The Caped Crusader - Return to AM

Darkwing · August 3, 2013

Well it's actually been a long time since I actually really used AM for anything (probably before Christmas actually). The projects I have been working on required other tools. So I wanted to crack open AM and see if I still had it in me!

So what I'm working on is modelling Batman! I'm trying to go for a style similar to that of the graphic novels. The unfortunate thing is that I lack rotos. I couldn't find anything satisfactory online and when I tried to draw my own, well, let's just say that didn't go very well. So I'm just going at it! So far I'm not sure whether or not I'm happy with what I have. There's quite a few problems, such as but not limited to the eye not being set in far enough, the shape of the jaw, the nose (I know, I'm pretty much listing off the whole face ). I haven't really worked on cleaning up the mesh yet or anything so it's kind of rough still. But regardless, feel free to critique, I haven't done this sort of thing in forever! There is a distinct possibility that I'm gonna dump this version of the model and start from scratch. This is actually quite hard without rotos

largento · August 3, 2013

Yeah, I think you're flying blind.

Have you done a Google image search for "Batman model sheet" ? If nothing else, I'd suggest using a generic super-hero rotoscope so that you can get proportions right.

Mechadelphia · August 3, 2013

You can see if the ones at the Draw Angry web site will work for you:

Sam Liu's "Draw Angry" web site

Darkwing · August 4, 2013

You can see if the ones at the Draw Angry web site will work for you:

Sam Liu's "Draw Angry" web site

Dude, you are my hero, no lie.

And good pun, mark Also, is model sheet those magic keywords, cause whenever I look for rotos, I can't quite hit the mark when doing a search and I use everything from rotoscopes, to blueprints as keywords. Usually that's fine for mech models, but character rotos I find so hard to search for because of the difficult choice of keywords.

EDIT: Just typed it into google and holy muffins batman, those are the magic keywords! That should be like at the very front of every piece of AM literature. "Welcome to AM. Oh and by the way, use the keywords model sheet when looking for rotos on google."

Darkwing · August 4, 2013

Those rotos have made a world of difference!!

largento · August 4, 2013

I think you answered your question, but yes, a model sheet is what people create in animation so that all of the animators have the same reference for what a character looks like. You've probably heard the expression "off model," which refers to a character being drawn wrong.

New version is looking much improved!

Darkwing · August 4, 2013

Aha! Well thank you very much!!

And here's some more progress!

Darkwing · August 5, 2013

Well, this is probably where I'm gonna leave it for tonight, getting kind of sleepy! Progress has been pretty smooth and I've tried a different technique for building the body which so far seems to be working splendidly for me!

EDIT: I lied, this is it for me tonight

Darkwing · August 5, 2013

I've made some more progress. I worked on tweaking his arms and in particular his deltoids. I still need to adjust his neck into shoulder/collarbone area and improve the bevels on the outline of his mask around his chin. I've been working on his bat symbol and have to figure some good way to stitch it into his chest. I must say, distort mode is absolutely wonderful for getting things like the symbol to match the contours of his chest. I have to further tweak his pecks so that they look more natural and so that the bat logo fits better. After all that, it's onto his abs and continuing with his legs! And here's a quick AO render (note you can't see his mask line as mentioned above). I notice in this render some odd lines running down from his neck into his chest. It could just be reversed normals, I'll be checking it out shortly. Anyways, as always, critique is welcome!

Dpendleton77 · August 5, 2013

This is looking good so far. I think Batman's forehead is a bit huge. Other than that this is very nice.

Darkwing · August 5, 2013

Yea I agree, it's not curved right. I followed the drawings but I think it's a case of where a drawing looks good when drawn from two different angles, but put them together in a 3D environment and then there's some incongruence, so I'll probably eyeball it. I must say though, it feels so good to be back modelling in AM. Spent too much time "abroad" with other software as of late

largento · August 5, 2013

Look at the shape of his head from the top view. That should help you see how the forehead should be shaped.

This is rotated back slightly (see how it's sitting in the side view), but notice that the front of the skull isn't as wide as the back.

Dpendleton77 · August 5, 2013

Yea I agree, it's not curved right. I followed the drawings but I think it's a case of where a drawing looks good when drawn from two different angles, but put them together in a 3D environment and then there's some incongruence, so I'll probably eyeball it. I must say though, it feels so good to be back modelling in AM. Spent too much time "abroad" with other software as of late

Welcome back to A:M

Darkwing · August 5, 2013

Look at the shape of his head from the top view. That should help you see how the forehead should be shaped.

This is rotated back slightly (see how it's sitting in the side view), but notice that the front of the skull isn't as wide as the back.

Muchos gracias senor! Is this any better?

Rodney · August 6, 2013

Looking good! (It's good to see you back in action)

Take the following with a large does of 'whatever'... these are just my initial thoughts as they came to me.

The Batman chest symbol

I haven't looked closely at the reference material and you may just be stuck with poor design to work with but to me the bat-emblem looks more like a bird or pterodactyl than a bat. Some minor refinement might be in order here... again, I didn't even look back at the reference material.

The attached image is something of an oversimplification but I wanted to point out those areas of greater concern in the three quarter angle you posted.

There are three areas that look off to me:

The neck and shoulders

The crown of the head

The (mostly upper) jawline.

I believe these may look much better from the front view but in the 3/4 view large areas of bone are either missing or (in the case of the forehead) could be smoothed out considerably. This is a helmet Bruce Wayne is wearing so it should not too tightly conform to his physical anatomy.

Note that my overdrawing leans more toward the animated look rather than graphic novel drawing but it's always easier to add more detail than to take it away. Once the basic outline is in place you can adjust it as necessary.

All this for what it is worth.

Looking very good from this end!

Darkwing · August 6, 2013

I think I just may go with a broader neck/shoulder area. These drawings do have him as a thinner batman and I've already thickened up other areas (abdomen and legs are two big ones I scaled up). As for the bat logo, there are sooooo many variations of it. I went with the ones in the rotos (which wasn't my first choice for the symbol, I was originally thinking something more along the lines of The Dark Knight or Arkham City). But to illustrate just some of the variations:

It's funny you should mention the animated series cause I almost modeled that Batman instead. I was really debating it in my head for the longest time. That's the great thing about a character like batman, there are like an infinite amount of varying designs of him that you could model him over and over again and each time be different. Like even for a "graphic novel batman" each graphic novel pretty much has him drawn a different way. So much choice but it makes it fun to throw in little bits of the differing designs into a single model.

Rodney · August 6, 2013

It's interesting to note that in the sheet of batman symbols you just posted they all have very pronounced spikes in the wings.

The symbol you modeled from is more rounded.

My memory says something similar was used in a character called 'The Patriot' which was meant to portray an eagle.

Edit: I converted the symbols you posted to spline outlines in case you want to use any of those in the future (see attached model file).

BatSymbols_Outlines_only.mdl

Darkwing · August 6, 2013

I think the roundness is due more to my modelling than anything I may yet choose a different symbol, especially since it's been mentioned. The length in the bottom of my logo has been posing problems in matching the contour of the torso anyways, so one not as "tall" would be good.

EDIT: Oh hey, bat symbols! Thanks Rodney!!

Darkwing · August 6, 2013

I broadened the neck some and then made a new symbol (which took longer than the last one for some reason). Anywho, here it is. Also, I haven't touched the legs since the CFA so the knees for example are... not right Also it looks like I messed up the curvature of the neck a little. Will probably work on that tomorrow.

Rodney · August 6, 2013

A definite improvement!

Nicely done.

Gerry · August 6, 2013

Nice work so far Chris! My one comment is that if you're planning on animating him, the chest logo may do better as decals (displacement and color) so you don't have to worry about assigning a bunch of cp's unnecessarily, and so that if you need to tweak it it could be done more easily as decals. Although the inprogress model may not look as cool!

Darkwing · August 7, 2013

Yea Gerry, I'll probably have to go with a decal for the symbol.

Anyways, I managed to get some more work done on him. His utility belt is modelled as are his, well I'm not sure what they're called, the things on his forearms.

I still need to do more work to his jaw and cheeks and still need to tweak the legs. Then all that's left is hands, boots and cape! I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to go about modelling the hands and boots though, they could be a bit of a challenge for me.

Rodney · August 7, 2013

Looking good!

I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to go about modelling the hands

It can help to think of hands as six cylinders connected to a wrist/arm.

Then it is mostly a matter of capping off the ends of the finger cylinders and attaching the bases to the palm cylinder.

There are a few different methodologies to connecting fingers and it's often best to experience the results first hand.

I would suggest running through the following exercise a few times and throwing away the results each time.

The goal being to get a feel for how many splines you need to connect the fingers to the palm.

- Lathe a large cylinder of three sections (Scale this inward on one side either now or later in the exercise)

- Lathe a small cylinder of three or more sections (how many sections this cylinder will aid in how realistic/cartoony your fingers will be)

- Place small cylinder at end of large cylinder and duplicate three more times (these are the fingers)

- Duplicate the small cylinder one more time and move it into place for the thumb

- Connect the fingers together each with a single spline (divide each spline with a new Control Point by hitting the Y key)

- Begin connecting the fingers to the palm (considering where you will be adding 5 point patches

- Cap the ends of the fingers (to allow for detail, i.e. fingernails, only if necessary)

- Move splines around until fully formed and refined.

Alternately (for boots) add additional heel and grip-like soles to the bottom of the feet.

For the boots that can be an even more straightforward approach and there are two primary methods (although there are others).

Method 1: From Front View: Lathe a simple (three section in height) cylinder and deform the top of the cylinder to form a leg and the bottom to form a boot)

Lathing with more cross sections will allow for more detail but it's is often better to lather a simpler cylinder and then subdivide that later via the SplitPatch plugin.

Close in or cap the bottom of the boot and connect the top to the characters leg.

Method 2: From Top View. Outline the profile of the foot and the from Front or Left/Right view extrude this shape upward (at least three times). Scale or Move splines/control points as necessary to refine the shape. Once in a generally acceptable position, it can help to select one cross section and hide the rest. Then from a Top View refine the shape to make it more symmetrical.

The next time I'm in a position to record the screen I'll run through a quick demo of these basic techniques.

Edit: It does occur to me that in the case of modeling boots it is generally better to create them as they would be made in the real world... component by component. Once each piece is created then they are placed together to form the boot. If you want a good starting point using this method there is nicely modeled boot in the A:M Exchange forum you could modify.

Darkwing · August 7, 2013

Thanks Rodney, I'll try those out later tonight.

I have a question though. I started to work on the cape and went to simulate it and it fell off of batman. So I cracked open TAoAM and in that tut (back in v13) there was an ability to add a custom attached group or something, however, in v17 this no longer seems to be the case. So how do I make Batman's cape stay attached around his neck?

Rodney · August 7, 2013

The old cloth (in the older TaoA:M) was not Simcloth so you are dealing with something completely different (a different type of dynamics) there.

You can still use groups to isolate areas (usually origins and place that don't move) and leave dangling splines to help control cloth the flow and movement as well.

Darkwing · August 7, 2013

Ah, thanks, seems to be working now! Of course needs a lot of tweaking!

NancyGormezano · August 7, 2013

Nice modeling!

Darkwing · August 7, 2013

Thanks!

Here's my prelim work on the cape. I'm going to try something a little differently than I have been.

Dpendleton77 · August 7, 2013

Man that is looking mad good.

Darkwing · August 8, 2013

Thanks!

Also, I'm having some problems with my cape. I've increased the density of the mesh which has helped quite a bit, but it's acting like sheet metal more than anything. The problem is that I can't seem to find a good middle ground. I need the fabric to be loose and light and bunch up when it hits the ground instead of bouncing back up. I'm finding if I make it a loose fabric, it does all of this jittering and bouncing when it detects solid objects. Where's the middle ground in here?