"Real" female

[Blackjack_Davie]

Hey Folks. Here's something I started working on. One day I may actually finish a project i start.

 

Any-ol-who. since most of my work has been kinda cartoony, i thought i'd try modeling from a photo. He're what I've gotten so far.

I'm endevoring to actually finishing this one unlike my previous projects i start and well. . . loose. Either physically lost it due to HD failure, or lost it cause i swiched platforms and can't seem to get my previous work of my old machine. . well here's the new girl.

[jon]

do you have a profile and/or 3/4 shot of this woman?

 

it's going to be difficult to be very accurate without a second rotoscope.

 

-jon

[Blackjack_Davie]

do you have a profile and/or 3/4 shot of this woman?

 

it's going to be difficult to be very accurate without a second rotoscope.

 

-jon

 

 

Wish I did. it's a sample image, but the site i got it from doesn't offer the profile of the model. Been trying to find profile pics of women with same basic features but the hunt goes poorly.

[tanassi]

Hi Davie,

 

nice start and good splining.

i had somewhere in my hard drive images of the same gal, hope they'll be useful to you.

in my (not so great) experience, once i have rotoscoped my images, i had to modify my model, even heavily, to fit my idea of beauty.

this girl seems to be quite nice but, once modeled, you'll see that you want to tweak here and there and go quite far from the rotoscope to have the same beauty of the image.

the rule is: follow your fantasy, don't (always) follow the rotoscope

pesonally i would add some edge loop on the nose-labial crease, especially if you want to animate her.

 

 

good luck... Vince

[Blackjack_Davie]

BLUE!!!! YOU MY BOY!

 

lol, THAT is the girl. so now i have a profile image. lol. man was i off, I tweeked the chin and forehead and lower lip as per the profile, but i think the pitch that they took the profile picture was off as the lips and eyes and nose weren't matching up from portraite to profile. Rather than spend the day tweeking everyspline to match the profile i'll well enough alone and get working on the other structures like teath an eyelashes and eventually the layers of supporting skin maps. Hehe. cool beens! As for the "Ideals" of beauty. . . I'll reserve that one for another post. lol.

 

Thanks alot ! Vince, Cheers

[trajcedrv]

MUCHO BETTER! keep us posted!

[Kelley]

Wish I did. it's a sample image, but the site i got it from doesn't offer the profile of the model. Been trying to find profile pics of women with same basic features but the hunt goes poorly.

 

Go to www.renderosity.com...a site largely for Poser people. They are hand-in-glove with DAZ, a company that now owns Bryce, Carrara, and several other 3D apps, currently in decline. Among the figures, clothing and props for Poser devotees, you can find photo albums of people [nude] shot from various neutral [not in motion] angles. You'll find faces and skin textures there.

[Blackjack_Davie]

Latest Update. The Debate for me now is to take this model further and make a full figure or just make it an animatable bust for lip sync fun. I'm thinking something from Chrissy Hine. Her voice matches the appernet maturity of the character age of the model. I can't picture Lindsey Lohans voice eminating from her lips. Either way. Hair is soon to follow, maybe 2 versions, one with Particle hair and one with mapped hair. Time will tell, but a lipsinc is in the future. After all, what good is a mesh if it can't be animated.

(( no offense to the still life workers in our comunity, but you too know the value of a posable figure)).

[Blackjack_Davie]

I've put on some hair. It's a cookie cut with color and a bump map. Then layered over 3 geomities to make the volume of the hair.

[Blackjack_Davie]

He're a yipsinc for critique. I can see there are some things wrong with it, but i wan't your opinions, you might see things I don't

 

Credits got to Kelly Lebrock in "Weird Science" for voice

and of cource me for animation. yay!!

 

I have to say, being that my previous lypsincs were to music. It's tougher to sync with regular speach.

untitled.mov

[ruscular]

He're a yipsinc for critique. I can see there are some things wrong with it, but i wan't your opinions, you might see things I don't

 

Credits got to Kelly Lebrock in "Weird Science" for voice

and of cource me for animation. yay!!

 

I have to say, being that my previous lypsincs were to music. It's tougher to sync with regular speach.

 

First off, great job on the model!

 

I am deaf so I primarily rely on lip reading. I would like to know how is your lip poses setup? could we get a shot of each of the poses? I think if we look at the poses, and that we could further assist you in the lip shape. I think that is where your effort should attend to.

[Blackjack_Davie]

and crash!

 

The .prj got currupted some how. I used to be able to edit the files using text edit to delete the choriography file. That was the section that used to hang up my file, but now the hash files are too big to text edit and even MS word.

 

Luckily I saved a different version before i started working on the lip synk, but now I've got to redo my phonemes. I use the standard Preston Blair set. I use this site for referance

 

http://www.garycmartin.com/phoneme_examples.html

 

in the meen time, anyone good at rescuing crashed project files?

[Blackjack_Davie]

okay, here are the new Phonems

 

 

all in all it's a blessing in desguise that the file crashed. The new phonems look better.

[mouseman]

The new phonemes are phenomenal. The model is looking quite good!

 

I agree with the comment about nose creases ... they look a little improved.

[Blackjack_Davie]

And once again. . . Kelly Lebrock

Lipsynk.mov

[ruscular]

The lip poses aren't bad, but I would suggest pushing the range further to beyond the boundaries. Exaggerate the mouth position so that you have a wider range of expression. then its easier to adjust with combination of mouth movement to get just the right touch. You may want to the character to scream or cry or have strong emotion as well as normal range. Otherwise you end up with that British stiff up lips. I didn't see a pucker lip poses.

 

the animation look much much better BTW!

 

when she say "so" I would pucker her lips a bit, and slowly cause she a tease at that point. think like a woman! close your eyes and imagine a woman enticing you with just her lips and eyes. she going to squint her eyes when she look upon the maniac, naughty boys, but open them wide with interest and appeal. your going to have your vision of a woman doing this to you. but the darting eyes can tell you much. be kewl if you can set up a lip pose to have her bite a corner of her lips. that would be something I see very few animators ever do.

[Blackjack_Davie]

okay, New Lypsink. The Phonems are on a different action from the rest of the facial features. But it doesn't look like 1+1 is = 2 here.

 

I've also posted some new face posses, a kiss and smirking from different sides of the face.

Lipsynk.mov

[Blackjack_Davie]

here the individual actions

AccessoryMuscles.mov

LipsOnly.mov

[Blackjack_Davie]

eh, I punked her out a little bit, lol.

[John Bigboote]

I like where this is going...

 

a couple commies... her skin is too oily, maybe dink with the specularity settings, a bigger spread, lower amount...

I'd like to see her mouth make more of an 'Oh' on the "So"...like the lips 'purse' together further, almost to a kiss.

 

I'm diggin it! Are you going to give her particle hair?

[jon]

you've done a great job!

 

in comparison to the photos: your model's face needs a fuller lower face and jaw, as seen from angles other than the front.

 

i can't quite pin in down, but i see the biggest difference in your highly defined rear jaw bone, and the photos smoother, unseen jawbone.

 

sorry i can't be more detailed in my unsolicited nag. ' ' )

 

-jon

[ruscular]

Interesting mesh work on the lips, I wish I could see closer.

 

I agree on the "So" lip pose should have a little more pucker, kind of why I wanted to see a pucker pose.

 

I see that you really did a great job in using minimal mesh work which it will make it easier to animate. My biggest suggestion is to animate her cheeks along with the lips. Humans have pretty powerful jaw muscles and leaving them still during the animation, makes her look like she had major botox. It will make a huge improvement to get those cheeks in action. do you have a smile and frown pose?

 

did I say I am impress with the meshwork? I would like to see the lip mesh work closer. I don't think I ever saw it done that way. May have a new technique I could learn from.

[Jin-Kazama]

very nice work..i realy like this female, by the way, is there anyplace where i can find real human rotoscopes???

[ruscular]

very nice work..i realy like this female, by the way, is there anyplace where i can find real human rotoscopes???

 

If you have a newsgroup access you can search there. or go to a free site www.Phun.org for celebrity, and or Google it. If you are talking about a full body photo, I found most of them on the newsgroup. I enroll with www.supernews.com

[Blackjack_Davie]

Curse you Blizzard and your highly addictive, production halting video games!!!!!

 

the bad news. not much progress on the model, the consilation is a well geared, hard hitting level 70 rogue!!!! BOYAH!!!!. . . err. but on the the topic.

 

well, here she is. Made the head a body and gave the resulting character a name. Astaeira. Yes, with the name comes a history and a story to tell that if i ever pull my head out my butt (listens intently for a "pop") I may gain the disciplin to tell. lol.

 

well, here some stills of the first draft body. its basically the irea body reproportioned some what. so yah, i've basically done about 5 hours of work in 5 months.

 

(still no POP)

 

enjoy.

[GDblEK]

That model looks good, also looks familiar... ImagineFX?

[Blackjack_Davie]

arg!!!!! Bad hair day revisited. . . .how in the world do i make realistic, if not eastheticaly pleasing hair?

[Fuchur]

arg!!!!! Bad hair day revisited. . . .how in the world do i make realistic, if not eastheticaly pleasing hair?

 

First I would activate the Muh-Hair-Shader... and than... I dont know but it looks worth than most things I have seen How did you do that?

Just let us see your Hair-material-settings.

 

*Fuchur*

[Paul Forwood]

How many passes are you using? Muh-hair especially improves with 5+ passes.

[Blackjack_Davie]

erm. . . hair material?

 

its image mapped geometry.

 

err.. . . splines and patches with a hair map with cookie cut alfa chanel and a bump map.

 

and layerd.

 

well, here's some work on the suit

[Fuchur]

erm. . . hair material?

 

its image mapped geometry.

 

err.. . . splines and patches with a hair map with cookie cut alfa chanel and a bump map.

 

and layerd.

 

Oh, okay... so you are using a cookie-cut... that explains alot...

Why didnt you use the hair-feature? Or which version of A:M are u using?

If you are using AM 2005 or above you should definitivly try A:Ms Hair-Feature... make a material, change its type to "Particles->Hair" and look at the settings... you can make quite realistic hair with that.

Example 1 from A:M 2005 (without hair-shaders)

 

If you are using AM 2006 or above you can use the Hair-shades Muir and Katayascha (or something like that) which will increase the realism even more.

Features A:M 2006

 

Both have dynamic-options to automaticly calculate how the hair should fall, etc.

The hair can be "brushed" with the brushtool and so on... you should really try this very nice feature!

*Fuchur*

[Blackjack_Davie]

More armor. I'm using the metalic plug in that comes with hash, but its not a rather convincing metalic.

[Blackjack_Davie]

Bah, progress on this is so slow. . . hopefully it will pick up now that i've stopped playing warcrack

 

Okay, here's a character sketch, now that i've got a better idea of what i want the armor to look like, my big problem is the hair. I still can't get how to use the hair emitter.

[Blackjack_Davie]

Day 6 without World of War Craft. the tremors are getting worse and I'm hallucinating. My wife sent me out to the store to get milk, when i came back, i could have sworn I saw a blue question mark over her head. Have I truly lost my mind?

 

My only hope is to drown my self in the task of completing this model and getting it ready for animation. I've spent the past couple of days revamping the armor and trying to get it to look more machine made and less like play dough. The progress is slow but i've been keeping my focus with near toxic amounts of coffee and cigarettes. I hope i can make it through these trying times.

[jon]

she's coming along nicely! the webbing is a nice touch... but it's hard to make out black on dark purble.

 

there's a whole world of hair design locked into the emitters. with practice you can style it however.

 

...but i still use lumps of geometry for hair, so you might want a second opinion. ' ' )

 

-jon

[Blackjack_Davie]

got so wrapped up in detailing i neglected one major thing, It's called "ANIMATION" for a reason. lol

 

here's a walk cycle. It looks. . . weird. the right arm is really twitchy and the animation itself is pretty rough. like, the legs are all wobbly. Did I set something up wrong? I'm using the 2001 skeleton.

astwalk1.mov

[Jeetman]

I read this thread from the beginning and I love the progression.

 

In looking at your walk cycle, it appears that her head is a slight bit too small for her frame. I think the costume layout is excellent!!

 

Keep up the good work!

 

George

[Blackjack_Davie]

Man, Modeling the environment is taking a lot out of me. Luckily the super market near me sells Bustelo dirt cheep

 

I'm either going to start a new thread for this, or try to change the name as it's so far from the original intent of what I started to do. It was supposed to be a female head with a lypsinc and it's taken a life of its own.

 

The stories been floating around in my head and sketch book for years now, since high school really but most of the serious work start 5 years ago. It was originally supposed to be a simple throw away story, something simple to write and draw and try to get published (was trying for heavy metal magazine) just to get my name out there so people knew who I was. But life happens as it does, so I never got the chance to do anything with it. Although I didn't do any physical work, mentally I've been developing the story and characters all this time. Now that I've finally made the commitment to go back to school and study animation this story is becoming much more than what I originally intended it to be. I'm basically writing this post 'cause it gives me an excuse not to work on the environment lol.

 

The character you've been watching take form is Astaeira (random name I came up with, don't even know how I did come up with it)

She's the tragic heroin of the story. She's got 3 pets which I'm still trying to design on paper; Deception, Rebellion, and Attrition.

 

Here friend and cohort is Tech (finalized on paper, once i finish Ast, I'll model him)

 

The monster she's going to fight is the Chimera (not the mythological beast, but named after it)

 

The ship she's on is code named "Oblivion" (reasons for that are explained in the story)

 

Chimera is the creature she fights throughout the story, but the real villain is Captain LeRose

 

Astaeira's Father Nax and her father’s friend and advisor Tidus (They're dead in the story, but appear in day dreaming sequences)

 

And last but not least Admiral Thrace (he a book end I added to smooth out the story, he literally appears at the very beginning and end)

 

The basics are this. One galaxy divided into two warring factions both descended and formed when a civil war destroyed the empire that ruled the galaxy 500 years ago in the story. One side is the imperialists the other side is a union of corporations that revolted to gain independence from the empire.

 

The oblivion is a ship (space station really, the dam thing is HUGE!) that was left over from the empire and was it’s crowning achievement but was found recently floating in imperialist space on a drifting course to Union space. The imperialists want the ship. It is 500 years old, but it was constructed using the best technology at the time, a technology long since gone. So far, all attempts to get the ship have failed, a recovery crew went in, they were never heard from again. A rescue party goes in to find them, they were never heard from again. A third special-forces team was sent it. (paste previous text)

 

The empire wants the ship bad, but as bad as they want it, they want to keep it out of enemy hands all the more so there choice was to just destroy the ship.

 

The story starts with Larose sitting in on an executive meeting to diced whether or not to go through with destroying the ship.

 

Larose speaks up saying that he may have another option, to hire and send in a Rage Panther. (Astaeira) the councile doesn’t like this idea and are quick to shoot it down, mostly because there are no more Rage Panthers, the mercenary unit was destroyed 5 years ago on there last mission. Larose says that he’s found the last one. Admiral Thrace who knew and respected Nax though he was a mercenary asked Larose if he knew the name of the would-be panther, When he hears Astaeira’s name, he give his endorsement to Larose’s plan which strongly sways the council to hire Astaiera.

 

Astaeira’s mission is three fold. Locate the previous teams and if they are alive rescue them. Second is to get the ship under control, third, if she can’t control the ship and there is no one to save, destroy the ship.

 

So how’s 1 person supposed to succeed where whole military teams have failed. . . dude, it’s a sci-fi action epic!

 

I divided the story into 4 major parts, The first part is the meeting above and her initial exploration of the ship trying to find the previous teams. It ends with her finding the dead soldiers and scientists and meeting up with chimera, the two fight and she kinda wins. The Chimera gets away by shedding part of its body but she gets hurt in the fight.

 

The 2nd and 3rd chapter are more of her trying to outsmart the chimera and finding out more horrible secrets of the ship (the name oblivion is explained in the 3rd chapter, the ship is basically a giant containment unit for a black hole) In the forth chapter she defeats the chimera it basically starts with them fighting. She beats it down and the chimera gives here a small box. When she gets it the chimera gets shot in the “headâ€. She turns and dom-dom-dom-dom. . . there’s Larose with a smoking gun.

 

Lorose thanks her for her efforts and has her escorted of the ship. She gets back to her own craft an talks to tech about what happened. Tech looks at the box and a plot twist later, she finds out that chimera was a guard dog trying to make sure that no one gets control of the ship that the ship was pure evil, that it was built for only one purpose, to destroy everything and anything. Astaeira decides to go back to the ship and take out Larose and destroy the ship.

 

Throughout the story there is mention that a single Rage Panther could take out a platoon of imperial and or union soldiers and that Rage Panthers are actually decended from the Imperial Guards form the original empire. Their function was something like an arbitrator. They kept the balance between the military and the congress of corporations. Think if our judicial branch of government had a group of martials to enforce constitutional law. Astaeira finds out through the stuff in the box that chimera gave here that 500 years ago the corporations were going to secede. The military took control of the Oblivion and was intent of preventing the sedition. They knew however that the guard would never allow the use of lethal force so they made a preemptive strike against the guards home world using the Oblivion to destroy the entire solar system it was in. (the oblivion basically uses the black hole inside itself to desrupt a stars stability making it collapse or go nova) The remaining guards became mercinaries calling themselves Rage Panthers.

 

Astaeira knowing this decides she's going to destroy that ship even if it will cost here own life. It does in the end, but in an awesomely heroic " batman gonna fly the watchtower and crash it into the Thanagarian hyper space bypass generator" kinda way.

 

There's a lot more not in this post. But the major story ideas are here.

 

Inspiration for this story has come from all over.

 

John W. Campbells "The Mothballed spaceship" provided the basic architecture for the story. God I love that story

 

Metroid

 

Alien

 

Iria

 

Even playing WOW (its where I got the idea for the pets)

 

And a table-top Battle Tech game I played once (how I got the idea for the functions of the pets)

 

The monster Chimera actually was the thing that got the story started. I made Asaeira to kill it basically. But chimera was a funny story, I was developing a photo in high-school but the filter I used killed all the contrast on it, so as it appeared while I had it in the developing fluid, I got so turned off by it I took it out the try and put it aside instead of putting it in the 2nd chemical that stops the developing process. Some how the image ran in a weird way and made a disgusting form that gave me the idea for the chimera.

 

 

Well, that's basically the way the story is going. Lets hope it gets there and I welcome you along for the trip and thank you in advance for any help and emotional support and encouragement you can spare. Lol.

 

Well, time for more modeling.

[nino banano]

Hi Blackjack_Davie...very good work an imagination as well...you have to work hard to finish your project...so have a good luck...I´ll be glad to see the progress.. .greetings

[Blackjack_Davie]

Sneek animation.

 

I'm going to redo it. The more i look at it the more i don't like it. the motion is just unnatural and the stride length is wrong.

 

The big issue is render time. Took me 18 hours to render this clip. and that's because i shut off reflections. with reflections on it would take 3 days to render.

 

anyone have any tips for shortening render times?

testrender.mov

[jon]

if you're just testing the animation, turn off shadows. it'll make her easier to see as well!

 

-jon

[nf1nk]

I bet the big slowdown is your choice of textures for the walls. It looks like one of the plug in textures. They all look cool but they slow the renderings to a crawl. Test it by making the walls plain gray and checking the results, I am betting less than an hour

[Paul Forwood]

Just doing single pass, shaded renders will speed things up significantly. Save all the final rendering until you have the motion and composition the way that you want it and then you can turn everything on and do your final rendering while you sleep.

[Blackjack_Davie]

Took the model in a slightly different direction. I reworked the body proportions and tweeked the mesh a bit. I also put in some of the smart skins and stuff. I cleaned up the Walk a bit too. I use a 12 frame walk with keys 0 6 12 as the legs farthest apart position, 3 and 9 being the weight on one leg positions. I like it, still need to tweak out the muscle channels a bit. But I like how this is going. The next couple of weeks I'll spend more on muscles and dynamics.

untitled1.mov

[jzawacki]

Not that my opinion should mean much.. but her knees are freaking me out! But the stuff you mention will probably fix that, huh?

[Blackjack_Davie]

I'm sorry what's wrong with the knees. I don't see it. Not that i'm saying there is nothing wrong, but if there's something you see, please tell me so i can try to fix it.

 

 

I did some fiddling with the model and made some adaptations to make a model of my WOW rogue.

[jon]

in the walk cycle, there's an odd lump above each knee on the inside thigh.

 

that might be what's freaking jzawacki out.

 

otherwise, she looks pretty good!

 

-jon

[Blackjack_Davie]

Oh! I gotcha, I over modeled the inside lower muscle head of the quadriceps. okay. I'll tweak them down a bit.

[jzawacki]

I think it's the bulge.. I'm not sure.. Could it be that they pop backwords when the leg is strait? I can't say for sure.. I just know they look freaky.. And for some reason.. I "feel" a pop in there.. Wish I could help more by explaining it better.

[ruscular]

The animation is pretty good, but I see the foot needs to be nail down. It's not a biggy, but it is one thing that a professional will look at when you show a walk cycle.

 

I have been watching this thread for awhile, and I can see tremendous effort and progress from beginning to now. It is exciting to see a model become a character with life.