The Jungle book

#15

I posted a video containing wip of my project state,showing animals being assembled in Blender. I unwrapped Baloo, Bagheera, BandarLog, also Mowgli- i modeled him since my last post-and rigged them all, also i put some basic hairs and textures, realy in early stages

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we6pFjWkA_w

I need to put wolf still, and elephant. Tiger will be done by morphing Panthera duplicate. I miss model of Pyton Kaa still, and some closeup props of the jungle.
Rig is really basic because ill use the models for still shots.
Sorry for rawness of the movie, feel free to skip areas :wink: .
If you have time give me your feedback. Thanks!

#16

Not only has it been done in Blender, it was done as a completely open source project (like blender itself) and literally all assets they created for the movie plus the scene files n stuff have been made available to the public…If I wasn´t so deeply rooted in 3ds max after having already switched from Cinema 4D before Id move over to blender instantly, it even got it´s own built in game engine, and its free! Like, how cool is that!

#17

I really love your work and think your models are looking great! I can’t wait to see more :smiley:

#18

Thanks all for lurking here and posting comments :).
I unwrapped wolf and elephant this evening, and set up basic rig for them… here is a little fun picture :slight_smile:

#19

Models are quite nice, maybe the elephant head is a bit too squeezed.
I think that they could use more loops at certain places (eg. hip joints, bear knee joint)
Weight-painting seems to be not optimal (the whole leg bends, instead of just the joint, especially the heel joint on Bagira’s front legs) - maybe switching Quaternion on or off would make it better already.
Could you show a bigger picture of the Mogli you had on youtube?

#20

Ania tnx for your suggestions! Happily models are not mentioned for animation, so eventually ill suceed without too much loops and perfect rig! Ill try the quaternation thing you mentioned. I hope that will do the trick for it self :slight_smile:

Ill try to approve visually possible errors as a style components where it will be nice :slight_smile: . In fact all the difference in the art is in error made being nice :cool: Of course where not, ill carve some extra loop or have a stroke or two in weight paint mode!
Your comments will be helpfull now when i am assembling everything in the scene. Ill remember them!

Ill have to do now a Kaa pyton quickly, and Shere Kan morph from Bagheera model. Ill have to quickly assembe the scene for front page for commisioner approvement, and scenes for inner illustrations. Ill have to make great compromises. Deadline ends in 5 days.

I need to post Mogli stuff though ill probably would not be able to change much. Still, ill be able to polish things a bit when it turns to 2d illustrations. And happily inner pages are Black and White.

#21

I sent those half raw half renders to the publisher for authorization. Its for the inner pages. They will be Black/White as they are now. Upon approvment some details will be finished in 3d, rendered, and then overpainted in 2d heavily. Also, there will be cover page in color. I need to compose it still.

I know there are some glitches because unoptimized weightpaind, but ill fix that, if not in 3d then by hand in 2d.

#22

This looks really cool so far.

#23

Thanks P1xelated!

Now here are my final black and white illustrations for inner pages. Those are blender renders, but heavily filtered in photoshop and really big time spent on brushing in photoshop. Much of overpainting and leveling of selections. Those finals have more a drawing feel, and contrasts are really high, because they have limitations when they will print it.

Somewhere i applied textures i cropped from some photos, like those far backgrounds and some vegetation. Some of vegetation are free models or purchased through daz3d. I had not much time to paint it all by hand, but they are all modified an overpainted to the level of unreckognition. Some vegetation, especially grass, are done through blender particle hair system. Loads of it. Some are hand painted in photoshop.

Hair and fur are also blender particles, but i have beautified some parts by painting it in photoshop.

As i said many glitches that were result of really quick rig and weight/paint setup were corrected by hand in photoshop.

Now i am working on cover page…

Mowgli and Hathi and his sons:

Mowgli’s victory

Python Kaa

Mowgli and Bandar-Log Tribe

Mowgli, Baloo and Bagheera Idyll

#24

And this is blender render of the visual i send to approvement before detailing, for cover page

It is a little bit rough in colours etc., you know what i mean.

This is scene when Mowgli casts away wolves with fire, but i also added some animals that were not in that scene… for cover page richness.

Please c&c.

#25

Very-very-very-veryy cool!

#26

Looks good the panther looks too black to me and I can’t see any details on him but I like what you did with the rest. Great work and good way to show off what can be done with open source software.

#27

Nikita: thanks :slight_smile:

Dann-o: yeah panther is really dark, but in color image she will have some reflections which will light up some detailing! Im afraid in black/white image there will be no more detailing, because printing capabilities of this book edition. Even in color variant, there is not too much need for extra detailing, because it will occupy a relative small area (it is a handbook).

But ill try add some details when the publisher approve my colored composition.

And oh, onot completely open source software. I planned to use all open source for this, but i was forced to use Photoshop for postprocessing (rather than Gimp), because i am 2-3 time faster when handling with Photoshop, and my deadlines were really looming.

But i admit that the power of those OpenSource programs are really incredible! Wings3d is clearest subdivision modeler I experienced, and good uv unwrapper. Blender i excellent for everything. It has very fast rendering. In this project i learned much about power of its particle hair options. Interface may be frightening, but now when im used to it, im fine with it. Theyll make it better in version 2.6. Im experiment a little with version 2.5s, but for commercial work i stick to 2.49.

Thanks for follow and support! :slight_smile:

#28

it looks really nice! I kinda have a soft-spot for kids books these days, and i gotta say, its really really great, especially with open-source work!!

#29

Hey Jed! Thanks for your kind words :slight_smile:

Yea it is for kids, though you know, if you read the book, you will find that it is not at all like Disneys cartoon! It is pretty brutal, savage world of Jungle; and book contains, maybe not in such explicite form, a violent parts. It is more a early teenager book!

I have a go for my color composition, now i am going to detail the cover page :slight_smile:

#30

Mowgli base mesh… i forgot to publish that :slight_smile:

#31

Here is wip of overpainting the blender render in PS …

#32

I really like the end result it is an unusual way to get to thsi end but the results are worth it.

#33

Dann - hahaha i agree, at last i could get to this in PS only, more easy way, but of course now it is very easy once i have rendered image in Blender, having all that volume, lights and composition defined, to overpaint it, to smudge paint it and breathe extra life into it…

Remember that i used and reused that models for black and white illustrations also. Anyway, i could get that easier, but im happy getting more experience in Blender and Wings 3d!

Im still working on the overpaint, i have great many of details to work on it, it is time consuming but eventually i will produce some rich- content picture for the kids and onthers :slight_smile:

#34

More overpainted segments - wip …