The "ThoughtScore" Project

[noidtluom (Dion Moult)]

Last edited on 27 July 2008

Official Blog: thinkMoult

Like the project? I’m not planning to give it up anytime soon. Progress is SLOW. But I promise I won’t give up on this one!

Hello.
I finally have the time to concentrate on an animation. I plan for this to be good, and not rushed and scrapped like me previous ones

The story has not been fully decided, so I won’t post the storyline here yet. I am thinking along the lines of action/comedy.

I am not aiming for perfect realism. I am aiming for slightly exaggerated characters, and impressive lighting/object positioning in the scenes. I am not planning to compress this one or make the dimensions tiny like my previous animations. This will stop me limiting myself.

I have started modeling the main character. He does not have a name. Note: he will be wearing pants all the time, but there will be a scene without his shirt. He will NOT be having a mouth.

Working on the face. Blender view, render + wire.

Working on neck. render.

Working on neck. Wire.

Current progress. Working on proportion.

All comments will be welcome. I need help on the proportion, I just cannot seem to get it looking natural.

[defstone]

the head mesh looks promissing, the mesh around the mouth looks a little weird, though
for the body proportions i would strongly recommend to use some good reference pics !
Look at www.3d.sk for example…

CU
def

[noidtluom (Dion Moult)]

@deFStonE
i couldn’t find any at 3dsk so i got some of the-blueprints.com. its interesting how the proportions of a boy differs from that of a man.

I LOVE replies and comments. Please help me keep this project active on blenderartists.

I have edited the body proportions, tweaked stomach, arms and legs.
I have also worked on his buttocks (i will not do much detail as he will be wearing pants), back and neck.
Head edits: changed sunken features in face, narrowed nose, made rounder, added eyes and eyelids.
Scene edits: changed background colour, added some lamps to illuminate certain sections.

A couple problems i ran into, the legs look fine from front and side views, but when rendered (probably because of the lighting), they look exaggeratedly thin. I would enjoy suggestions about this but i wouldn’t worry too much as i will be adding pants. Also, as you will see in the picture later, his face looks all screwed up when i set the rendering dimensions to 50%. in the 100% render his face looks normal. Also in the head-closup renders. what can be causing the disfigurement.

Back view:

Front view: (screwed-up head)

Open and Closed Eyes:

100% dimensions render:

Looking forward to complete this mesh soon: then i can rig it and begin on other characters.

[Toulji]

this has a lot of promise, and i’d like to see the textured result. i think your facial detail could use a little more work, but i can’t be too hard only half-way through.
Good job.

[noidtluom (Dion Moult)]

Worked mostly on face. Played around with Jahka’s particle patch but didn’t see it feasible due to softbody lagging and frequent blender crashes. I’m just using normal particles now. Updates:

• Sharpened nose a lot.
• Thinned neck (but you can’t really see it in this picture)
• Blended sunken mouth feature.
• Re-positioned eyelids and eye.
• Added hair
• Changed forehead shape a little (but you cannot see it due to the hair)
  

[noidtluom (Dion Moult)]

I managed to find good seams on him, and I’ve enjoyed unwrapping him. Here are two face textures I made. I used the second one.

Normal Skin: Link Removed
Pale Skin: Link Removed
Now, after I used the pale skin, he looks something like a malnutritioned, badly done genetic experiment. Personally, I like the way he looks now, but I think he’ll look nicer with maybe a tad more skin colour on him. I think I made him…too pale. I also managed to whack-up his eyes as well. (Take a nice long look)

I’m planning to add eyebrows perhaps, improve on his hair and add that minor peachy tone. Probably with an alpha cloud texture or I’ll edit his ramp shader a little.

Update:

• UV map added
• Ramp shader edited
• Colours edited
• Vertex painted a little
• Hair edited

Full Body:

Head Close-up:

Back:

I also started working on a scene:

[noidtluom (Dion Moult)]

I cry when I get no comments.
Anyway, worked on him a little more. The previous image looked as though he had been textured, and not realistic enough, and so I smoothened the colour around his head a little. The image might look similar but if you put them right next to each other you can see the difference.

This head image is not the latest, there is a newer one where his eyebrows aren’t that…funky, but since I’m at home now, my home computer can’t handle Blender, so I can’t give you a later version. Oh, and surprise! I’ve added clothes.

Smoothened head with eyebrows:

Oh look! Clothes:

Also worked a little more on the room. I didn’t like the ground, it was too…fake. I added another wall, changed the ground and dimmed the light. I want to make it so that there is one dim lightbulb hanging in the center of the room, but I haven’t modeled it yet.

Woohoo, updated room:

edit: Forget searching for the wall, it’s so dark I don’t think you’ll be able to see it. I’ll fix the lighting when I get more work into the room’s objects.

[PapaSmurf]

he looks like when Neo got his mouth glued shut in the Matrix.

[noidtluom (Dion Moult)]

Images for this post have been lost. Don’t worry, it wasn’t anything interesting.

Yo. Long time no edit. I’m going to start up my own site for this project. I’m planning on making it open where everybody can see how it progresses every step of the way, and all comments will be taken seriously.

RogerWickes: yep, I got the no-mouth idea from The Matrix.
This guy (and another character when I start making him) was also inspired heavily by “Elephant’s Dream”.
Updates:

• Rigged.
  
  I’ve been learning a lot about actions, paths, and walkcycles. I’m trying to get a “stylised” walk for this guy, and a normal walk action.
  I’ve finished a “sneaky” backwards-walk, for when I want him to creep away backwards. I’ve also been playing with blu-ish lighting to create moods and atmosphere.
  I’m thinking of using a shapekey for his fingers. 1 key for an open palm, and another for a closed fist. So far I haven’t had much success, but I’ll keep trying. Up to come will be expressions and eye movement together with small anims of walking.

[BlackBoe]

You really don’t need to use a water-mark for that picture.

[noidtluom (Dion Moult)]

I did some stuff, I don’t want to show yet, but heck. This thread was so dead I actually found it on the FIFTH page.

Anyway, I’ve done some character movement tests for Cicero (yes, that’s his name, in Ancient Greek it means “The Historian”…kinda ironic for a guy without a mouth). Unforunately, i made it on a computer which displayed everything extremely bright, so now that i’m on a normal computer i realise that it’s almost pitch-black.

But i’ll show it anyway, please comment. It isn’t finished, i’ll be redoing it in more light (perhaps i could improve the movement as well) and adding face shapekeys, hand rigs, and eyeball movement ATM i’ve been failing repeatedly with the hand, so i’ll be thinking of redoing it and rigging it with some IK solvers. I might have to read up on limits and axis IKs. or whatever they’re called.

LINK:
Link Removed

It’s in .swf format so to view it you might need flash player. the good thing about this format is that it compresses files a lot, loads of people have flash player, and you can add all fancy stuff like preloaders, normal 2d animation, cool sound stuff (more advanced than blenders sound thing from what i’ve seen).

Oh, i’ve also setup a site for it as well.

LINK:
http://e2-productions.com/thoughtscore

Yes, i will be releasing .blends when the rigging, shapekeys and actions are done.

EDIT: about the watermark, i put it on some other sites too, and they aren’t blender related
also, if anybody can tell me how to get a .avi for the alt-a animation i would be very grateful.

[BlackBoe]

Whoa, whoa whoa whoa. That was almost pitch black, all I could see were shady green-blue highlights moving around.

[padigo]

iam still in the nooby zone of blender and i hope i pick up extra stuff from your work i like the dark room and the texture on his clothes looks right for the scene

[padigo]

how did you make the cracks on the wall i really like it and if you could help me i was trying to rig or add bones to an object but when i move them the bones move on their own …how do i link them to different parts of an object? or if you could link me with an already posted tutrial tht wud be nice…:yes:

[noidtluom (Dion Moult)]

@padigo you can just search for armature tutorial blender on google. or read the noob_to_pro wikibooks. the wall cracks were textured with bumpmapping. You will have to parent the armature to the mesh and then add vertex groups.

@blackboe yeah…i’m gonna redo it.

Here is an image of Cicero in the room scene. Since the room will be his “cell” in the beginning, I’ve added some necessities. If you can count a toilet, a sink, and a chair as one. I also played around with lighting on it so I hope I did an OK job on the light bulb. I’m gonna work on this more and keep this topic up-to-date.

There’s the scene: It should look OK on most computers, though on mine it looks a little dark.

You can see comments for the picture here:
Link removed.

[Kemmler]

looks cool but way too dark. At least boost the contrast, I would also suggest bumping the energy up.

[noidtluom (Dion Moult)]

WhooHoo. A week of exams are over. I’ve got this weekend (ok only saturday - on Sunday I need to get back on revision) before I have a final week of exams.

Updates…how to start?
Firstly, I’ve updated the movement tests into an alt-a style test. Hooray for normal monitors. It doesn’t look as good as the original because I re-did it really quickly…but yeah, I shouldn’t make excuses. Take a look:

File no longer exists.

[/B]Next will be the shape keys. I’ve added 2 expressions - angry and surprised - unfortunately I can’t do awesome lipsync talking tests because this guy has no mouth. Taras (another character will be able to though). Take a look at his expression test:

File no longer exists
(quicktime)

One of my friends seems to have gotten it stuck in his head that my guy looks like a malnutritioned zombie which looks totally retarded and moronic. I call it stylized, he calls it stupid. I like the mesh and his features, so I’m not going to change that. Instead, I edited the materials a little. Here is him, edited:

And here is a close up of his face:

Now, for Taras. I’ve gone back to the basic mesh and I’ve decided to play around to make the second character. I once saw a WIP on this robot which had a really nice eye/goggle thing which had a halo spotlight shining out of it. So I’ve deleted his eyes In order to spend time making those cool goggles. I’m not going to make him wear clothes. Instead, after looking at SPI WIP thread (and some others) I’m planning to make him wear a full-body armour thing.

As for his teeth, I watched the Mancandy lipsync test (“take you to the future”) and I love those teeth. They don’t look like some guy with buck teeth, and they won’t complicate lipsyncing. Here he is so far:

Finally for updates, I’ve played around with different cinematic styles and ended coming up with the “shadow” outline thing…hard to explain, so take a look:

I’ve also made a redesign for the ThoughtScore official website (http://e2-productions.com/thoughtscore) but It’s pretty empty so I’m not going to update the design until I get more impressive pictures

Oh I almost forgot, I’ve also made a small button you can add to your website (if you have one) if you want to support this project. It’s a transparent GIF so it’ll work on all backgrounds - both light and dark (it has a white outline so it can also work on dark backgrounds).

Image no longer exists.

Just link it to http://e2-productions.com or http://e2-productions.com/thoughtscore

[noidtluom (Dion Moult)]

Smaller update today. It seems as though my forum has been spammed by a guy from another site so I’ve been looking into that.

I’ve been rendering stuff without his hair because it renders faster, but that would not be in the real animation. I decided to go back to his hair mesh. It was…not very good. I edited it some, and through a complete accident (kindof) I got what I think is some nice hair for this character. When you’re quite close sometimes you can see a little of his scalp but it doesn’t matter, because you wouldn’t normally be that close and the camera will be moving most of the time.

I also played around with his materials and put a very light vertex paint to make it look as though he had a little ash on his face.
Hair back:

Hair front:

[noidtluom (Dion Moult)]

Even smaller update today.
Been having exams. Well, firstly, the official website has been updated, check it out:
http://e2-productions.com/thoughtscore

Well, since I’m planning for this to be around the same quality as Elephant’s Dream, I think it is kinda unrealistic for this to be a one man show.
If you would like to join me to make this, please email me: [email protected].
Don’t worry if you aren’t pro, I’m not pro either.

[noidtluom (Dion Moult)]

Update! Update!
Ok, I want this to be perfect (or close to), so I want to spend time. Previously I’ve been rushing into animations and models with basic knowledge, getting lazy, then just quickly going through them.

Ok, I’ve decided to agree on the fact that yes, he looks like a freak. A stylized freak (see previous post), but a freak nonetheless. I’ve touched up on his face, eyes, nose, and I’m planning to add a mouth! I guess if an animation only has one guy talking, it’s kinda sad. Seriously. I’ve just deleted some vertices for his mouth, but there’s still a long long way to go. I’m planning on redoing his shape keys, his hands, feet (if he even had one in the first place), and texturing. His texturing is not yet up to the standard I’m looking for, so I’ve got lots to do.

I’ve decided to stop working on his face for a while, and learn techniques. After all, without the technique, how can you get something to look good?

I plan to learn more about Bump mapping, Focus, Envmaps, and Nodes. I started to learn Nodes today. I mostly just familiarized myself with the nodes interface, and tried out a few stuff. Here goes, it may look bad, but I won’t stop until it’s perfect. I hope I’m making good progress.

All of them have a black darken material node on the skin in order to make his left side of his face blend out into the background. I’m trying to find out how I can make things “showy”. Or at least good looking.

Original with soften composite node:

Skin Materials nodes (blue burn colour):

Overkill Blur. I did some, but I liked this one:

Got one more exam after this, then it’s the holidays. Unfortunately the only computer I have at home is old. I can only do Blendering at school, so that’ll be an unfortunate time lapse. My next update will hopefully be more technique tests and a much improved face.