale so I could do global adjustments easily if I had to.

Day 3: Facial morphs (Eyes, Mouth and Phonems), initial UV maps and basic weight maps

Day 4: Wing rigging tests
This is where i put my theories into practice. It took a few goes to work out what bones I'd need, and how to best weight the feathers. This helped me determine exactly what method I would use for the final rigging.

I also realised I had modelled the wings too low on the body. I needed to move a few bones to get the wing folded into the right place.

It was also then that an important decision had to be made, whether I used a large number of bones, with lots of control, or minimal bones with less control, but easier animating. I think the final result is good, with decent control over the wings, but few enough controls to make animation easy enough. Hopefully I'll also be able to automate the secondary wing bones more when I do the test animation.

These are the results I had at the end of day 4...

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinDay4.jpg

Day 5: Final wing rigging
The first thing was moving the wings higher, towards the back, so the wings could fold into the right position without having to move bones.

Then I created new weights for nearly every part of the wing. The method that I ended up using, was after the "finger" bones, the outside primaries, I created a bone for groups of 2-3 of the remaining feathers. These feathers are weighted to only the one bone.

Here is an example, the primary feather weight and their bones...

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinRig_Weights.jpg

Here is the final skelegons for the wings...

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinRig_Skel.jpg

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinRig_Skel2.gif

Next I posed the bones into the folded position, then morphed the feathers closed so they sat nicely. Here's the folded wing with and without morphs...

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinRig_Morph.gif

Then I posed the wings in the extended position and morphed the feathers open.

I started out having a seperate morph for each set of feathers. Eventually I realised that a single morph for each wing was enough, as the percentages of each were close enough, with various poses and transitions, not to warrant the extra hassle of multiple morphs.

Day 6: Main rigging and tweaking
Doing the standard rigging stuff to the other sections of the bird, IK, tweaking weights, etc. Some more tweaking of morphs was done as well as seperating left and right wing morphs.

Here is the current rig in Layout...

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinRig_Layout.jpg

Day 7 (Today): Time to start editing UV maps so I can start texturing...

[Xilica]

This is sweet!!!!!!!!!!

:buttrock:

[pOiNtPuShEr]

Great work! Can't wait to see the textures! KEPP IT UP...

[Savage_Henry]

excellent work!!!

I wanted to do a bird way back when I first started in 3D, I think I just found some inspiration!!

[Lunatique]

Very helpful. Thank you!

[Beckett]

:bounce: Impressive rig. Nice work. Look forward to seeeing some animation.:beer:

[scribble]

I'm very impressed with your bird model, and rig.
It's good to see a fellow australian with so much talent.
I also had a look through your site, very nice work on their!! :)
Keep up the impressive work!
:thumbsup:

[ironbearxl]

That is plain GENIUS right there!
:applause: :applause: :applause:

[fender]

kretin,

:thumbsup: that is just too cool!

[x_wolf19]

wow thats realyl good...good work in here!

[kretin]

Haven't got much done today... I finished tweaking the UV maps, that took a while, and some other stuffing around.

Textured the top side of the primary feathers. Now that that's done the rest of the modelled feathers should be real quick to texture...

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinTex01.jpg

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinTex01a.jpg

[[msf]]

wow cant wait to see it fully textured!

[dobermunk]

I'm afraid I might make myself unpopular here: I kinda like the cartoonish non-textured look :hmm:

Okay, I mean, I LOVE the cartoony non-textured look. I'm sure the textured one will be great, too - but, :shrug: different...

At any rate, :thumbsup: incredible!

[evan]

Looking great Jonny! Love the look of the textured feathers. Thanks for the step by step breakdown on the modeling, rigging, morphing, etc. Very cool.

Evan

[carefulconan]

Kretin.

You are so comfortable with the package.. it's very impressive.

Did you look at reference from real life?

or from a traditional animation book?

I havent checked out the rig link yet.

how many generations of bird wing did you go thru before you
got it right?

But I'm pretty sure there isn't much you couldnt do.

Impressive!
:eek:

[lildragon]

kretin this is a stroke of genius man, simply breathtaking, and the model is awespiring :D keep it up man

salud

[mav3rick]

man this is


--------------------- A B S O L U T E ! ---------------------------



brute force , congrat :)

how u move feather bones some follower or ? keep us update i really can't wait to see some awsome anim.....

[southern]

You are an inspiration. I learn so much every time I log in here. Thanks for showing.

Glen

[SPruss]

This thread is the coolest! I can't wait to see the finished bird, the texture work looks very promising! :thumbsup:

[dsigna]

lovely bird... :arteest:

[The_Dreamer]

WOW! great looking bird!
Is she working out?:)
:bounce:

[ironbearxl]

I cant believe the style!!?? It 's like a realistic cartoon, unbelievable. It reminds so much of pixar, with the adorableness of the birdie's character, and the complexity of rigging a bird for pete's sake, wow!
:beer:

[kretin]

Thanks guys :)

Titus: Can't help you with the Manzanita Sol snake, no idea.

Dobermonk: I know what you mean :) I still haven't decided exactly what style I'll end up with for the texturing, I'm kinda making it up as I go along. I must admit, the texture so far is a little more realistic than I had planned, but hey, I'm winging it (get it? "wing"ing it? Haha, I kill me). At the very least the texturing will be alot more colorful than the real thing.

But my favorite style is cartoony forms and realistic texturing, that way it kinda looks like the real thing has come to life...

carefulconan: I used heaps of reference. I started by scouring the net for everything I could find on bird anatomy. When I exhausted the net I grabbed a DVD that's just lots of footage of all kinds of birds. I also spent some time at a pet shop watching the birds there. By then I felt almost ready, so I started modelling. The last step was finding a bird that I could play with, doing a final check of how the wings worked, so I went to my girlfriend's gran who had chooks, and played with their wings. This was after day 4, which was useful because I could compare the way my wings were working with the real thing. That was when I realised my wings were too low on the body and needed raising, which solved all sorts of problems.

i have lots of trad. animation books, but didn't check them out specifically for bird stuff.

The wing model itself didn't change. It was moved higher on the back, but that's all. I did go through a few changes in bones and weights though. Fairly minor changes on the bones, but 3 major weight variations.

lildragon: Thanks heaps :) I'm honored.

mav3rick: At the moment the bones are moved by brute force :) I haven't figured out a pattern to enable automation yet, although I may as I'm animating... we'll see. It's not difficult though, once you've positioned the arm bones and the first finger/primary feather, it's pretty obvious where the others need to be.

[ds]

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :airguitar :airguitar

Unreal man, Inspirational.

:xtreme:

[samhodge]

nice one jonny

still havent met but your repuation preceeds you.

I have had a go at a bird with a hand/wing nearly send me mad!

go Adelaide w00t!!!


Sam
:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[dobermunk]

Dobermunk: the texture so far is a little more realistic than I had planned, but hey, I'm winging it

:eek: A forum punster! LOL!

I think I know what you're talking about and love that realtoonish look. Like my EAM animals - they saw your salamander, screamed "Brother!", slit wrists and bonded :beer:

I like to take the color pallette and the bumps from photo reference and paint maps or vector map the actual color.

I'm really looking forward to seeing your bird in scene!

[kretin]

Didn't get a chance to update last night, but here is yesterday's effort. I haven't shown the tail, or the underside of the wings, cause they're still rough.

The feather maps are 128x512, 8bit. I need to make sure to keep the total map size and count down, cause this is for an ensemble cast, with up to 20 characters in a scene, so memory becomes a pretty big issue.

Also, as I said I'm kinda making it up as I go, so I'm waiting to see how the body goes before tweaking the wing textures. It may end up they're a bit too dark, and not quite colorful enough...

So far there are 4 color & diffuse textures (not counting the tail), 2 transparency textures, and 1 spec and 1 bump.

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinTex02.jpg

[Kamul]

This is soo great stuff :)
I cant wait to see more:thumbsup:

[dobermunk]

:eek:
sweet!

[Fasty]

Just out of interest what sort of a bird is he? Kind of reminds me of a budgie when his wings are folded back... still can't get over this guy, inspiring stuff Jonny!

[Facial Deluxe]

What an awesome work !

[kretin]

Sam: good to see ya :) We should catch up sometime... I need to catch up with Sam Papas and Michael anyway...

Dobermunk: Hey, I checked out your EAM animals, I remember seeing them a while back. They're great :thumbsup: I especailly like the cat.

Fasty: It's a martin, a very close relative of swallows, in fact the only real difference between them is the tail, martins don't have as pronounced tail fork as swallows.

The character's name is Jonathon Martin, after his voice artist, and thus the type of bird.

[kretin]

Well, didn't get a chance to work on this yesterday, so here's today's effort.

I've finished the underwing and tail textures, although I haven't really shown off the tail feathers here very well.

The majority of todays work was working out all the layering. My god, I was starting to wonder what I had got myself into here...

So the guady coloring is just placeholder images for the real textures to come. Don't take too much notice of the coloring either, as I'm still deciding how I want to color the head and body.

There is UV and texture layering on all the surfaces apart from the modelled feathers. The basic layering on the body is like this...

The head and leg textures are first, then these are overlayed by the front of the body which is in turn overlayed by the back of the body.
Then for the textured feather polys, each has it's own feather texture which are overlayed by various body layers...
So there are quite a few alpha and transparency maps, but still only a few color maps.

There is currently a fairly harsh transition between the body and the textured feather polys, which I think will be lessened with the final textures, but I may have to place a few more single poly feathers over the transitions to hide them... we'll see how it goes.

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinTex03.jpg

[JeremyW]

I haven't read the other posts yet so forgive me if it's been covered already...

Really nice work, as no doubt already said.

I find the way you transition the green around eyes and cheeks into the neck is far too pronounced. The high contrast and large scale of the "noise" you use for the "disolve" from cheek to neck draws too much focus, detracting from the the more important elements of the otherwise very expressive eyes and mouth.

HTH

[Pachy]

This is awesome!

no crits!

[Lukashi]

wow that thing is soo cute :)

[dobermunk]

The wings are looking HOT!

[kretin]

Well after a heap of experimentation, and too many redo's, I've finally got the head and body done. They're not entirely finished, but I don't want to do any more on them till I have the other parts textured.

Left to do is the feather coverts and legs/feet. I'm hoping to get most of that done today, because the texturing is already taking much longer than I'm happy with... which is partially my own fault for not establishing a texturing style before I started.

I'd certainly appreciate any feedback you have on the head/body texturing so far, good and bad.

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinTex04.jpg

Whattya recon JeremyW, is this better? :p

[mohh]

WOW,

I haven't read any of the previous posts, but I think that it's looking great. A big improvement from the first wips. The only crit that I have is that the feathers on the head look more like scales. Great job!!

[conjaman]

nice job on the wings:thumbsup:

[JeremyW]

Looking great!
I'd still like to see less distraction around the eye..so how about a slightly different contour of the cheek feathers...http://www.jeremyw.com/show/kretin_bird.jpg

http://www.jeremyw.com/show/kretin_bird.jpg

[baby]

to had a little more life to the eye...

[oracle]

WOW :bounce:

I actually saw this model a few days ago, but refrained from posting, because usually when I see a good model getting a crap-load of good replies, I figure "what's the point", but this just keeps getting better and better!

Not only is it good to see a model of high technical difficulty being done in Lightwave, but it's even better seeing it being done by a fellow Aussie! Looking forward to seeing more updates.

Keep up the great work, kretin :thumbsup: :beer:

[Fasty]

The only thing bugging me at the moment are the brighter short feathers between the long tail feathers and the body. I can't put my finger on it but they just don't look right. Otherwise it's beautiful!

[Remi]

Nice work kretin...mind if I pm you and ask some questions about uving....talk to you later....very impressed and inspired by always:thumbsup:

[William GUiLE]

You're doing a very good job, however that the wings are somehow different from the rest, they look a bit more realistic, and I think you'd emprove the result if you make a unique style.:thumbsup:

[kretin]

Thanks for the feedback :applause:

mohh: Yeah, they are a bit, but believe me, the earlier versions were even more like scales :p I'm not totally finished with them yet though, so hopefully I can still improve them a bit.

Alot of the scale look comes from the specular, where I've tried to get the shimmery look of the feathers on the real martins. I still need to play with the settings I think...

JeremyW: Thank, I see your point. I quite like the transition where it is because it emphasises his cheeks, and I think will help with expression. I have taken your advice on board though, and I'll see how it goes when I start to animate him. If the texture is distracting from the eyes then, I'll revisit it.

baby: Hehe, cute :) But you're right, the eyes need more life. I don't wanna put in fake highlights because it'll conflict with the real specular.

Usually I create eyes with an inner layer, the white, iris and pupil, and a clear outer layer. With this I wanted to create the eye as a single sphere so it works with shadow maps. I know what I need to do to simulate the highlights of the more realistic eye, just haven't got round to it yet.

oracle: Thanks man. Yay Lightwave :thumbsup:

Fasty: Yeah, they're temporary, fixed now...

Remi: Go for it. You can catch me on ICQ and email (jonny@pobox.com) too...

William: Thanks. I understand what you mean. I need to revisit the wings once the body is done. I don't think they need too much work, primarily I want to put more blue in the tertiary feathers, the closest to the body. I also am thinking of putting a bit more brown on the back, it's a bit "too" blue at the moment possibly...


So here's a little update with the coverts pretty much done. Just the legs to go now.

I will be revisiting most of the texturing once the first pass is done to better match it all up together. Also I'll be playing with the surface settings some more. Part of that process will be fixing the more obvious poly transitions, some of which stand out way too much at the moment, as well as general mesh tweaking...

I think I'll also add another wing feather where there's a bit of a gap now (I used to have another row of feathers in there which I killed during the rigging).

Hehe, I forgot I was gonna show various facial expressions in these updates, so I've included them in this update...

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinTex05.jpg

[Fasty]

...buh.... incredible!

[Eman597]

Wow :bowdown:

[Freak]

Yeah, what everybody else said...... Wow, Great, Fantastic....
Birds can be tedious to recreate....

But your doing an astounding job.....

The facial expressions are great!
Texturing is also very nice...

I can see many influences in the style....
including your own, it's great!

I Look forward to the final animation.

[mohh]

Don't get me wrong Kretin, what you've done here is great. I could never make anything this good. Would it be too much to ask of you to post a small section of your texture maps?

[kretin]

Well he's finally finished. Now i can get onto animation, yay :bounce:

A little tweaking may still need to be done during animation, but I'm hoping not much. I managed to hide some of the seams, I think the worst ones, and added a couple more feathers to the wings.

Thanks Fasty, Eman & Freak :) And mohh, tis cool man :thumbsup: I'll get together a selection, what texture areas would you like to see?

Here's a montage of the "almost" finished model...

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinTex06.jpg

And here he is after some final tweaks...

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinTex07.jpg

[fender]

I have not been following this thread in awhile. Untill now.... Holy Cow's this is great work!!!:thumbsup:

[mohh]

It all looks so great that any will do as long as you show the same area for the bump, spec, color, etc. :beer:

[webfox]

This is all so good that I feel badly for asking this. Have you considered toning down the orange on the forehead at all? I find myself looking at it rather than the eyes or the beak. (Maybe it's just me and you should ignore it.)

I am really in awe of what you've done here.

Thanks very much for sharing it with us.

[wok]

Absolutly Brilliant!!!!:applause: Can't wait to see some animation!!!!!

[RiotManZ]

as everyone said before: this is great!
He looks like he plays main part in a Disney movie.

Only thing I don´t like is the stem in the last pic, just increase the polycount on it. Please.:applause: :applause: :beer:

[dobermunk]

:surprised

Congrats! Wow!
App. how many man-hours are in this?

[kretin]

Webfox: Yeah, I tried killing it all together, but it looked like he was wearing a bandit's mask without the orange spot. I may end up, as you suggest, toning it down a bit...

RiotManZ: Thanks. Yeah, it's not usually seen up that close :P

Dobermunk: Here's a little breakdown of the time it took. It ended up taking over 3 times longer than most of my characters...

Modelling: 2 days
Morphs & weights: 1 day
Rigging: 3 days
UVs & Texturing: 8 days
Tweaking: 1 day

So 15 days all up... The funny thing is, in the beginning I thought the most difficult adn time consuming part would be the morphing and feathers, but that was easy compared to the texturing.

At one point when I was complaining about the texturing a friend of mine said "at least you didn't have to model every feather". I laughed and told him it would've taken half the time if I'd been able to model every feather. Unfortunately render limits meant I had to keep the geometry as low as possible. Luckily, even though I ended up with 62 textures, it's just 9 Mb worth, cause they're all 8 bit.

Here's the textured version of the wings closing and opening...

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinWings2.gif

and here's a couple of examples of the textures. They're the actual size used on the model...

One of the wing feathers...

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinTex_eg01.jpg

And the legs...

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/MartinTex_eg02.jpg

[jackman]

cool !!!

8 days texturing? wow, I see u made so much detail !!

never done that before

[mohh]

Wow!

That's some great work! I like how well your morphs deform the wings. Your texturing skills are great as well. You have actually motivated me to get up off my lazy rear and start a new project!

I can't wait for the animation. :thumbsup:

[kretin]

Thanks guys :)

Thought I'd throw up this early flying test. Still some tweaks to be done, but the basics are there...

Martin_Fly.avi (http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/Martin_Fly.avi)

http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/Martin_Fly.jpg

[Fasty]

This is what we've been waiting for! More! :applause:

[samhodge]

good work so far but......

speed
wing flap shoudl be faster for a body that size and a wing span that small, you have got the predator bird pace (eagle, falcon etc)

feet position
feet should be hanging back see image http://www.willaustin.com/images/blackwhite/seagull.jpg

[dobermunk]

:D
Yeah, now get them wings movin' so fast ya can't see the work you put into them!!

Absolutely stunning work. I see him standing on the fence post gesticulating with his wings, taling with your lizard character. Absolutely inspiring!

[Nelis]

i have followed this thread and i like it a lot. couple of months ago i did a bird as well. its quite hard to animate a bird well.

i have some tips though:
just some help, that may help. when he flaps his wings down the leading edge of the wing, should turn downwards. just a subtle movement and when going up it should turn little bit upwards. this will cause that there wil be a real flapping movement instead of just flapping up and down.

also the wing movement should be faster because he has small wings. it's just an tip. hope i dont offend you with this.

i realy like what you have done here and on many things i could learn from you. sweet bird and nice facial animation.

greets niels

[SpaceFork]

Nice job man, its looking really good

[Spooked]

hmm.. i dont think feet trail behind in small birds, come up into body feathers more.. feet are trailing in that pic because its soaring, so can get better control of the wind .. funky model and texture :buttrock:

[kretin]

Thanks for the replies :)

I forgot to mention, yesterday was working on the Motion Mixer animations in preparation for the proper anim test. So I knew the speed was too slow, but it doesn't matter because you can speed it up or slow it down within MM.

Also I'm not overly worried about getting the flying perfect, as you'll rarely, if ever, see him flying in the video. The current model they're using for the character couldn't fly if it tried, and I'm sure never has :p
So areas like the legs/feet, which were purposely made oversized, that don't sit quite right during flying don't matter too much.

Sam: You're right about the speed, but Spooked is right, most smaller birds such as sparrows and swallows etc hold their feet up.

Dobermunk: thanks dude :)

Nelis: Thanks for the feedback. I must admit, I hadn't checked my DVD again before animating yesterday, so I was going by memory. You're surely right, and have reminded me to watch the DVD again before I go any further :applause:

SpaceFork & Spooked: Thanks guys :)

I was going to wait to upload any more until I'd finished the test animation, but I think I might upload another flying test later today. I wanna make sure it's right.

[kretin]

Here is a little update of the flying motion. The actual animation is the same speed, but I've sped it up a bit in Motion Mixer. It's still not quite as fast as it will normally be when he's really flying.
I also included a bit of a glide, where you can best see the other addition, some wind blowing the feathers.

I watched the DVD this morning before starting, so I think the flapping motion is alot better.

Also I forgot to mention yesterday, the tail isn't animated here at all, as it'll be manually animated to lead the aerobatics.

Martin_Fly3.avi (http://www.zerogravity.com.au/temp/Martin_Fly3.avi)

Now on to the character test...

[samhodge]

hmm

the feet still look queer to me

it looks like they are pressed on a non existant ground plane.

they should be curled and slightly relaxed even if they are tucked up. they just look a little rigid.

I like the secondary motion on the feathers, nice touch!! :bounce:

Sam

[webfox]

It really rocks, but curl the toes, man, curl the toes. :)

He's not skiing.

[dobermunk]

Am I seeing this correctly: wind flowing through the feathers?
:thumbsup: Sick. Kretin = sick :eek:

[-mindcache-]

The bird has good character to it but could be tweaked a little more to be individualized.

My only real gribe would have to there is too much sheen on the bird(of course if the sheen was smoothed out/blurred outward a bit would look nicer.) Just my humble opinion.

Can't wait to see the aerobatics need to get that tail in action =)

[kretin]

Ok, thanks Sam and Webfox, you're right. I curled the toes, looks lots better.

Dobermunk: Yep, there is. I still need to tweak the weights a little so the effect isn't quite as pronounced on some of the feathers, but I'm happy with the overall effect.

swank: Thanks. I'm not sure what you mean by individualised?

Yeah there is quite a bit of sheen, I'm trying to simulate the high sheen on the real bird. Perhaps because he's lighter in color to the real bird it's not coming off quite as well?


I'm well underway on the test animation, I may have an update tomorrow...

[-mindcache-]

I was primarily refering to giving it a bit more physical character if you're going for a more cartoony/non-real style

[buzzlightyr]

:rolleyes: :applause: :rolleyes:

[kretin]

Swank: I think you mean exaggeration of his form to make it cartoonier?
Well if you check out the real bird, there really is a significant amount of exaggeration in this character. But I understand what you mean, and I'm not going for a wacky cartoon bird, just a lively one, so think Disney rather than Warner Bros.

But having just finished the test animation, I'm very happy with his characterisation when acting & speaking.

So I've just started rendering, which looks like it'll take a coupla days, a day in post and I should have the test anim ready Monday or Tuesday...

[ironbearxl]

Hey Kretin,
I love the sheen, that's just awesome! :drool:
I have a question though, did you use smooth bezier splines to do the modeling?

[webfox]

Don't sweat it, K. I don't think there's anyone here who thinks you've modeled off-target, so keep at your goal. Everyone has preferences, but you are doing better than most of us can hope to do.

Can't wait for your preview.

:thumbsup:

[kretin]

ironbearxl: Thanks :) No, just subD poly modelling, starting as I normally do with a cylinder, shape it roughly into the body, then smooth shift legs/arms/head with a good mix of point by point chucked in for good measure.

Webfox: Thanks man, I'm quite pleased with the animation... I would've liked to spend a couple more days tweaking and cleaning it up, but being just a character test animation it didn't really warrant it. What I'm most happy about is that Motion Mixer behaved itself, and I was able to implement it better than I thought I would.

[kretin]

Well, the character test animation is done, and I won't be doing any more work on the character itself, so I thought I'd put the links to the character test animation in the Finished Gallery:

MartinBird Test Animation (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46024)

Thanks everyone for your support during the making of this character, it really helped through some of the tougher parts :bounce:

[webfox]

I, myself, have been very pleased with how intuitive and functional Motion Mixer is. I bought the upgrade for Lightwave for other reasons and this was just a benefit... and such a great one, too. It saved me a lot of time in one recent project.

Nice motion test, man. Good job!

[mohh]

ROFL!!!!

That's great!

[Insider]

Very nice work!!!

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