100 Characters

#41

Simple, elegant and absolutely brilliant. Both the animation and the character designs. Very impressive body of work.

#42

nice , most of your characters are great
cheers

#43

Sweet! So…do you like character modeling? :slight_smile: This is great polyflow reference for anyone into character modeling, thanks for sharing!

#44

Just a bit :stuck_out_tongue:

#45

The Ninja has been around for quite some time. I thik it even shipped with Motion Builder at one time.

Still use LightWave for all my modeling…100%

#46

So inspirational. Seriously. I’m a stickler for converting my 2D style over into 3D and it’s been a struggle. Seeing this has given me a lot of inspiration. Couple of questions if you don’t mind answering:

1.) How/where did you learn topography?
2.) How much reference do you rely on when modeling?
3.) What books/videos/plug-ins do you find helpful?
4.) Where is that black-outline shader available?
5.) Do you draw all of your designs, and after you’ve designed it, do you do the whole character turnraround sheet?

I’m so anxious and ready to get into character modeling. That is definitely my calling. I have about 10 characters lined up to work on over the summer. I can’t wait to get into them after watching your video, and I’ve documented it as well.

#47

1.) How/where did you learn topography?
Years of modeling and seeing the result of the deformation on meshes. I developed all sorts of “rules” that I loosely follow on all of my models to insure good deformation. I like to keep my meshes light in poly count to make it easy to manipulate to build morphs and rig. You can always Subdivide to a higher res at render time or during the modeling process.
I dont think many people take full advantage of how SubDs work and usually end up with a large amount of Sub ploys that aren’t needed. Make sure that you only put geometry where it’s needed (Localized Geometry) and you’ll be set.

2.) How much reference do you rely on when modeling?
Depends on the model but when I design the model I use little or no reference. If I’m modeling for a client I use the reference supplied, if any. I have a massive Toy collection that I’m surrounded by and I’m sure I’m influenced by them as well.
I take in as much visual stimuli as possible. I read lots comics, watch lots of movies and cartoons, and anything else I can get my hands on…I’m sure it all helps shape the over al design of my work.

3.) What books/videos/plug-ins do you find helpful?
Watch lots of cartoons and buy lots of toys. Surround yourself with lots of things to inspire you. I’d also recommend Jonny Gorden’s book from Wordware. he is an amazing artist and he really knows his stuff.

4.) Where is that black-outline shader available?
The Back outline is done in post. It’s just black fringe from the Color pass.

5.) Do you draw all of your designs, and after you’ve designed it, do you do the whole character turnraround sheet?

I never do a full character sheet and rarely do full sketches anymore. I have found that by the time I would get a full sketch of a character I can have it pretty much finished in 3D and be on to the next project.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions or if you need any help. I look forward to seeing your character work…keep us posted!

-William

#48

I saw this on the NT forum…GREAT STUFF! Where’s the love for the front page?!?

#49

Thanks for the question and the post to explain your workflow proton. Always interested in how pros work.

#50

Thank you for this. Greatly appreciated and I will definitely keep you updated. :slight_smile:

#51

Awesome work and again very inspirational work! Keep up the great work and can’t wait to see some more characters!!! Definately front page material!!!

#52

I’m sure there’s more than 100, not that I counted!
How did you get that many sub’d characters to render in one scene?

L

#53

I’m quite sure it is composited. If you look closely, you’ll notice a black fringe around the characters; a common problem with Fusion when using merge instead of booleans.

#54

There are more then 100 characters but who’s counting :slight_smile:

Without 64bit it wouldnt have happened. It was one scene with all the characters.
It was rendered on a single machine. Each pass took about 7 days to render. Almost 3000 frames. The average frame was 2 minutes and 50 seconds. Radiosity On (montecarlo with 5 bounces).
The scene had almost 10 million polys!!!
Alejandro did it that way because he wanted to test the power of his new computer.

#55

My computer wouldn’t have even allowed me to open that file.

Mind sharing your rig specs?

#56

:slight_smile:

But the background is rendered in a separate pass? Because anytime a foreground character “intersects” with a background character, the black border of the foreground character dissappears, but it is always visible against the background (the room/walls that is).

#57

Hey William,

Please post decent still of this reel and I will personally plug it.
-R

#58

It’s two passes…the wireframe and the color pass

#59

Sounds like a plan. I put some images on the first post. Let me know if you need anything else. Much Appreciated!

#60

Hi, I’m glad many people are liking the character reel.
Some people are asking about the specs of my computer. Here they are:

Processor: Intel Quad Core 64bit 2.4GHz
Video: GeForce 8800 GTX 768 MB
RAM: 4GB Kingstone
MOBO: ASUS P5K premium/wi-fi ap
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 32MB 7200RPM
Windows XP pro 64bit
LW 9.3.1

The scene had almost 10 million polys. No bones. Basic procedural texturing.
Lighing:1 Area light + 5 passes of Montecarlo radiosity. I wanted to test the power of the workstation. It gave me an average of 2.40 to 3.00 minuts per frame. Not bad, uh?

Again, thanks for the positive feedback. It’s fun to see Proton’s work displayed all together, or at least part of it :wink:

Cheers.