Spaceman – is it working?

[fabmedia]

I know that his pupils are wonky but I'm curious if anything looks out of place. Needing some honest feedback.

His eyes are separate globes as I'm not sure how to embed them properly within the head and his pupils are supposed to be round, but I just quickly put them in.

Question though, are there any good tutorials for phenomes? I'm looking for a wireframe that I can follow so I can make my Morph targets.

Anyway, it's in your corner.

Thanks,
Arlen

[Lightwolf]

Hey, nice suit.
The only thing that strikes me from this angle are his antenna. I'd either slant them a bit or attach them to a different part of his head.
I'm not sure, bit I think I even like those pupils...
Well done!
cheers,
Mike

[fabmedia]

I've included a wireframe. Just wondering if there is enough detail in the mouth for phenomes.

A

[DrM]

Cool Model!!

Yes I think that's just right for basic phonemes on a cartoon character.
I have found that making the mouth smile is a good way of testing
the mesh.........I fined i have to some times re work the polys in
the cheeks to pull it off.

Also you may want to play with the length of the arms....
The right length and the character will be abel to cover his eye
with his hand....and will be allot easier to interact with his face.

Good Luck

ps....If your character is going to have teeth..
be sure to make them before you make the morphs of the mouth shapes
or any tests like........
"when he smiles...is there enough polys that the lips do not go thru the teeth?"...
"Can he bite down on his bottom lip to make an "F" sound?".

[pauland]

Great model!

Paul

[MGuerra]

Looks great!

Are the little pads on his uniform done in a separate layer, or is it part of the main model?

[fabmedia]

Well the phenomes are going to be a pain. I find it hard just trying to get him to smile. Maybe I'll just keep him with the "blow up doll" expression.

I'm working on the belt, but not sure how I'm going to implement it when animating. I don't know if I should keep it as one object along with the character, OR seperately controlled by dynamics. What about bones?

To answer the question about the pads. They are separate layer. Each one is a duplicate of the actual mesh then smooth shifted once then adjusted. I tried to keep it all as one item, but found that the mesh was causing problems when I toyed with it.

Here's another image for you.

A

[DrM]

If You need some reference for mouth shapes....
there is tutorial that i did that has some
extra stuff hidden in the negative key frames.
It's VERY basic phonemes but may give you some
ideas how you can brake it up.
-Download the zip file here... http://www.drm3d.com/DownloadFaceInfo.html
-Scene Info-

<F . S>
<r . h>
<a . a>
<m . p>
<e . e>
-------------
-1 = A-I
-2 = O
-3 = E
-4 = U
-5 = C-D-G-K-N-R-S-TH-Y-Z
-6 = L
-7 = W-Q
-8 = M-B-P
-9 = F-V
-10= Rest
-11= C-D-G-J-K-N-R-S-Y-Z
-12= Th
-13= brows_sad
-14= brows_mad
-15= brows_squint
-16= eyes_open
-17= eyes_closed
-18= Rest
-19= Rest
-20= Rest

[fabmedia]

Curious... now why did you use bones to control the mouth? I didn't think that that would be an easy way to animate a complicated item. Hmmmm. It's great stuff though. I will definitely use this as a reference. The mesh detail is exactly the same as what I have in mine so I'll be able to mimic relatively easily.

Thanks!
A

[kevman3d]

Great character! :)

Was just thinking about your mouth - I would say you probably need a bit more geometry around the mouth of face area for animation.

While you can probably generate the necessary mouths you need as it is, you'll run into problems with creating any creases or cheek bulges that you need to add later on without a little more geometry. Maybe a couple of bandsaws around the mouth, I would say outwards towards the cheeks, not so much close to the lip area.

You'll find making mouth shapes feels 'hard' if you have too little geometry - A couple of times I've found the mouthshapes became a lot easier to make with just an extra strip of polys...

[Kuzey]

Very cool...it looks like it's straight out of the Muppets :p

The antenna might do with a bit more work.

Kuzey

[fabmedia]

Ah yes, the antenea. That will be covered by the bones. Either that or softbody dynamics (can you do that?). 'Cause SBD would be the best way to go. But I figured that the antenea would increase the amount of expresion that he will convey.

A

[fabmedia]

Oh boy. Okay. I've added my bone structure and I'm having trouble with the deformation of the mesh. The head I can fix easily enough with a weight map, but the hip I'm not too sure about. Any suggestions? I'm sure any solution will work but at this point there are no weight maps just a straight bone system (ACS 4) that should work on any mesh. I'm not too sure if it's from a lack or detail in that area, but I don't have that problem with the elbows.

HELP!!!

A

[jin'a]

you could try padding out the mesh, but i would go for weight maps every time. They're so much easier to use with organic models. You have much more control, and you don't normally get weird things happening!

Good luck on that!

[fabmedia]

If I was to use a wieght map for the legs (I'd leave the feet out of it), how far up would I go and what kind of fall off would I use? Just not sure that's all.

A

[DaveW]

If I were you I would avoid weight maps as much as possible :) You do get more control with them but most characters don't need that level of control and it takes so much longer to set up.

You probably just need to remove or weaken a hold bone somewhere near the hips. It's supposed to be a weightless rig that works on any mesh, but unfortunately there is no such thing. You will always need to tweak the bone influence. Try using the bone weights view in Layout to see if you can figure out which bone is doing that to the leg.

[jin'a]

I would still go for weight maps. It might be ok for this model not to bother, but if you are taking your skills to a higher level, you will need the experience!

just get in the habbit of doing it! might take a bit more time but i think it's worth it!

[fabmedia]

How far up the body would you need to place the wieght map? AND would it be advisable to add one or two subdivistions within the hip area?

A

[jin'a]

If you are going to weight map the figure, then I'm afraid you'll have to do the whole thing!

It would proabably be usefull to add an extra couple of poly's round the hip, if you just want to make a video or image, then it doesn't really matter how long the image takes to render, the final videa file size will allways be the same.

[fabmedia]

If the extra polys are going make it work better, then I'm not too worried about the extra 10-15 seconds that it'll take to render it out.

I guess it would be best to separate the arms, body, legs, neck and head as separate weight maps. Am I correct? So that would be 6 different maps. Now what about the hands/fingers?

A

[Castius]

Do not forget about joint compression option in the bone property. Since the creation of weight maps it's easy to forget about that stuff.

[fabmedia]

I was thinking of creating a skin texture and some "spots" on him that would cover the space around his eyes, eyelids, and fingers. Not too sure if this is a good idea because you see a lot of this stuff on "aliens", but I guess it couldn't hurt to do so. I initially thought I would just keep him like he is, but now I'm sure he can do with some material textures, logos and such on his jump suit and the pads on his body, arms, gloves and boots. Not too sure how to handle the textures for these items.

Any suggestions would be great!

A

[jin'a]

Well the best thing to do would be UV it, but tutorials aren't great for newbies to this form. So play around!

[fabmedia]

I'm at another impass right now. I managed to fix my problem with the rigging and deformation. BUT the big problem right now is the belt. I'm trying to control it with wieght maps, but I'm still getting squashing and stretching with the movement of the bones. Any suggestions? I'm just trying to limit the amount of deformations. I heard of something before on a list (can't find it) about using a separate bone system attached to the character that would be animated separately along with the character.

Does this make sense? Any suggestions?

I'm almost ready for another post...

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[fabmedia]

Notice the belt... that's what I'm having trouble with.


Stupid Belt.

A

[kevman3d]

Just thinking that you could try adding a few child bones from the spine/hip bone outward as anchors to hold the belt polys from pinching as much. Give that a try - Though you can also get problems with anchor bones working 'too well' at holding geometry! :)

BTW, it might be useful to post up a bone xray view of your rig if you're having problems - Seeing what you're doing can help people give you feedback.

[fabmedia]

Bone X-ray. Yeah. How do I do that?

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[fabmedia]

Duh, never mind. I'll open the manual.

A

[fabmedia]

And here i was looking for a render option... It's going to be a long day. Well I managed to get the belt to behave somewhat okay. Here's an image...

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[fabmedia]

and one more. The only thing here is the little cylinder on the belt. I can find what's controlling that...

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[fabmedia]

A question about the arms is about what is best... forward or inverse kinematics? Should I create a separate rig for both?

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[fabmedia]

Okay, I'm using ACS 4 for the character and noticed that the spine is controlled by controlling null/bone. So if you turn and twist this null, it will deform the whole spine. Pretty cool.

My question here is how can I set that up for the antenea. OR should I use IK for them?

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[kevman3d]

Using FK or IK depends on what you plan on doing with the character, really.

For example, I don't usually IK arms, but I do IK Legs - Why? Because legs have feet, and in 90% of cases, the feet will always need to stay 'fixed' on the ground and not slip about. Using IK allows me to leave the feet on the ground when moving the character - That way, the legs bend to compensate for the movement rather then having to FK the feet to prevent that 'slipping' effect.

Arms, I prefer to FK so I have a nice full control over their positioning and articulation - Sometimes IK will remove a level of control from the character that prevents or makes some animation more difficult to perform.

That said, occasionally I've IK'd arms - For instance a job I did a year ago, for a scene where a character had to have one hand holding onto the arm of a chair, I IK'd the one arm so that the hand would stay put while the character moved about. The other arm was FK so it could freely be animated however it needed to be.