WIP - Silent Hill

[RowanAmeth]

Hi, this is my first post here and I thought it would be a good idea to kick things off with my idea for a project. Anyone who is familiar with the Silent Hill game series would probably get a kick out of this.

 

A while back, I played a Silent Hill RPG with a few friends. Horror generally doesn't translate to a TTRPG very well, but our GM did a spectacular job scaring the crap out of us on a regular basis. And now that the game is over (at least for the time being), I had an idea to put together a series of short animated films based on our adventures. So far I have very little work done, other than a VERY low-quality model with simple materials and boning done, but the model's quality is low enough that it even makes the old Quake 1 models look like masterpieces. It's a slow process, but I figure I'll eventually get some fairly good models together (if I could reliably import the models I have from Poser 4 into A:M, I'd be in business, but for whatever reason, A:M doesn't like importing them).

 

I doubt I'll have anything to show y'all any time soon, but once I do, I'll try to post some updates on the project. Any suggestions on making realistic human models in A:M, or ways to import high-quality models (Wings3D doesn't like converting the high-quality Poser models either), would be greatly appreciated.

 

Wish me luck!

[nimblepix]

Good luck Rowan!

[heyvern]

Hee hee...

 

Great idea!

 

I was going to animate a really good game of Ker-Plunk I played last year.... just not the same thing though is it?

 

Forget about Poser... been there... done that...

I've said this before, you won't get usable Poser figures into AM. It is like Apollo 13 when they needed to convert those air filters... you might be able to do it with the right tools but all that duct tape just looks awful.

 

Realistic models.... hmm... the next AM update is going to have a bunch of pretty realistic humans on it. They are rigged and everything!

 

Another option would be to use some of the characters on the current disk. When I first started using AM I used Tarzan and Jane in horrible scientific gene modification experiments...

 

... I learned a lot playing with those files...

 

Consider using Poser to create rotoscope images for tracing in AM. That is the best use for it in my opinion.

 

 

Vernon "!" Zehr

[RowanAmeth]

thanks for the suggestions! Yeah, I've given up importing Poser models as a lost cause. It'd be nice, but the conversion process just makes it look like crap no matter what I do. Rotoscoping might be a good idea, but I tend to do better free-form (though some reference images to look back at for ideas might be a good idea, I can sketch those by hand)

 

 

Inspiration hit me a few hours ago and I've been working since then. I have a fairly good model of a head down, I'm thinking of using that for the character I based off of myself (the character, unlike me, is a recovering drug addict, so he's emaciated and really worn-out looking). Imagine very pale skin, shoulder-length hair, all black clothes, and a big honkin' shovel on his back.

 

I started with just the basic head shape, in a vertical cross-section, then extruded the heck out of the thing. No eyes, nose, mouth or ears to start with, just the head. Then I modeled an eye socket seperately, and with some rather inventive uses of hooks, I attached it to the face and got all the broken patches working again. Rinse, repeat with the other eye, then used a similar method for the nose and mouth, and that's where I am now. Still fiddling with the basic face geometry, to make the cheekbones stand out more and give it a sunken look. I still need eyeballs, eyelashes, eyebrows, teeth, ears and hair, then I can start working on the rest of the model. I figure once it's done, all the little mistakes I made will either be covered up or too miniscule to notice.

 

I'm thinking of doing the hair as an unconnected mesh (to avoid the splines curving in all sorts of cruel and unusual ways) and applying it as a spring system to get it to move a bit more realistically. I'm not going for photo-real here, just close enough to make it look good.

 

Once I finish up some of the more gruesome details, I'll render a quick image and post here so y'all can see what I'm doing. This is my very first A:M project, so don't expect anything breathtaking. I just need a means to tell a story, and A:M seems to be the best medium for such a task.

[Zaryin]

I loved playing the SIlent Hill games. Never thought of making into an RPG though. THe idea of the RPG and the shorts sounds great to me. It will be interesting to see if you can get the feel of those games into a short.

[RowanAmeth]

Update! I have a head. It's not completely finished yet, I want to add facial hair and a few other things, but it looks good in toon render mode (which is what I'll be using for the shorts) and is designed for animation. The eyes are seperate meshes, so they can be moved easily for the character to look around. I'll likely steal hands from one of the characters that A:M came with, to avoid the grief of modelling them myself.

 

But that's a while from now. I'm gonna try to attach the image of the head into this post, if I can figure out the forum's system. If it attaches right, you can see that there's still a bit of work to be done. Questions, comments and constructive criticism are all appreciated.

[RowanAmeth]

Another update! I've worked long into the night and have all but the arms and a few accessories done. I'm going for a simplistic look, hence the toon shading. I might add some wrinkles to the pants, and laces to the boots, but that's still up in the air as to whether that'll look too out of place. Here's the latest test render (at an awkward angle, unfortunately, he's taller than he looks)

[Zaryin]

I like the clothes, the face, but I'm not that big on the mopy hair. I just think there's too much it. But that is only opinion, and the hair might fit the rest of the style you are going for. Let's see s'more!

[RowanAmeth]

There'll be more soon enough! I'll have the model done sometime tomorrow, likely, as I have a meeting to go to tonight that could run to some obscene hours (I'm a member of the nearby University's Renaissance Club as an associate). I am fairly nocturnal, so even if I don't get back home until 2am, that'll still be about 4 hours of work time before I'm too tired to stay up.

 

The hair is intentional, this is like a cartoony Silent Hill, using the sparse, toon figures to contrast the dark, creepy Silent Hill story. I figure I'll likely finish the arms tonight, then work on some of the accessories, like the straps going across his chest, and the big shovel on his back (it's his standard weapon, the Justice Shovel, the edge of it is sharpened, it works like an axe). Tomorrow I'll work on boning and facial rigging, I'll hopefully get that done before too late tomorrow. I'm debating whether I should use this model as a template for the others, or start from scratch each time. At a rate of 3-4 days per model, I'll be done modelling sometime around new year's.

 

The thing I'm worried about, though, is rendering. a single frame in toon mode takes about 30-40 seconds, with no other objects in view. I figured at 30 seconds per frame, and 30 frames per second for the animation, a 2 second animation would take an hour to render. I suppose I could find some ways to cut that down a bit, but if I want to render a feature-length movie, that's *quick mental math* 150 days of render time. Not that I will be rendering anything NEARLY that long, and I'll not be rendering it all in one shot, but it's a concern anyway. I suppose the intelligent answer to that would be to go out and get or build a better computer than this 4 year old laptop, but I can't quite afford that right now. Oh well, 5 minutes of animation would only take 6 1/4 days on my rig.

 

Anyway, I have some time before the meeting, so I think I'm gonna work a bit on the model. See y'all!