The skin is UV-ed and there is a colour map on there, but it is very subtle change at the moment. About 6-8 posts back is a render with way too much colour variation - looks like a bad clown makeup job. I’m trying to find some sort of a balance, and I think the more uniform end of the scale seems to look more polished. Still want to have more pinks and a bit of yellow around the face (particularly mouth) and perhaps deep red around the eye sockets. I havent done anything to the actual painted texture map in a while, just been playing with overall hues, amount of light passing through etc. Thats my next step however, fixing seams and tweaking colour in parts.
The eyes do have some red veins when viewed up close, but you’re right, he could go for far more evil. Current rendered turnaround still coming.
Its 5mb and res of 600x1000, so a bit bigger than the last ones. (200 frames.) Once again the shadows go a bit wierd when the light moves, mainly on the tentacles. I also had the shadow map samples turned down a bit because it was a test render, and I’ve since changed a setting on the toon shader. Mainly I still think the whole random shadow tentacle thing is because there is 3 spotlights moving around 40 tentacles all casting shadows…
The camera rotate 90deg while the lights do a full 360 to show how the light passes through. Currently rendering out a 360 spin of the head with the lights still and the shadow sampling up a bit.
Comments as always, havent changed any colour stuff since the last still images though, video mainly to show light passing through the model I guess. Perhaps I should try a vid with just 1 lamp as well. Thoughts?
Greetings,
If you already know how to do this, then thats great, but seeing as I was so politely asked, attached are links to two blends and corresponding rendered quicktime files.
Ask a quick run-through…
Rotating camera around a model:
created a bezier curve
set the curve DefResolU: to max, ie 1024 - this makes sure rotation is smooth
ShiftP the camera to the curve and select “Follow Path”. The default path length is 100 frames, either set this to match your animation render length or vice versa.
I set the camera to be looking dead on at the models front to start, but it will work at an angle if desired, you model might shift from central focus depending on how you set it up
IMPORTANT - put the bezier circle on a layer you aren’t rendering out, ie layer 2 so that it doesnt cut your model in half when rendered!2. Rotating Multiple Lights:
created a cube at the models center and placed it on layer 2
parented the lights to it
rotated the cube 360degrees over the course of 100 frames. a keyframe on frame one and matcing one on the last frame.
If someone already wrote a similar or better tutorial, I didnt know about it. Hope this was useful. Dont worry about the lights or material though, there are already many many tutorials for those. I’ll be releasing some form of Davy Jones in .blend form later anyway.
Ben.
Ah finally figured out why that sample blend file you posted wasn’t working when I pressed render animation.
That’s because you set the output path to the g: drive something I don’t have .
Also I can’t really understand how you snapped the camera to follow the bezier circle in layer two.
Can you post a better explanation with picures in a step by step style.
Cheers.
Wait I’ve got it, I think you meant ctrl P to snap the camera to the bezier circle!
One last thing how do I get the camera to be absolutely centered?
Also I don’t suppose you have any links to a good uv mapping tutorial? The way you’ve uv mapped DavyJones is amazing.
Oh and I know you said you used sharp construct to model the hat, but did u use it for the face and tentacles?
Cheers
Yeah, I was wondering what would happen if people rendered without a g:\
Anyway, the way I got it dead on centered was by making a new camera and new cube and new bezier circle in a new file, so the cursor was centered anyway. The way to center the cursor that I know of is to left click it as close to the center of the grid as possible and ShiftS snap selecting “Cursor->Grid”.
Also, if you made a model and moved it, you can send it back to the center using AltG. Removing rotation is done with AltR, and AltS to clear resizing. You may need to re-keyframe the objects there.
As for the UV mapping, in reality it’s not actually done all that neatly, its just that most of the seams are out of the camera’s focus and the colours are close, but I still need to fix a few parts. I unwrapped the tentacles AFTER I modelled them into curvy shapes which was a major mistake as the auto unwrapping made the sides all disproportionate. I should have unwrapped the ‘default’ tentacle when it was a cylinder and then the coordinates would all be nice and easy when copied to each new tentactle, but as always I’ll chalk it up to the learning process. People will be able to see what I mean when I finally post the blend and the texture (which I’ll also have to shrink due to size.)
The face and tentacles were modelled in blender, then the face only was taken into SC and redetailed. There is extra detail in the texture though to get the ‘scaly’ bits, the bumps on the face are mainly muscle groups and wrinkle/folds around the eyes.
I wont go into more detail here, but like I said earlier in the thread, if I get enough people asking, I’ll put together a sort of ‘what I tried and what I learnt’ retrospective sort of thing, as opposed to a direct ‘make your own squidman’ tutorial. Would be a nice thing to chuck on a website once I actually make one I guess…
The unwrapping tut in the documentation back from 2.34 contains basically all the tricks I have up my sleeve plus one or two I keep forgetting to use. I think all the hotkeys are still relevant. Davy is just a larger model than Suzanne, but the concepts are exactly the same.
What about 2.42 and the archimap unwrap script? Is that any good.
Also is there anyway you can actually paint texture onto your 3d object. I know you paint on 2d faces but can you do it for 3d?
I did two semesters in Maya at Uni, so I can do a reasonable amount of basic gruntwork, and z-brush I’d love to get into at some stage. Trick is to be able to afford them both, which isn’t an option right now… I dont know if I want Maya just for home use either. I’m aware that commercially I’ll be working in Max/Maya/etc, but I have to say I am a big fan of Blender’s workflow, so I’ll continue to use it in for private work for a long time to come. Maya’s interface was a bit counter-intuitive after having first learnt 3D in Max, but Blender’s takes some getting used to when starting out too. I might even end up at a company using their own software and then have to learn that, which I dont mind either. At the end of the day, 3D is 3D to a fair extent.
P.S. I would love to work on Project Orange 2 if it exists…
Well, this rendered turnaround took a lot longer than expected, but now I know exactly what seams I need to repaint. As far as I can tell, it should all be ok except the few short side tentacles near the face. After that, its finishing the barnacles on the hat and finished final render time!! Any final thoughts/suggestions before then? (i.e does he still appear heaps “green” on peoples monitors?)
Also, if I were to post the .blend (modified for the internet) and textures, I guess here in this thread would be the best place for that sort of thing?
The turnaround is a sizeable 600x1000 pixels so I could get a good critical eye over the smaller details and you guys can do the same. I made 2 versions for size constraints:
Attached to this post is also a large render of just the face, you’ll be able to see here that my uv mapping isnt that awesome joining the main tentacles at the front, but that still blends in at a little bit of a distance. I’ll get it right on my next character…
Your work is freakin’ awesome!
I did notice the UV seam. The material settings for the the tentacles seem to have less specularity, they look much dryer than the main part of the head, almost as if there’s a material missing altogether. the tentacles look much more rough as well.
Keep up the great work, this thing is giving me the shivers! :0)
Happy Blending and happy New Year!
I would LOVE to see this.
You have done an amazing job m8.
My only crit. would be that in the latest render the chin and nose(?)look really slimey and the top of the head and tentacles looks quite dry.
Great work though!
I have alot of practice to do…lol
Soter - I think the reason for the ‘dryness’ is that the UV unwrap gets all disproportionate on parts of the tentacles, but only enough that its a problem really close up (I think). The dryness/lack of specularity is because the bump map of the scales gets all small near the join. It is the exact same material on tentacles as on the head.
metalliandy - I think a similar thing happened with mapping on the chin.
The still image I posted was a large res one to show he’s not that perfect up close… The mapping is stuff that would take a while to go back and change (because of the ridiculous high poly strain on memory, etc) for a minimal fix up. If it was a professional work I would definately go at it, but its a personal learning exercise so I cant be bothered seeing as it’s not really noticeable in the full turnaround video. Also the main light is aimed almost directly at the nose/mouth, because that and the skinny ends of tentacles seemed to be where most of the SSS was on the original ILM character.
Junkie - Cheers, I knew there had to be a simpler way. I’m just used to moving the camera around a scene instead of models in front of the camera. Both work.
Finally, it seems I will write up a short retrospective ‘thing’ as thanks to everyone who’s posted stuff and hopefully some sort of learning resource for working with blender and sharp construct.
No, this project is not dead, in fact the final video is rendering now, with the camera showing off the head from a few different angles. Will definately post a link to a high quality DVD res vid and another more bandwidth-conscious version. I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been tidying up the rest of the content for the demo reel that Davy is a part in. He’s the last one to render out as well, so I can post a link to that too. It’s all done in blender except one mech-warrior-thing that I did in Maya. (The other things being a piece of pirate jewellery for a CAD prototyping project, the Delorian Time Machine from BTTFuture and General Grievious from Star Wars.) Incidentally, I guess the “Finished Work” section would be the most appropriate section for posting something like a reel and getting comments?
Davy’s seams all now match up (finally!), his hat is much more interesting to look at and there is a bit of slime hanging off of the back. I’m rendering out the sss in a different run of .tga files so I can tweak them at the end instead of persisting with nodes. I tweak stuff a lot, being part of the learning process and all, so i figured this was going to be the more time efficient option in case I changed my mind after the renders were done…
Also I haven’t forgot about releasing the .blend file and a ‘what worked and what didnt’ sort of a document, but that will be a little while yet because I havent written it yet or reworked the blend for the internet. It’s 190mb at the moment, but I have ideas for trimming that back a lot.
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Any final thoughts/suggestions before then? (i.e does he still appear heaps “green” on peoples monitors?)
