Clark

[Mechadelphia]

Hello.

 

I'm taking a short break on a personal project that I have been working on in Animation Master to work on this:

 

I am almost finished with this but I still have a few things to go with it:

 

* I need to finish the head by adding eyes, teeth and a tounge.

* Finish the face.

* Finish the hair.

* Tweak the boots around the ankle area.

* Tweak his butt.

* Finalize his belt.

* Rig it.

* Model and rig his cape (I currently am using a rough stand-in now).

* Add additional texture maps.

 

I think that is it for now.

 

My goal is to not get caught up in the details and finish this in another two weeks or so. I find that with my personal project I take longer than I think that I should to finish but, with this, I have been moving a lot faster on this model than I usually do (good reference materials help!).

 

There is more about this wip at this post on my web site.

 

Questions, comments, and suggestions are definetly welcome. Thank you.

 

[robcat2075]

He looks great!

 

The head looks small, but I guess if he's got giant shoulders the head will look small!

[largento]

Looking good!

[itsjustme]

He looks great so far, Mack!

[mouseman]

I agree with the head being a bit too small, but other than that, it looks top notch! Keep at it!

[Maniac]

nice work

[John Bigboote]

Yeah, COOL!

[Mechadelphia]

Thank you for the comments!

 

robcat2075 and mouseman,

 

I agree with you about the size of the head. In fact, I felt that way from the very start. I have modeled this using the model sheet that you can find at Sam Liu's Draw Angry web site.

 

Here is how my model is set up in my modeling window:

 

 

That is how it looks when I follow the model sheet almost exactly.

 

I decided to go ahead and adjust the head size. The Superman on the left is the original one from my earlier post and the Superman on the right is the one with the head scaled up a bit.

 

 

I like the newer version more so I will stay with that.

 

I'll post more updates later.

 

Thanks.

[robcat2075]

The small head looked a tiny bit... retarded. But if you're Superman maybe you don't need a large brain.

 

How many "heads" tall is each version?

[Mechadelphia]

The small head looked a tiny bit... retarded. But if you're Superman maybe you don't need a large brain.

 

How many "heads" tall is each version?

 

The original model is about 9.6 heads tall.

 

The adjusted model is closer to 8 heads tall (maybe just sightly less).

[mouseman]

I like the newer proportions much better, even if they are not true to the original reference. Lookin' good!

[3DArtZ]

cool. my feeling is that you could achieve the shape with fewer control points/splines... particularly in the face.

[Gerry]

Head size way better. The feet look a tad small as well, but I'm not going to quibble, the torso is really nicely contoured.

 

I was going to ask about the way you've splined the elbow areas, but I guess you're not animating this, is that right? Would you have done the elbows differently if you were?

[Mechadelphia]

It has been a few days since my last update so here is where I am now:

 

 

mouseman,

 

Thanks, the only thing that I changed in my last update was the head size. I did not change the mesh in any other area at that point. It did make quite a difference.

 

3DArtZ

 

You were right about the face being denser than it needed to be. I almost always start out very dense and then clean up but that face did need some more clean up so I removed quite a few patches from it. Thanks. I left the rest of the rest of the body mostly unchanged.

 

Gerry

 

Thanks for your comments. I agreed with you about the feet so I changed the width and height of them and I think that it's an improvement. I'll have to show you what they look like in a later post since you can't really tell in this image.

 

The elbow area looks the way it does because I need the extra definition for the arm's muscle groups. That's another area I should get you a picture of so that you can have a look at it. The arm does deform properly (when using CP weights, a fan bone and some smart skin) so animating it is not a problem. I've had a request to animate it so maybe I will try that out when I finish this.

 

What's left?

1. Basicly some minor details on the face.
   
2. The cape and its rig.
   
3. The rest of the body's rig
   
4. and texture maps.
   

I think that is it for now.

 

I've apreaciated all your feedback so far. I think that I should have asked for it sooner.

 

I'll update again soon.

[3DArtZ]

Looking Great! Hope to see more soon!

[Mechadelphia]

I started off this thread thinking that I would finish this in two weeks... HA!

 

I'm not even close. But I do have some updates:

 

I've changed my mind and now I am going to animate this. I have rigged the model with that in mind now. The rig that I made for this is set up from scratch but based heavily on the A:M 2008 Rig.

 

Gerry, I spaced out the splines in the elbow area to impove the deformation a bit.

 

 

I've also started adding texture maps...

 

In the following picture Superman's face is a strange color because the is the color that I assigned to the group that I'll use to UV map that area.

 

 

 

I am still working on the texture mapping and I'll update this thread when I get closer to finishing that.

 

I'm also storybording this too and it's looking to be about a 3 minute short at this point. It won't go any longer than that.

 

I'll post more updates when I can. Hopefully sooner than last time.

[robcat2075]

He's lookin' good!

[Gerry]

Yes, and I really like the stylized face!

[largento]

Very cool!

[KJ'd Beast]

Really nice modeling. The reduced facial modeling is much improved. The only thing that looks bizarre is the bones in feet. You modeled arches on the outer sides of the feet.

[Mechadelphia]

Thanks again for the compliments and feedback.

 

KJ'd Beast,

 

I agree with your observation about his feet so I straightened them out a little bit.

 

There is still a little bit of a curve on the outside buit it is nowhere near as extreme as before.

 

I've circled the corrected area in question in the image below.

 

 

Thanks.

[Vertexspline]

Mecha ---all the improvements have been great ........watching you improve it has been fun.

[Mechadelphia]

A little closer...

 

I think that the cape makes a big difference.

 

 

Vertexspline,

 

Thank you. I'm glad that you've been enjoying this.

 

...

 

I still have a little left to do like minor corrections and finishing the texture mapping but those things can wait until after I start animating (I'm at the point where I can and I want to start that soon).

 

I only planned to make this a modeling WIP and I did not plan to make this an animation WIP. I am not sure how much more that I can post at this point to keep this thread fresh. I will have plenty of questions about animating so if I ask some of them here at the A:M forums I may just start a new generic thread in Animation sub-forum.

 

In the meantime, questions, comments, and suggestions are still welcome.

 

Thanks.

[Rodney]

Impressive work!

 

No crits here.

 

Edit: Okay, I do have one suggestion. (I'm sure you are already working on and/or considered such detail)

Adding some additional bump/displacement to areas that should be sticking out just a little might go a long way toward lending a feeling of his costume being real. Some critical areas look almost painted on (no doubt a carry over from the animation look and feel). In particular I'm thinking the chest "S" symbol but also his belt/belt loops. Getting those two areas to pop out a little will make the "S" look as if it was added to the suit and the belt/belt loops will seem to be separate parts of his costume as well. I do note that you already have some detail that does this to an extent. Perhaps you can just exaggerate that a little?

[Mechadelphia]

Impressive work!

 

No crits here.

 

Edit: Okay, I do have one suggestion. (I'm sure you are already working on and/or considered such detail)

Adding some additional bump/displacement to areas that should be sticking out just a little might go a long way toward lending a feeling of his costume being real. Some critical areas look almost painted on (no doubt a carry over from the animation look and feel). In particular I'm thinking the chest "S" symbol but also his belt/belt loops. Getting those two areas to pop out a little will make the "S" look as if it was added to the suit and the belt/belt loops will seem to be separate parts of his costume as well. I do note that you already have some detail that does this to an extent. Perhaps you can just exaggerate that a little?

 

Thank you Rodney for your compliments and criticism.

 

Yes, I did decide to use bump maps early on with this model. In fact, I already have one on his torso for some of Superman's muscle groups. At this point that is the only bump map and it does make a subtle difference with the shading on the model.

 

The "S" logo on his chest will definitely have a bump map applied but those are details that I think that I will save towards the end (of animating). I'm trying to avoid being slowed down by fine details at this stage.

 

I have not really considered displacement maps though. I know what they do so I'll have to experiment with them to see how they look.

 

As far as the textures are concerned, they are all preliminary ones at this point. I can and will do a better job with what is there now. Some areas don't even have them yet. I will redo the maps when I finish animating (I have already started some of the animating).

 

The belt and belt loops are separate geometry already. I did not want to make the belt loops too pronounced but I can modify them some to check the results. The belt and belt loops will also get their own texture maps too so that may help.

 

On a side note:

 

Until now, I've never gone very deep with the animation tools in A:M but I have to say that I am happy to see that they are really very good as well as relatively simple to grasp.

 

I'll still have animation questions like I said previously but I'm hoping that I'll be able to keep the momentum that I have with this going.

 

Thanks again.

[Mechadelphia]

 

I have not posted in awhile about this anyway so an update won't hurt.

 

I'm actually posting this update as sort of a follow-up to Simon's thread about lines showing up in his rendered shadows.

 

The same thing is happening to me as you can see with the cape. I've been working around that(and a few others) by using separate render passes like Simon intends to do with his project.

 

I have not gotten to a separate shadow pass for the cape yet but once I do that should clean things up quite a bit.

 

This particular render of Superman is a result of me trying to find a visual style that I like for this project. I think that I'm getting close to something that I'm happy with here. The texturing and a few other details (etc) here are still not final yet.

 

Ironically, I would not have created a render like this if I had not been working around some of the render issues I've run into. I'm going to keep experimenting with this for a little while and follow up on this a little later.

[Simon Edmondson]

Mack

I really like the way you have the toon render setup, there the ambient values ( ?) in the flesh tones work really well. Its something I am hoping to explore later in the year, concentrating on performance and timing at the moment.

regards

simon