Phew, this has taken up most of my day. I havn’t been modeling for well over two months and just started again last week.
Today though I’ve really been working hard and improving not only the model but also the file in general (thanks again for all who helped in answering my questions )
The character’s name is Gaxter. He’s loosly based off of Daxter from the Jak and Daxter series. (it was around a year or two when I bought the game, yeah, REALLY late in buying it)
He’s more based off of my 2D character that I should really draw more of called Genus (who was again based slightly off of another videogame character of a similer name, well, not really. It so happaned the hair syle was similer so I sorta gave the same name too)
So it’s an anthropomorphic “Racoon Ottsel”… of sorts…
So the attachment is a picture of 5 views with 3 different versions of Gaxter. The last one, the “dress” version is actually something I’m working on to understand softbodies better and learn how to make clothes fold while animating. It just so happans that the tutorial (which is from this forum http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=97413 ) is also done with a dress. So Gaxter just has to suffer!
I’ve got to finish weight painting the fingers (which I was wondering if there is some way to copy the weight from one set of bones on the finger, to another)
And I’ve got to Shape key it so gaxter can talk.
Then I have to learn the softbody thing, make some clothes for him, THEN I can start doing some cool animations to further my animating skills!
Well that’s about it, if any one can give there input to maybe make my job easier or just any plane old input be it constructive or flame. Any comment is appriciated!
O and if you want to see a bigger version, or other art stuff, both 3D and 2D, then visit my deviantart site!
Sorry about that! I’ve now uploaded a few images with wires.
(There all the subsurfed version so the wire that shows is not actually the vert count, it’s about half that. I don’t know how to show the original mesh subsurfed with a wire and without showing the subsurfed created lines.)
(I’ve also got renders, I’ll post them in another reply since the limits 6)
I’ve been working on this all day and put on some better hair! (thanks to the inprogress Joan of Arc thread which had an AMAZING .blend file with alot of stuff to learn from!)
I also have the model fully possible but it still needs some work, I’ll upload picture of problem areas later. Also some stuff about IK chaining.
If any one can help in making some suggestions on anything (like the hair, materials, mesh, etc) that would be great!
use something like imageshack for that.
Comments:
Dont take this as offence, but you have a lot of detail that is not needed, more precisely, it kinda disrupts the form of the character here and there.
The shape in general seems a little odd and out of balance, do you have any concept sketches for him?
I’d make the hips a little wider, the legs stronger/thicker, make the tail a little lighter, bring the torso down a tad and to the front so the spine flows into the tail more, and I’d bring the eyes down and more to the center of the head.
Those are some good points! And don’t worry, I don’t take anything as offensive! Cus me out and say that it was the worse model in history, I wouldn’t care
The detail, yes, even I thought so. I even got rid of this modeled in black stripe that was messing up the mouth region and making it hard to use shape keys. (figured I could UV it) probably should do that with the mask too. But what other details do you mean?
I was wondering about the spine thing, I always did think that maybe he was a bit off in balance and flow. As for thickening the legs, I always thought it would be bad porportions with the skinnier torso, but it’s worth a try.
As for the concept sketch, I made it last year and I’m not the best at drawing things at different angles in the same porportions and I ended up making it slightly different from the drawing.
First two attachments are my first drawings of genus (in the bottom three) turned into an ottsel, named Gaxter (the lamp as you can see is precurser and the pose in the second was hand drawn using daxter’s pose) The third is the actual concept sketch and the last three are probably the only 3 drawings I ever done with Genus, havn’t drawn him mutch and probably should.
I didn’t intend Gaxter to end up as an anthropomorphic ottsel, I wanted it to be more shaped, well like an actual sized ottsel like in the first two pictures. Hmm, I’m just wonder if I start all over again and try for that I might end up with having to redo everything, including weight painting and such… But then again I did start Gaxter back when I practically only had it for about a month or two so maybe by now it’ll go alot faster modeling it (and probably better) than last time! (but I don’t want to give up on this model either…)
I’ve done some much needed touch ups to not only lower the polygon count that was messing up the mesh, but also to make it look better and a tad closer to the sketch I began with (I might just go from here and try to make it match exactly by morphing this version, the one I intended was not supposed to be anthro.)
Thanks to ~FreakyDude for the advice!
The wires are: Front view of Head, Side view of Head, Front view of Torso, Side view of Torso, Front view of Legs, Side view of Legs. (six more in the next reply)
Here are 6 more wire frames to better show my progress.
They are: Front View, Side View, View of Feet from Above, View of Feet from Bellow, Render of the front with hair, Render of the Side with hair.
this is a LOT better. if you like though, you could still fiddle with the proportions a little.
I know it’s not daxter, or whatever that rodents name was, but maybe if you tried to match his silhouette and then try to adjust it from there.
Actually, just give him a little more of a belly that flows from the crotch to the ribcage and it’l look better allready.
VERY good progress man… I thought i’d take forever to clean that mesh up…
Thanks for the complements FreakyDude and LowPoly! Really appriciate it
I might try that, using the silhouette (and yes his name is daxter )
Well, what I ended up having to do was cut out 2 vertical rows of vertices and a few horizontel, I then connected them all again. (most of them were middle) I ended up having to cut my mesh in half twice, edit it, and use the mirror modifier. I then precedid to work on a few of the other details like ripping off his mask and remaking it, then the feet which were REALLY messed up with verts. (did a bunch of merging) and as for all the triangles, I used I method I devoloped (don’t know if someone already has) called Triangle to Triangle (basically it’s moving the triangle around in the mesh like a puzzle game till you get it near another triangle there by canceling it out) It does move the flow of the mesh around but if another triangle is near enough (say from the eyes to the back of the ear) then it shouldn’t be to much of a problem.
It took me a good 2 or so hours off and on. And still SOOO much to do. Once I do get the final mesh down I’ll have to work on weights, materials, shapekeys, fur etc. (I can’t wait for the peach open movie! I already pre ordered it and apparantly it will tell how they made fur!)
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and keep going!
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