Squiggly's 3D Doodles (Updated March 7)

Long story:

I have a large - LARGE - project waiting in the wings, and have had it there for some time. I’ve done about all I can do on paper. It’s planned, scripted, half story-boarded, has partial dialogue recordings and tons and tons of notes made up for it. However, the project requires a lot of effects and the way I’ve got it planned is very different from other animated projects / shorts out there. I’m going to do the thing with low-spec / game-type models. There are a number of reasons for this, but speed is the primary one. That I also happen to love old-school, Playstation One style 3D graphics is the second one.

Dunno if anyone else has tried it, but I’ve found it to be difficult to say the least. 3D tools - Blender included - are not designed to be friendly with 500-1000 tri models and 128² 256² or 512² texture resolutions for pre-rendered animation. They’re designed to make shorts that look like Elephants Dream or BBB. Pixar-style, if you will.

Anyway, I decided to work on something much much simpler first. I came up with another short idea that would be much much shorter (like 30 seconds) and that would be something I could test out some different approaches to the models / textures / designs / etc. That project was called “Super Ultra Robot Ninja Death Squad”. I also ended up thinking up a second project along the same lines (sort of a ‘sequel’ to it) called “Cute Must Die”. I won’t spoil them for you yet, tho :stuck_out_tongue:

Anywho, I was working on S.U.R.N.D.S., making a character, and the modeling went smooth. The texture and lighting and various other aspects of it were not satisfactory. Here are a couple of examples:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/Squiggly_P/Render_Test.gif
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/Squiggly_P/white_test.jpg

As you can see, it’s somewhat stylized. The textures are very simple (almost nonexistant, actually). The lighting in the last one is a hemi + AO. None of these really looked the way I was hoping they would. I decided I needed to play more with modelling styles and especially do a lot of texture painting. And so this thread is born. It will contain all of my work, and will thus be an endless WIP. These projects have been secret for some time, but the only thing that keeping secrets ever got me was a lack of actual production. This is me trying to be productive.

So here I go:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/Squiggly_P/Guile_First_Pass.jpg
Guile from Street Fighter. Texture is 128² and the model is - if I recall - about 180 tris.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/Squiggly_P/Character_One_001.jpg
This is a dude I drew up for a game project eons ago. I’ve got about a dozen more from the same game concept that I’ll be WIPing up for practice. This guy is currently sitting at 398 tris and has a 128² texture. Sticking to grayscale for now with the texture. Hoping it will make painting it easier. Then I’ll add color later on.

I fully plan on releasing all of these models under CC when they’re finished. Some of the BGE users will probably be able to use them, since they’ll all end up being somewhere around 500 tri’s, give or take a few hundred.

Sorry for the long post. I just love making long posts so much :smiley:

I’m not sure on the specs the BGE can handle but you should be fine with a 1024 or 512 map.

I like (some) long posts, they gives us the idea of what you want to do, and i think it was a great idea to post a WIP cause everyone around here, from the the God-like blenders to the most common of mortals can help you out with ideas, technical solutions and so on…

Good luck

Nice style. I dig the third one a lot.
I’ll keep an eye on this thread. Good luck

Texture Update. I feel like I should be done with this thing by now. Gonna try to finish it tonight at some point, cause I have a lot more models that I’m eager to get cracking on, but I know if I stop working on this one it’ll just end up as yet another unfinished model.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/Squiggly_P/Character_One_003.png

And I still have to model his weapon and give him a cool pose.

EDIT: done for the time being.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/Squiggly_P/LittleRandomDude001.png

New model. I started it a few days ago and I’ve since been trying to figure out why the video I recorded was all glitchy and screwed up. I’ve (sorta) fixed the vide and uploaded it to Vimeo. It’s about 50 minutes long and is rather boring and I say a lot of dumb crap and the video is sort of targeted at people who possibly have never used blender before, or perhaps they are just interested in low-poly modelling and want to see someone actually making a model.

If anyone is interested, it’s here: http://www.vimeo.com/3508812

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/Squiggly_P/squiggly_p_Kid_flat_render_001.jpg

This is the resulting model. I fully plan on making a second video to add some more details and do some unwrapping and stuff. Again, once I’ve got several of these dudes I’ll release them under CC license.

EDIT!! - I keep using the word “tutorial” in the video, tho it’s not really a tutorial. Just a demo. I kinda talk about modelling and stuff. In my later vids I’ll probably dive more into theory or just random ideas and stuff. Future vids will be more interesting and… hopefully more ‘pro’ looking :stuck_out_tongue:

Working on my short is sometimes mind numbing. I’ve had headaches the past couple days, so I’ve been lazy and un-productive. Decided to make something quick and easy.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/Squiggly_P/NewspaperMachine.gif

A note: This is done in a similar style to the short I’m making. Just sorta rushed and kinda crap looking. Blender’s painting tool needs more love (and an eraser and a flood fill and square brushes and , and, and…)

I like a lot the way the little textured guy look. Both the shape and the texture.
The 4-arms guy is pretty nice too - it seems you’re good at keeping a low number of faces while having a clean and well defined shape. (I can’t view anything from vimeo here, though)

You have great texturing skill, bringing the details out of lowpoly models. Keep up the good work!

Haha, quite pretty actually. Could I possibly have a blown up version of the texture for the little random dude?

peace,
-nick