Hello all, just wanted to create a thread to track my progress on this project.
This will be my first serious animation, and I’m expecting to learn a lot of new things in order to see it come to life! I wanted to make a small animation, but to attempt a fairly high production quality. Since I’m fairly inexperienced with Blender, I wanted to avoid a lot of detailed character animation, and certainly wanted to avoid syncing facial animations to dialogue. The simplest way for me to achieve this goal is by creating the short in the format of a movie trailer. I will be creating a 90 second trailer with music, sfx, and a voiceover.
The concept for the trailer is still a little loose, but essentially it is about the dawn of the age of vikings, and the beginning of their raids on the coast of Britain. Because of the format of the trailer, I should be able to do quick cuts from shot to shot, thereby eliminating any drawn out scenes.
I had started work on some weapons for this project (thread here), but decided that I needed a new thread to properly reflect the actual goal of the project.
I will be posting various work as I plan and make progress. Comments and advice are always welcome!
here’s a first take on the logo. I’m planning on using the logo in a title animation at the beginning of the trailer, but this is just a cutout to show the shape
Wanted to start thinking about characters and clothing, etc. Setup a male mesh from Makehuman and did a paintover in Photoshop. Characters are the viking cheiftain (jarl) and a lower ranking karl, with the appropriate differences in clothing. Some of the details are from research, some I just took some creative license with. I think it turned out well, certainly well enough to establish the look of the character before beginning modelling in Blender.
just trying out the grass tutorial from BlenderGuru.com. Had some issues with the black ground showing through in patches, so I duplicated the grass mesh and spun in 90 degress. This covered the holes, but makes the grass look likes it’s woven, loses the realism. Otherwise felt good about the test scene.
@Volume - test scene isn’t anywhere in particular, just testing out the grass rendering process, obviously the grass in the scenes will be less green and probably longer, depending on the location (either Norway for the Viking village, or Scotland for the scene of the monastary attacks). as well it was just a nice scene to gather models as I work on them!
@roelant2 - thanks for the comments, the logo was designed in Illustrator and brought into Photoshop and cut out of a layer. Bevel done with layer effect and the red behind is just a stock fire photo. I don’t have the logo finished modeling in blender, so I didn’t have anything rendered to show the form of the logo. I’m intending to create a 3D version of the logo and have the camera do a “travel around” at close range and then pan out to see the full logo. Also, the wood on the weapons is a first stab at the textures. I’m definitely going for more photorealistic than cartoon, so any suggestions for better texturing is welcome. Thanks!
Pretty good going there mate you’re definitely more experienced than me in blender 3D! good job :eek: the grass looks alright to me in my opinion much better than i could do since i don’t even know how to make grass yet! but what i suggest is use as many reference pictures as possible when you make models especially of historic etc weapons or armors etc.
I’ll be checking this topic everyday since i am pretty fascinated with Vikings and would like to give as much help as possible with my limited knowledge.
Also i have started working on a Viking shield myself here’s some screens of it.
And here is my Viking Sword that you saw in the other topic if you want i’ll give you the blend file and you can do whatever you want with it don’t need credit either though i doubt you will use it since it is my second sword ever made also i wasn’t watching the poly count either so it is pretty high… i have made low poly models but me i prefer quality than quantity! here’s the pics of it.
Remember if you want the blend. file i’ll send it to you. Cheers mate!
By the way the wood on the spear just looks too orange it should look more like a pale brown to look worn out etc try to make things look a little more worn out otherwise it looks like it’s made for hollywood movies! but your models inspire me mate i don’t want to show too much of my work since it isn’t my thread only showing what Viking things i have made which may even help you in a way, like i said if you want you can use my sword but most likely if you want to use it you’re going to have to remove the textures on it etc and also touch up the cross guard since it ain’t that right i made it awhile ago so yeah my skills have improved a little more since then.
Also one thing to take note of Vikings loved Chainmail if you really want your viking men to be really fierce add some chainmail to them and they’ll look awesome!
@Dagon19 - hey thanks for the input, I like some of your photo references, I’ll take a closer look when re-doing my sword. Thanks for the offer of your .blend file but for me the point of all this is figuring out how to do this myself, there will be a lot to do in the project, so I’m starting with the simplest things first (ie. weapons) and then will progress to more complicated things (buildings, environment, logo, and then finally the characters) so I’ll have improved quite a bit once I finish the project.
Some screens of the battle axe I’m working on. Have it modelled and textured. Need to fix some problems with the mesh, but it’s getting close. Also the filligree in the dark area in the middle of the blade is just a test, need to do a proper carved pattern that’s closer to a nordic style. Cheers.
That axe is pretty sweet! i like it especially the Blade part your renders are pretty photorealistic mate! compared to mine! yeah it looks slightly like a Viking axe but more like an Elvish one.
But one thing i’d really like to know is how do you make that awesome pattern! would of loved to do that on my viking sword O.O if you have any tips a PM would be nice but don’t let my wishes bother you focus on your Project.
What you should do well if i were you i would make first a Sword or more an Axe or more a Spear and a Shield then i would move on to actually making the characters so i could put the weapons on them etc and make sure they fit nicely then i would make the surroundings (buildings, castles, whatever you’re going to make) and your Logo is pretty sweet too i’m looking forward to seeing you finishing this project one hint! Never give up! =) just keep going you’ll manage.
Thanks Dagon19 - that is definitely the reference picture I used, I’m thinking it’s more of a stylized Viking axe, probably a bit more detailed than the vikings would have made, but it will look much cooler on screen than a plain black axe. Also, I’m planning on making the viking cheiftain’s things more stylized and decorated than the other vikings. Perhaps they will have the plain black axes. Regarding the pattern, it’s just a doodle in Photoshop and then a colour and bump map. Colour and bump maps are attached.
Here are some test renders of some single letters for the Logo. I’m going for a chiselled stone/metal sort of look. The F image is a highly subdivided mesh, with the chisel marks painted in with the brush tool. The R image is using a displacement map to get the chisel marks. The displacement map is a better solution as it will render faster and be faster to set up, however I’m still working on getting it to look as good… Also I’m trying to learn material nodes so that I can apply some materials to all letters, and only some materials to individual letters…
Nice! i see looks pretty good pretty good textures on the Axe! though don’t you think it would save more time doing the Title in photoshop? though i don’t know if there is a chiseled effect in Photoshop though but it sure looks good in blender too!
Man i just love the detail on that Axe blade… drools
Infact i just made a logo for my cousin’s shop pretty awesome i’ll give you the the page with the logo on it, it’s pretty sweet!
and yep i made it in blender too as a 3D object it’s a frame around a crocodile you’ll see =) soon.
Hey Mate! nothing new yet eh? i’m just wondering mate do you use photoshop for your textures? like the one on your shield etc etc since i’m trying to get my shield as good as yours it still looks too plain.
Though i don’t want to spam your thread with asking for help, i prefer giving you feed back but =) i will edit this post when you post something new.
This is my shield at the moment isn’t finished needs that last strap.
Hey Dagon, nothing today. I do use Photoshop, but you could use Gimp just as easily. I use PS because I already have it for work purposes. Regarding your shield, the first thing is to set up the colour map textures with photographic quality images. Make sure your texture image is large enough, or it won’t render crisply. The next step is to set up a bump map texture to get all the nicks and scratches and wood grain detail. The last step for me was to set up a displacement map to get the large dents and dings to the metal pieces. Of course I’m assuming you UV unwrapped your model first though, right? Good luck!
