Captain Blender...

[Aleideka]

Hi all,

Well i am going trough the book "Introducing character animation with Blender" by Tony Mullen. I have decided to post my progress on Captain Blender on this thread. The character is called "Captain Blender",its an superhero-like cartoon character. The original "Captain Blender" character is copyright from Tony Mullen, the writer of this book. But, the screenshots from "Captain Blender" below are from the model i have made ofcourse. Anyway, i am learning alot these days aboud character modelling, edge loops, N and E poles, etc... Note that the screenshots below are only the mesh for now. There are no renders or textures or particles - like hair - added. This is the next thing i have to do now.

[kbot]

Hey this is impressive. To be honest, I have never gone through the tutorial, and I understand that you may already be more advanced than me *sign*. Look forward to further updates!

[Aleideka]

Well, i am in the middle of the texturing process right now. The reason why i already post this is because i ran into some problems. I hope there someone that can explain me whats happening and why

Ok, problem 1 => The Blender logo on Captain Blenders t-shirt has a strange orange border around it when rendered, but strangely enough not in the render preview. And i have no clue whats the cause of that.. The logo is an imported .png file (witch i found on the cd that came with the book) loaded in the orange color material from his suit. And then its connected to an empty so i can place and scale the logo were/how i want. I have selected "UseAlpha" and "ClipCube" so everything around the logo is gone, but that strange orange border still remains in the render.
Anyway, the first 3 images in the attachements are for this problem.

First, the buttonsetup. Up are the orange suit material buttons and down are the logo texture buttons.
Second, the render preview in blender (Note that there is no orange border around the logo).
And third, the actual render (Here you DO see that strange orange border around the logo).


And now, problem 2 => The face seems to look plastic when i follow all the steps from the book when it comes to applying the "spec" and "hard" buttons in the "map to" tab on the brows texture (This is on page 107 from the book). This is what tony Mullen wrote in the book: "You also want to add a little bit of shine to the eyebrows, witch you can do with mapping some other values with the same texture. Click Spec and Hard to have this texture control those values at well. - ... - The eyebrows look more convincing now that you have differentiated their specularity and hardness from the rest of the face." Anyway, i dont find what i am doing wrong, it seems to me that i have followed all steps in the book closely. But instead of a differentiated speculartity and hardness between the eyebrows and the rest of the face, i have ended up with some sort of plastic face..
Ah and an other little problem is the black spots on the brows, it seems like the normal map isn't comming out like it has supposed to be.

The 4e image shows you "the plastic face" - with the buttonsetup like explained in the book.
And the 5e image shows you the same face but with "spec" and "hard" off. Note that "normal" is still on for the browstexture.

The .blend file is available for those who want to take a closer look to the problem. (Remember that the captain Blender model is copyright from Tony Mullen)

Help appriciated

[bugman_2000]

Hi,

The buttons like Spec and Hard actually have two on states, that represent positive and negative effects of the texture. And actually, I can see that this would not show up in the image in the book, because the lettering turns yellow, which doesn't show up in black and white. If I neglected to mention this in the text, this may be the problem.

The plasticky face shows that things are working correctly though. The problem is that the face is high spec and the eyebrows are not. If you click "Spec" again the letters should turn yellow (as with the Nor value in the picture you posted), and this should give you the correct result. The effect is a bit subtle, so you might need to render from some different angles to see it.

As for the normal maps, it's possible that depending on the way you drew the eyebrows a higher resolution image might be better for this texture. I think the normal mapping seems to be working correctly though.

Finally, regarding the outline on the logo texture, I see what you're talking about, but unfortunately I'm not sure why this is happening. I'll ask around and see if I can find anybody who has seen this problem before. It might have something to do with the material settings, but I don't recall seeing that problem in my own renders. Do the textured models from the book's DVD have the same issue?

T

[Aleideka]

Thanks Bugman_2000 for the explanation.

First off, i have decided to just put the normal button on (on yellow) for the brow texture. Because if i put the "spec" and "hard" buttons on (clicking once or twice on it) the face seems still full of speculars (make it that plastic/wet look again) for me. In fact if i turn the "spec" and "hard" button yellow it seems that the speculars in the face are even more pronounced then before..

Then for that strange orange line around the logo on Captain Blenders t-shirt. It seems indeed that i have the same issue when i render the pre-textured captain Blender from the DVD that came with the book. So, i have still no clue

Wow.. i am starting to see here that the modelling stage is something that suits me far more then the texturing stage. (That remembers me to my childhood time when i was drawing constantly in black and white, but always negected to color the drawings afterwarths because i just hated coloring back then )

But thanks anyway for trying to help me.

[Aleideka]

ok, here i am again with an other texturing problem.

The eyelashes. The eyelashes are just an simple texture with some stripes UV-mapped around the lashes-polygons. Ive used "UseAlpha" in the texturebottons, gave the material a brown color, and used "Alpha" in the "Map To" material buttons. "Ray Transparancy" is on to.

With this setup the lashes are supposed to give nice shadows. But, the shadow looks more like some thick black stripes around the eyes in the render.

Does anyone know whats the cause of this? And how i can make nice lashes shadows?

Help requested please

[Brados33]

he needs a cape!

[Aleideka]

To Brados33: Hehe, did you ever saw "The Incredibles"? Super-hero's with capes die just to easy.

[bugman_2000]

Does anyone know whats the cause of this? And how i can make nice lashes shadows?

Oh, good! A question I can answer! For this, on the Shaders tab of the face material you need to set "TraShadow" to enable that material to take transparent shadows.

[Aleideka]

Aha! Thanks very much Bugman_2000. This was exactly the answer i was looking for.
- Eyelash problem solved -

[Aleideka]

OK, ive started to add the hair, but, it seems that the whole particle system like it is described it the book isn't accurate anymore. Ive started to read some of the documentation on Blender.org aboud particles and especially hair and fur, and so i came to the result from the images below.

Now i have a question, the book says that i have to style the hair trough bezier curves, but isn't it simpler to style the hair in particle mode nowadays?

Further, i have posted the buttonssetup from the particle system i have used till now, if anyone has any suggestions on how to make the hair better looking please tell it

Note that the hair is still the standard unstyled particle system.

Help requested please.

[skateboardkid]

http://www.blender.org/development/r...-and-softbody/

Brushing hair is covered here.. as well as most other techniques , kinda vague but it should get you in the right direction, bezier curves are outdated method I believe.

[Seraph]

He's looking good! nice particle systems in the hair.

[nevbms]

HI! Aleideka,I think that what you are looking for is PEP(Particles Edit Properties).

1.create your Hair particle system.
2.give it an initial velocity in Normal direction.
3.click on Set Editable.(when you click on set editable,you will not be able to change many of the basic particle system value,if for any reason you want to go back,and change values you will need to click on Free Edit,and doing so will delete all the changes made in Particle Edit mode)
4.select Particle mode in the dropdown-box in the windowheader of the 3D window.
5. select Point Select Mode in the windowheader of the 3D window.(you will find it under the vertice button in the 3D view WindowHeader)
6.select Particle Mode in the Mode dropdown-box in the windowheader of the 3D window.
7.press the N key in the 3D window view.(now the PEP floating panel appears,you can now comb,cut ,grow,shorten,puff,and many other features.Is like going to the barber shop.LOL).


P.S. By the way, Great Work!. Check out Bounce,Tumble,and Splash! & Mastering Blender also by Tony Mullen(Thank's! bugman_2000 for your most educational books.),and visit this link http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Do.../Particle_Mode

[bugman_2000]

Hi,

Yeah, the particle system has completely changed. The new particle system is described in depth in my second book, "Bounce, Tumble, and Splash! Simulating the Physical World in Blender."

And guess what, you're in luck, because it happens that the chapter on hair is being offered on Amazon as a free sample download. Click on the "sample chapter" link in my sig and scroll down to the bottom of that screen at Amazon to download the file.

T

[Aleideka]

Thanks all for the reply's

This is again lots of information to dive into today

[Aleideka]

Ok, the texturing is done and the hair particles system is added. I know the hair can still be improved, but i am gonna leave it like this with this character. Time to move on to the rigging part.

[bugman_2000]

Word to the wise:

http://www.sybex.com/WileyCDA/SybexT...Cd-errata.html

[Aleideka]

OK, it took a while. But i ran into a little problem again, now with the captain Blender rigging part.

The problem occured when i tried to make an action constraint on the hand. First, I have made the action in the actioneditor. Start on frame 1, restposition on frame 11 and end on frame 21 (image 5). Then i have started to place an actionconstraint on each bone in the thumb (image 4). The target of that actionconstraint is the Fingerthumb.L bone floting above the hand (image1). So when i move that Fingerthumb.L bone from 90 till -90 on the Z axis, the actual 3 thumb-bones in the hand should do the animation.

Thats the problem, the bones doesn't move when i try to rotate the Fingerthumb.L on the Z-axis (image 2), but when i slightly rotate the 3D view and then rotate that bone, the action does happen (image3). What seems very strange to me since it should only happen when i rotate on the Z-axis.

As far as i see i have done everything right.

Ah, just want to say that i had no problems with creating the action constraints on the feets

Help appriciated.