Slowly but surely...

[littleandy]

I think I'm done with my geometry... I'm putting up some screen captures for any design/ modelling criticism before I start bugging (no pun intended) everyone to help me with the texturing. Haven't had the time I've wanted on this, so I haven't made many changes since my last post. Just redid the hands, tweaked his face, put in eyes, made the inside of his mouth, which I can't even see. Anyway, any suggestions are welcome. Thanks -Andrew

[DarkLimit]

Coming along very nice.. This guy will look sweet when he's textured....... his overall design is great; his wings looks kinda out of place a bit... maybe try and fit it on better, and I would just add some bend to his antennas just to add more life / character to him....... I look forward to more updates..... keep up the good work... PS: can we see a wireframe?

[Mike Lium]

Hey Andrew thats coming along just great . I think you have a very fun Character there. :)

[Zaryin]

Your character is looking great. I think the area between the mouth and eyes, where the nose would be, needs to be smoother. I'd grab that middle spline and pull it forward to get it smoother. Jeff B.

[CRToonMike]

Nice critter you have there!. Agree with the opinion of smoothing out the area between the eyes. Or give the lil' guy nostrils (as your avatar has). Doing a character w/o a nose but with the pair o' peepers and mouth is a good challenge. Overall, there's a lot of character here but one thing to my eye is lacking: a distinctive line. All the lines/contours of the body are pretty much straight or "standard" curves (like in the side view of the wings). The segmentation in the body itself could be a bit more 'curvy' -- for instance instead of just going around the front from the side, make the line more of a "S" curve -- you have the beginings of that curve as shown in the side view, now if that was emphasized and strengthened I feel it would make some kind of "solid" anatomy exists in this bug. And that curve on the sides/front could be echoed in the antenna's curve. I would try to avoid things "lining up" as the shoulder-elbow-wrist does. If the wrist (and rest of the hand) was lowered down (much like a human hand) it could give a bit more visual interest. And in the same vein, throw the shoulders back or forward. IMHO, you can have a balanced figure without having all the parts in a straight line. I'm assuming that there's wings on the back of the bug, and what we're seeing is the 'cup' for the wings (like with ladybugs and other beetles) and if that's the case, angling them so the top is closer to the shoulders and the bottom is further away from the body proper would look a bit more interesting. Right now it looks as if the bug is wearing one of those hard-bodied backpacks. One last thing -- the ears look "off" to me. Maybe instead of pointing them, you could make them into a ridge system that would then lead up the sides of the head and eventally become the antenna... Just my opinions looking at the captures of the bug and thinking what I would do if it was my model. Be interesting to see how this critter evolves, you have a great start! mike r.

[littleandy]

Thanks for the feedback! :D Zarvin- I tried to soften things a little, like the ridge on his nose and the part between his eyes... does it need more tweaking? DarkLimit- CRToon is right. That's supposed to be the shell that protects the wings. That's why its rounded. I'm thinking it'll be more evident when I make the back shiny and maybe put big spots or some design on it. And I'll bend the antennae with bones. They're just static for the rigging process. CRToon- I'm still not sure what you mean by "definite line." I don't have much of a vocabulary when it comes to artsy lingo. Maybe you could explain it more...? And where I might put it? :huh: And I put a little more work into the ears. So hopefully they don't still look like places where I pulled part of his skin away. I'll have a wireframe in a sec... -Andrew

[littleandy]

Ok, here's a front wireframe.

[Zaryin]

I love the new smoothness of the "nose" area. Please, I'm only being picky here :), but I would smooth the cheek area more. Round it out more to give him a chubby cheek look.

[littleandy]

And here's the back. How's he look? -Andrew ;)

[littleandy]

Ok, I smoothed out his cheeks, but other than that, I'm ready to go. I'm tired of modelling this guy! And the changes I made weren't drastic enough for me to justify attaching a new image. So... Next step: Any ideas on how I should texture him? I've got access to photoshop, and I am semi-proficient at it... I just need to find some tutorials on flattening and all... One thing that I've heard is that I need to take seperate pieces and flatten those as seperate things to be decalled. Does that mean just the seperate geometry like the shell and the eyeballs, or do I need to go farther than that? And I need this stuff explained in the simplest of mentally deficient laymen terms. I. Have. No. Idea. What. I'm. Doing. :blink: -Andrew

[CRToonMike]

Yeah, I've been to that space were if I had to move one more CP I would go mad, mad I tell you! :lol: By definate line, I meant something that'll individualize the critter. In the altered picture the green line is part of that (called sometimes, iirc, the 'action' line or center line). Anyways, the included image describes visually what I verbally rambled on about :D Here's a url (got it from the ARM) for some proceedural shading you could try -- [url="http://www.babbagepatch.com/cd/"]Diffusion Grating[/url] And over in the Hash Animaster List, Jim Talbot has a thread about some texturing tutes he did. Here's the link to that thread -- [url="http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2315"]Texturing Tute[/url] He has done something really great here and should help you out. You can check out the [url="http://www.lowrestv.com/arm/"]ARM[/url] (Animation Master Resource Matrix) and go to the Materials/FX section for some tutes on texturing. Quite helpful (keep in mind there are a number of "dead" links on that page :angry: When I was trying to get the hang of texturing with texture maps (and still learning btw) I exported the MDL file and made a new project file and then imported the MDL (can export/import MDL files by right clicking/control-clicking on the objects folder in the Project workspace and then selecting the menu item that you want to do). In 10.5 you can select the model and then in its properties go to file and then you can basically do a save as. I would then apply the decal/texture to the model and just muck about with changing the decal's properites and so on. When ever I'm going to to a major change, I do a save as to the model and then do my changes. My renaming scheme just adds a letter to the end of the name and before the .mdl extension. hth mike r.

[littleandy]

CRToon- Thanks a LOT for that tutorial link. I feel as though I have a sense of what's going on now. I'll try to have some sort of textured version in a day or so... -Andrew :D

[littleandy]

OK. I need some feedback on my texturing. I'm going for a softer look, so I'm not out to make my character's shell real shiny or anything, but if you notice anything I've missed or should focus more on, it'd be great to hear. :D -Andrew Here's angle 1

[littleandy]

Here's angle 2

[littleandy]

Here's angle 3

[littleandy]

Ah ha... I'm a moron. Here's angle 3

[littleandy]

Well, since no one replied to my texturing, I hope that means it's an ok job ;) Ok, here's some expressions. I'd like to hear any positive feedback, or criticism- shoot, even destructive criticism would work for me. Feel like I'm talking to myself here! :D And does anyone have any suggestions for how and where to create a nice, (cheap) website for the sole purpose of showing movie files? I'm about a third of the way through a test animation and it'd be cool to get some critiques on that too... :( -Andrew

[xor]

Lookin' good. I'd say the expressions are lookin' sharp as well. Is that all of his expressions so far, or are there more, or more to come?

[DarkLimit]

The texturing look good.... my only crit is that I think his buttom lip seems a bit flat maybe add some roundness to it... The expressions look good. how did you get the spots on his face?

[JTalbotski]

I like the character a lot. I think his expressions could be more dramatic or exaggerated since he is obviously a cartoony type character. You won't have to use them full strength all the time but it will help you if you need to show strong emotion. And don't forget to add a pose to control the lower eyelid. It seems too static right now which causes all the poses to look similar. Nice work, Jim

[littleandy]

Thanks for the crits! I will make more expressions, and yeah, I suppose they could be a bit more exaggerated. I did the freckles on his face with photoshop, thanks to the tutorials that Mr. Talbot put up recently :D I'll smooth out the mouth... My original goal was to have 20 different expressions done by the end of yesterday, but I got sidetracked and spent most of the time doing the first 3.5 seconds of a test animation. As far as that goes, I have some questions: -I've done the hierarchy right, my bug's eyes translate with the head control bone, while aiming at a null object. The only problem is that when the bug's head is tilted in certain ways, the eyeballs want to peek out from behind the lids just enough to really agitate me. Did I not put my eyebone bases exactly in the middle of the eyeballs, so they're not rotating right? Or could it be something else? -Is it possible to delete percentage poses? I've made some that I don't like anymore and I want to get rid of them so I can clear up my pose slider window. That, and at one point I imported KeeKat into my model so I could cut off his hand and examine it next to my bug's hand and redesign it. Now I have a bunch of KeeKat poses that don't do anything, since the KeeKat geometry is long gone thanks! -Andrew

[JohnArtbox]

Hi Andy , looking good. Old animation rule -" Take your expressions to the extreme, and then double them". It's amazing how often the extra punch comes in handy, especially on a cartoony character like this. You can post short animations directly on the forum if you can squeeze it under 1mb. Especially for WIP's small is good, oherwise a lot of people won't bother to download. With your expressions, it seems like your doing full face expressions. I create sets of seperate brow, eye and mouth poses which allows more flexibility and reusability(is this a real word? :o)) during animation. You can delete the poses under user properties in the PWS or properties window.

[littleandy]

Actually, these are seperate poses. I've got one for eyes, a couple for eyebrows, and maybe two or three for the mouth. I've just mixmatched them. :D But thanks for the advice, I like that rule. I'll get to work this weekend on some better expressions. I don't think there's any way I'll ever fit my animations under 1 MB, unless they're too tiny to see. But if you have a suggestion for a website service that has around 20 MB or more, I could sure use it. -Andrew

[Mike Lium]

I like this more and more and the think the expressions are looking real good. better and better with each post :D