been a while since i got down and dirty on a project, so since i’ve actually got one rolling, i figured i might as well show off what i’ve got, and see what you guys think.
pete is the character i’m modeling here; originally he started out as a piranha, then i decided to change him to a perch, as a piranha won’t really go with the story i have in mind. going with a cel-shaded look this time, i found a great node tutorial for it HERE, check it out!
here’s some renders:
Heeeyy! Thats a nice looking fish! I’ve always wanted to do a bit of cell shading myself, so thanks a lot for the tutorial. I’ll file it away in my ‘To Do’ cabinet. Sorry I can’t offer any advice. in my opinion, it looks great!
+1 to all that has been said by Adamstox.
I’ll have a look to the node tut, I like nodes 
I can’t do any better, so, sorry, I can’t give advises.
Only I can say that the environment is little empty, but it’s the beginning, so, it’s not usefull hahaha.
I’ll wait for your updates.
totally looks like that new prince of persia game…
cool!
well, i wanted to use some “mist” in here, to give it the underwater cloudy effect, so i had to turn off the edges, as it outlined the stuff even if it was enshrouded in the mist. so went back to the original SSS versions, and here’s what i’ve got. i know the background is still a bit empty, but i’ve got my two main characters out of the way, i can focus on environment now. probly throw in some rocks and seaweed, and then maybe an old tree or driftwood or something.
EDIT: went ahead and did the environmental stuff i mentioned. i think i might need to play with the lights a little more; i don’t like the shadow of the hookline there on the ground…
Pretty good previe so far. since you got away from the toon shading perhaps the scale details should go back in?
JF
scales are still on there, they’re just a more subtle now that i’m using the SSS, it tends to blur things together a little bit.
anyways, adjusted the lighting a bit, and played with some brightness/contrast controls in the nodes. here’s what i came up with.
Finally…More of your work! The fish’s look great dude!
I agree with Adamstox about the scale detail going back on the fish.
The plants are too straight, tey should have more curly shape. The background is very empty - perhaps you should add a small fish school? Maybe a few air-bubbles would make the scene more interesting? Crab walking below the fish? A few shells maybe? It looks fine so far but still needs some improvements (including very simple and not really interesting textures).
thanks for the crit, roz :). however, i’m wanting the viewer to focus on the fish characters, so the background doesn’t need to be filled up; i just want to give the impression that it’s underwater. however, i might go ahead and throw some air bubbles in there (particle emitter?) and a few shells, as you suggested.
anyways, after playing with different voices for the two, i came up with a sloppy-fat guy sounding voice for pete, so i edited his mesh to be a little “fatter.” here’s what the scene looks like now, and HERE’s a test animation.
tossed the “sloppy-fat guy” voice, and went with more of the original idea (yeah i know, i’m a flip-flopper 
)
went to start rendering my clip, and a strange problem occured. the second fish’s (bob) SSS shader makes him turn completely black on a few of the frames. anyone know the cause for this? check it out: http://www.vimeo.com/5454968
It looks good, but the water is so clear that it feels like they are floating in air in spite of the background. Maybe you could have some bubbles and particles floating around in front of the fish too.
Actually I don’t think you need to fill up the background any. But adding caustic effects would make a difference to the underwater feel. What I mean is the light refractions you see underwater as an example - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Barracuda,_corals,sea_urchin_and_Caustic(optics)_in_Kona,_Hawaii.jpg
Hey cool project! Too bad you had to loose the toon edges though.
I tried out the toon shader node set up, it’s interesting but I still don’t have a really good grasp of nodes yet. I did notice that in the render setup you can limit which layers receive edge outlining. I thought it might work for you if you set your main characters in a different layer, that way you could get it to leave the background alone. Just a thought.
yeah, going back to cel-shaded would cure my SSS blues…
so i tried a few different techniques. here in the first one, it’s purely toon-shaded with no edges. second one has the edges only on the fish layer. the third has sort of a gradual fadeout of the edge, the further you get from the camera. which looks best?
looking over them… i think i kind of like the no-edges look the best… sort of reminds me of the artwork in some of the anime’s i’ve seen
Have you considered using Freestyle?
I love the distance-fade edges: It really adds pop to different depth levels of the image.
Toon shading tends to make an image look kind-of like a flat layer (as it should), like pieces of paper cut out and arranged in the image.
The edges on the fish only makes them seem like a seperate ‘layer’ of flat images posted over the background.
But the depth edges? That makes it seem like a dozen or more individual 2D layers are being overlayed over each-other, and that’s just plain cool.
In that above post (#16) I like the one with no edges as well. Looks like really great work. Is this a personal project or one for work/client?
@mazui: no, i haven’t heard too much about that. i like to do as much as i can with blender internal, but maybe i’ll take a look at that.
@okagestarr: thanks 
it took me quite a while playing with the nodes to get that look. heh, i don’t even know if i could duplicated it now, i did so much trial and error work
@linxpimp: yeah, it’s a personal project. sort of a “last hurrah” before i turn my brain over to learning the industry standard that is maya. i’d like to stay in blender, it does everything i need it to do, but if i want to do 3D animation professionally, i’ll need to learn maya 
