I am rather new to blender (wonder how long I’ll keep on saying this… :p) but now I modeled my first character in Blender.
It’s the Cube Granny.
Here we go:
C&C are very welcome!
What “granny items” could I add? Don’t wanna add any clothes though, because I want to keep it rather simple.
I am also planing on adding an armature soon, so Cube Granny can walk down the street with her trolly. Hope I have enough patience.
Also I am wondering about the SSS. I am using SSS for the first time, so I am not very experiened in it.
During the rendering process I see some “SSS map” (or however it is called). Mine seems to have some wierd glitches, parts which are brighter or darker then supposed to be (see picture).
I have no idea how to fix the SSS stuff, but I think its a great character, the only thing I would change would be the luggage… Grannys seem to always have hand bags with things like Kleenex and bandaids in them… and in a few rare cases surprisingly large guns.
Are you going to animate her?
@neilbraun: Where I come from (Germany) grannies always seem to have these weird trolleys dragging behind them, when they go shopping. And when they come back from their shopping trip, then there’s usually a leek sticking out of it, or something like that.
Yes, I’m planning to animate her.
@hessiess & phoenix123: I have tried that. But it didn’t change anything. Strange. Anyway, now that I played a bit more with her I think she looks better without SSS, because then you can see here proportions more clearly and with more contrast. Unless there is a way to achieve some very sublte SSS. Does anybody know?
@iamthwee: Great character! Cannot render her in Indigo, because I am working on a Mac. But I agree that I should skip the SSS, found out that looks better somehow.
I have made some progress and gave my granny an amature. Since I am new to this I followed the instructions from “The Essential Blender”, which worked out quite good, I had to tweak the settings of course in some places.
This is how the amature looks at the moment, of course I still have to add something for the mouth and I have to rig the hands (I better look for a good tutorial for that, before I mess things up).
This is how the amature looks at the moment:
I even skinned her already. First I tried to follow the envelope method, but then figured out quickly, that this doesn’t really work. So I started over again and weight painted the whole thing. First time I ever weight painted. A bit confusing in the beginning, but once you figure it out, it is a really powerful technique!
Well, I would love to, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work for PPC macs yet. I’ve tried to make a build myself, but there were a lot of errors in it and the developers told me to wait for the RC3.
Ok, I have played with my character a bit more, I put her on my desk, following a tutorial from this site on how to combine CG with real photographs.
Here is a still of the result:
What do you guys think?
Would be really great to here comments, also on the walkcycle, because that needs stille a lot of improvement.
The animation of cube granny walking over the table can be found here:
I added some grain (to make it look like it was taped with a camcorder on a tripod) in After Effects, did some color correction and added some (rather crappy) sound.
Hah! Thats pretty sick but, shes too small. I’d make her bigger and have her sit on the side of your laptop. Just a thought. The animation is lovable though.
Looks great, especially the animation
Where exaclty did you find the combine-cg-and-reality tutorial? I’d like to do that when my model is ready, but have not found a good tutorial yet, and this one seems to be pretty good!
Borgleader: Thanks for the comment, it’s a good idea. Since I just started 3D-Animation it will not be so easy for me, at the moment I have just animated the walkcycle. But I will work on it and I will see if I can do it. Also I would have to match my modeled scene much more properly with the picture, if she also interacts with the laptop.
Glad you like the animation.
Sven: Thank you. You can find the tutorial in this thread. Watch out, the working download link is some posts down.
I guess I probably have to make a front and side view render which is more detailed of the walkcycle so you anyone can comment on it, not sure how well you can judge it by these two animations right now.
What I want to do next:
Rig the hands, the mouth and the eyebrows. Do some more animation. Put her into some moving live footage (need to investigate a bit more into Icarus and watch Levy’s tutorial about it again). And also put her into some proper 3D scene.
I might have been a little short in my last message, but I just wanted to say that for being new to blender, it (modelling + animation) looks great. Have you used other 3d-programs before?
actually now I am not really sure anymore if I still would consider myself “new to blender”, because I have also made quite some progress with Blender since I opened this thread. I guess I should not really say that anymore.
But with the animation I actually mostly followed the instruction from “Essential Blender” as well as with the rigging. Just the modelling and skinning were done completely on my own without the help of a tutorial.
WOHA! I didn’t read the caption - and thought you had made a real-life cube granny! I was wondering how you made something so small… Great compositing there - you really fooled me there… (though i am abit tired :p)
