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That's right folks. I'm making a new model. Key word being new. This aint no remake or tweak of a previous model. This is a whole new character. I got the front and side design for the head done and scanned in. I'll be modeling the rest off and on some time next week prolly between work.



I'm kinda iffy abouthow the side view looks. I had to tweak it a bit to correspond with the front view, which I think came out really close to what I was trying to get. Hopefully, it'll all come out all right in three demensions.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 4th June 2006 03:44

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Simple, but very good. It reminds me of the faces drawn in Treasure Planet, a bit. Good beginnings, you have here.

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Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them.

~Pacifist Badge, 1978

Here's the progress so far.



Modeling faces is turning out to be pretty easy work, and fun to boot. The problem is getting the face and the proportions for the head to mesh right. Something you may notice about cg models is that the wireframes are always squares, like a grid (cept for videogame characters). The idea is to make a model with only four sided polygons so it's easier for the computer to render out (less math to figure out). It's called modeling in quads, and it's a bitch sometimes to get your model to cooperate. Like the cheek area right at the edge of the eye. I have no idea how I'm going to tackle that, but I gotta get past it before I can go farther.

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Looks pretty interesting. Seems like it would be easy enough in some parts but hard as hell for others. Keep at it, I'm interested in how you go from the wireframe image to making it look more smooth and curved like your last model.

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-- You're Gonna Carry That Weight --

Updated the image to my current progress.

Actually, smoothing out a poly mesh is as easy as pressing a button in the program. It quadruples the polygons in the mesh and by default smooths out the shading so it's not so hard edged like you see now. When I'm in the middle of making the object, I don't smooth it because 1) it slows down the computer and 2) quadrupling the polys quadruples the work load. In fact, there's an option to smooth just the shading and it wouldn't look much different from a higher poly version, but I like keeping it hard edged like this while I'm working so I can see how it's structured.

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Well, I've gotten quite aways since...February. I've pretty much just let this character slide up until this past week, where I got the general body/shirt/pants/shoes/pretty much everything modeled. Even did a quick-slap color test.



Here's the last 2d incarnation of the character by the way, for comparison:



There are two ways I can continue. I know no matter what, I'm gonna use a hair program of some sort to do the hair (what's up there now is basically a place holder). The question is whether or not to attempt a cloth simulation for the shirt and pants. Those kinda things take wicked amounts of processing power and the last time I attempted it, it was quite the spectacular failure, but that was a couple years ago. Who knows what the new version of Maya can do?

The other option is to basically stick with what I got right there with a bit more detailing added. It's quicker, easier and a lot mroe reliable, but it just don't look as good.


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So is this gonna turn out to be a Animation?

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Kel'Thuzad: She is persistent. Reminds me of you, death knight.

Arthas:Shut up you damned ghost.

-Warcraft III Kel'thuzad comparing Arthas and Sylvanas Windrunner.

So amazing ^.^ But I don't see her pigtails? Do they have to be added later? o.o
I'm still in awe! Ohhhh! The color putting- on is called mapping/texturizing, right? I think you told me that once when you did something with teeth!

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You're telling me that there's no hope.

I'm telling you you're wrong.

Dragon: That's the eventual destination, yeah. Point in fact, a couple of other characters I've shown have already been animated, but that was way back when I was in school. I plan on redoing those scenes with the revisions I've made and hopefully they'll turn out better. But that's a ways off. I still hafta to do the rigging for all of them and that's going to take a large amount of time.

Relm: Yeah, the hair that's shown is really just a place holder until I decide to crack my knuckles and deal with it. Hair's always a sticky situation to deal with in computer animation, so I'm gonna hold that off until the texture work is done. Speaking of which...



I finished up the mapping of the character and am in the middle of painting the textures for her. Don't know how long that'll take, but I hope to get a large amount of it out of the way this weekend. God willing...

Edit

Okay, finally got the hair the way I like it. Took a lotta work to get it just to where it is now and I know it don't seem like much. Such is life. Anyway, here's a close up the face. I'm not one for digital painting, so I think the face texture is definitely one of my better attempts.



Finally got the texture looking better. Not quite the pixar level I was hoping for, but it'll get the job done.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 2nd July 2006 04:54

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