Ross Smith

Hey all, it's me again. This time, the problem is the eyes. (Yay that he has eyes at all! Now then.) Many of you know about the rabbit model in the Hash CD library, the one with the unusual eyes. The eyes are spheres in the model window but transformed into oblong cartoony eyes in all the relationships. The clever modeler/rigger made the eyes such that the pupils adhere to the surface of this irregular eye and still move to track an eye target. My Robot The Finished Rabbit The Rabbit in the Model Window See what I mean? I want to get that effect with my robot's eyes. The right eye of my robot (his right, your left) is just something I made to fit the socket so I could sculpt the socket and deal with this problem later. Now is later, and I would like to know if anyone knows how this was done with the rabbit model, so's I could imitate. Thanks for looking. ** EDIT: Wait, why am I asking this... Noel already answered it for me. Duh. Forgive the stupid person. Thanks for looking anyway. I should have more of this guy posted once I finish his eyes and hands.

To be fair, Bill, I did say I'm no pro at the bias handles. But I'll take your advice and fiddle with the handles on a sphere. I'd certainly _like_ to figure them out. It's looking great, Andy! But now you've made a big problem for yourself -- you have to texturemap it as well as you modeled it.

Friend, I think you've got a real knack for this. That looks _awesome_. My only crit is that there's some bad pinching at the corners of the lips, and that you have perhaps too many splines above the eyebrow. But hey, if he'll be using those a lot in animation, maybe it's just enough. Looking forward to more!

Really nice! The little designs that frame the windows are great. Nice lighting, too. You have the creepy green fog thing down pat.

Parlo, this character is remarkable at expressing body language. I can watch and watch this and the WotW demos you made and see new bits of expression each time. Bravo!

Yep! RayDream was fun stuff. That's actually where my avatar pic came from. I'll remake him in A:M in due time, along with my other robots. Anyway, looking forward to your update.

Wow! Very imaginative, for not demanding your full attention. Looks like some kind of warrior marsupial. The lips will need some fixing, and the eyes look veeery tiny at the moment. Otherwise though, really great. Wish I could do that in two-ish hours. Could we see a wireframe?

Hey Andy, I can't speak on behalf of our community's titans (like Jim), but I can tell you my strategy for making smooth meshes. Seems to me there are three rules: 1) start simple, 2) tweak endlessly, and 3) don't touch the bias handles. So 1, if your character's body is supposed to be a smooth basic shape, start with that simple shape and learn how to build on it. To set an eye in a spherical head, for example, you can use the Add CP tool to subdivide one big patch into smaller patches, make some circular splines (and hooks and 5-point patches in the process), and extrude that circular spline into the head to make a cavity for the eye. Then tweak into shape. There was a great example of that elsewhere in the WIPs recently, with a teardrop-shaped character, but I'm not sure what thread it was, and I'm lazy. Tweak endlessly. I do this in shaded wireframe preview mode and make heavy use of the 4 and 6 keys above the letters. 4 moves a CP along a selected spline, and 6 moves the CP along the normal (the axis perpendicular to both splines -- "out" and "in", in a sense). I try to coerce my splines into flowing, rectangular patches whenever I can. Seems to help. Don't touch the bias handles. It's a superstition of mine, but I figure if you let the bias handles do the interpolation work, there's no way you will have _definitely_ messed up a smooth mesh (it wouldn't prevent all problems, just some). Rule of thumb, I guess. Hope that helps! The teeth look real nice, by the way.

I was referring mostly to the head. There are areas of the body that I personally would try to decimate, but that's not advice of any sort. It's just the way I prefer to model. So long as you're satisfied with the way the head looks, that's the bottom line. Keep us posted.

For a math textbook, eh? Cool. I always remark at the variety of work 3D artists on this forum seem to do. His fore-flippers are very large. Will he be using them to grasp, or hold things at all? I ask because without a wireframe or a look at the rig, it is hard to see how or if you would articulate them. I'm just curious why they are that size. Overall, excellent spline control, and interesting character. Looks like he (she?) already has personality. Keep us posted.

Heheh! I like. The character in the back looked like a cat to me, at first. Then I saw the cloven feet. Not many cats have those. I like the "cabinet-front" torso. I have a robot with a similar feature, except it is a filing cabinet -- he works in an office, you see. Feel free to share more pics with these guys, they've got some potential!

** UPDATE ** So! This character is basically all rigged, and modeling is as done as I'm gonna do it. The next frontier: UV mapping. I haven't posted on this guy in a while, and I wanted to show y'all my progress. I kept asking myself how to make the textures more interesting. I had an idea. He's supposed to be a sickly, frightening sort of character, so he'll have a lot more detail (and be a lot uglier) if I cover him with warts and sores and things. Nasty, I know. Luckily for you I haven't put many on him yet. Anyway, some pics. All my texturemaps are done in Macromedia Fireworks. Merman, front Merman, back Merman, tail fin The tail is all done. I'm proud of it. It took forever to come up with a solution to the Waistline Problem, that is, good transition from scales to skin. I have done his back up properly, but the front and sides need more work. His skin won't be yellow in the end, I don't think. Though I do sorta like it. Thanks for looking. --Ross

Looks like you've come a ways with this guy. I remember back when you posted him some months ago. You've got an original design for his head, with the eyes up high and what looks like a very prominent nose. I would recommend you prune back the splinage, though. You can probably get the contours you want with only a few, carefully-placed control points. As a result, the model will be easier to change, a little faster to render, and probably a lot smoother. I always tell myself to remember why they're called control points: they give you control. But you only want control in the important spots, and let the patches do the rest. Keep it up!

Got that one right. Anyway, good to start off with a plan. That's something I rarely do (well, for 3D, at least). Make sure you share the end product with us.

Very nice job on the head! 'Tis impressive. At first I saw the post and thought, "Pshh, yeah right, this guy's really gonna do a remorhaz." But it looks like you'll do fine. From the pic it looks like a daunting task, but a clever enough modeler would find a way to replicate the individual body segments and scale them appropriately to make 90% of the body there. It might even keep the decals if the first one replicated is decaled, though I'm not sure about that. After that, it's just a matter of going in and touching up to give it that unique-all-over feel. Really looking forward to more on this one. BTW, the eyes in the rotoscope look like they curve back and to the side more; those in your model look a little flat. Good luck!

Very nice job! The geometry looks great, and so do the textures. Those lights make it look like it's on display in a museum, though. Is it intended to move? It appears to be very firmly mounted to the wall. If that's the right idea, then well done.

They DO look like Schlitzy hands! Lookin' good so far. Can't wait for it to come to a head.

Awesome! I like how you minutely varied the motions of the many exercisers. It's too easy to duplicate motion like that and make them look like mirror images.

His body language looks good, although his head has a sort of stop-and-go jerk to it after he sticks it out the door at first. I'd be interested to see more facial expression, but naturally you'll do that with the lip sync. Looking good!

Hear, hear! This is to be a wooden practice dummy of sorts, right? I was expecting a mannequin or a marionette, so I was initially confused. Looks like it's coming along fine. I like the color variety in pic 1. Also, I don't know if I'm right on this, but if it's the sort of wooden dummy martial artists or such practice with, some "scar tissue" may be in order down the road.

I misread it as "El Burrito" at first, too... heheh. I need to learn some Spanish. Looks very nice! Excellent cartoon exaggeration, and good spline control as usual. Looking forward to his body above the shoulders.

True dat, about the loading issues. But man, these pics are cool! It's fun, not to mention very encouraging, to see what previous Hashers have done. Adds to that dimension of community.

Hmm... looks like he's going to walk upright. Do you have a design sketch or summat for this guy? I'm curious what you have in mind for the rest of his body. (Okay, so he's a doodle... but I usually doodle in two dimensions before I expand it to three and four. )

No plants, eh? How about those deep-sea tuber-things? Tube worms, I think they're called. Ja, they could spruce the place up some. Looking forward to the end product! Your work is always impressive.

Nose looks good. I think you could fix the eye problem by just making the iris darker. The depth wouldn't be so obvious then. Then again, I've never made any really good eyes, so I suppose I'm not one to talk.