Cute :3

lovely 3D work you have here. i also always love your avatar ^-^

bouncy bouncy bouncy ^-^

Wow that's really awesome

Neat. I work with Maya as well. I take it that this is downloadable with skins, textures and rigging?

Yup. You need to relink the textures, though; I didn't bother to group them in a Maya project ^_^;

but the textures are downloadable, right?

They're in the package along with everything else.

Thanks so much.

This Krystal cosplayer can now play with Krystal. :)

Really well done!

Finally, something different.

Staff ready as well? Guess she needs to beat up some pervs.

Nope, sorry; that was pretty low on my priority list. ^^;

Hey, self-defence!

And, think you're gonna transfer/repack that one? I'm not sure how Blender-compatible Maya files are.

I tried importing it as a more cross-platform-friendly .FBX file. Didn't work. :(

Okay, official. Guess for that file you deserve a watch, even though I'm a rather purpose-oriented person and normally don't watch people offering commissions (please, don't show me that face now )

Oh, nice!
Glad to see a fur rigging her finally ^^

I was actually waiting for someone better than me to do it... but no one seemed interested so I just tried to do it myself ^^;

By the way, is there any chance that there's another model being used in-game? There's stuff that I can't seem to manipulate (e.g. eyes), which makes me suspect that this is a gameplay rig, and that they're using a different model for cutscenes. If there is, do you think you could possibly rip that one, as well?

The cutscenen model has the fur, but its' unusable in 3dsamx (skin is totally messed up)
And this for each layer of fur, when you know that there is 7 layers of fur, misplaced,
it's a nightmare you won't to cope with.
For the eyes, it's a texture thing! The eye image slide depending of where the eye looks...

But the texture file only has one eye, so how am I supposed to slide it around? The other eye will go in the opposite direction...

Also, do you know how the eyelids work? I want to make all these but I can't get them to work properly. ;_;

In many games, left and right eyes have different poly identifier (id)
so that the textures on it can behave indenpendantly of the other...
Also, for the closing lid, you should try morph or add more bones for the eyelids

Oh, so are they separate textures for the eyes? o.O And I had trouble with the eyelids cos there's not enough polys to make an eyelid..

If only someone could help me with all this >.>

Wow! Great work! Glad to see someone made a working model of the original version. Thats awesome!

Wow, that's quite an impressive rig!

Now excuse the noob question, but how am I able to select these black joints? I can only seem to move the hair and torso with the default selection. Is there a certain selection option I have to apply? Sorry, I never really delved into skeletons in Maya, but I'd like to try. ^^'

Nevermind, just figured it out myself. Regarding the facial expressions, did you use blendshapes? I opened the blendshape editor and there seem to be some options, but the values are yellow and the sliders seem locked for some reason.

And jeez, this must have taken forever to rig. O.o

Yep, the facial blendshapes are connected to the head controller (the circle around her head), which is why you can't move them in the blendshape editor. You can control them by selecting the head control and adjusting the attributes that I added to it on the right; they should be relatively simple stuff like Eyes Happy, Mouth Frown etc. And yep, this took foreverrrrr. :D

Found some time to play around with this today, this is some pretty amazing stuff! :D

It took me quite a while to find all the right control points and make some quick selection sets, but I think that was a good opportunity to get a glimpse at the complexity behind this. Would be cool to have some furshading on this model but I think this would rocket up the rendertime too much. Maybe it's possible to apply a layer technique like they did in SFA. Makes me wonder where you got the model from by the way. ^^

Thanks ^^ The model was ripped straight from the game by Gadonstriom; you can see him a few posts above yours. ^_^

And you probably don't need to use that ridiculous technique that they did; that was because of technical limitations. True fur simulation looks much better. :D

Definitely! I've put together a lenghtmap for the fur as well as a slightly improved bodytexture (with better eyes). Thought I'd share that one here...

http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/4463/furmap.jpg
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/6519/krystalm.jpg

Also some test renderings with the fur...

http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/6157/kickjp.jpg
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/3617/kick2.jpg
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/2706/kick3i.jpg
http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/1844/kick4.jpg

Works great for martial art stuff! :D

Ooh, that looks nice! I see you upped the resolution of the texture map to 2k, how did you do that? O.o

I don't understand why you changed the color of the texture though o.O She's like... light aqua blue now? ^^;

And the fur looks awesome! Might need some additional mapping for gradients especially around the edges of the clothes, but looks real good ^^

Mind passing on your stuff to me? XP

Hey there! Sorry for not being around for a while. I recently moved and had to catch up with a lot of work so I kinda lost track of this.

Sorry for the color change, I was toying around with different colors and must have forgotten to change it back to the normal color.

We're currently testing a new Maya render plugin called Furryball where I work and in order to give it a little test drive, I decited to use your Krystal model and fancy it up for that purpose. I've been working on it this week and have changed a few things which include movable pupils, mouth details, fully detailed body fur and other facial details like that thingy on her head which was just a texture first. Some of these elements where basically copied from the other Krystal model that is available online. I first wanted to do a lipsync test, but I really suck as an animator (I'm rather responsible for light, shading and post), so I came up with something else to test eye movement and general animation.

Here are some of the current results.

Updated model: http://img34.imageshack.us/f/krystalupdated.jpg/
Still from a short CGI test I'm working on: http://img33.imageshack.us/f/krystalb.jpg/

I want to get everything done this weekend and will also share the updated model with you. I still need to clean up the scene a little and do some optimizations. In order to see the fur you'd need the Furryball plugin for Maya by the way. It's one incredible GPU renderer that renders fur and other great features in no time. The only thing you'd need would be an up-to-date graphics card with DirectX10 support. I can only recommend it! ^^

Wow, that looks so much better than the version I'm trying to do now (Adding nCloth and using the default Maya Fur stuff, basically), and the eyes look really nice ^^ My only real complaint is that it's starting to look a bit TOO realistic, especially with the new eyes - Personally, I'd prefer keeping the whole cartoony look they had going in SFA... but well, you're the one making the changes so I can't really complain :P

If you can get the model out to me that'd be really awesome. Can't wait to try animating it ^__^

Thank you! I was first using the usual Maya fur as well, but the rendertimes with Mental Ray where unbearable, even though I'm on a new quadcore i7. The eye texture will be included, so it won't be a problem to change it at any given time. I basically took the first best result that popped up on google. The updated model will be done soon, I'm currently making it a little more user friendly with an additional face section set where you can control eyes, mouth movement and everything you've made possible there. nCloth would be a great idea by the way! I first tried out dynamic fur on the tail (it didn't make much sense on the body, so it's just static there), but just couldn't get the dynamics right. Maybe you'll succeed there. XD

Yeah, I think I can work on the eye... it should be easy enough for me to retexture a version similar to the original. I think nCloth is also great. not just for the loincloth but the hair as well... I tried using the normal hair dynamics and it didn't turn out so well, but nCloth actually seemed to work relatively okay. I think having dynamic fur on the body would be good, too... it might be a little weird to have it static. Problem is I don't exactly have access to the plugin... is there any way for me to get it?

It's fairly easy to get it actually if you look around on the internet a little. ;) There's a 14 day trial as well if you register in their official forum. We've got a commercial license of the plugin where I work, but in order to use it at home I've got a "different" one on my personal computer. Like I already said, the plugin is perfect for fur rendering. It easily renders a 1080p image with Multisampling, 4xSupersampling and lots of fur in just a couple of seconds while it takes Mental Ray more than 15 minutes at almost the same output quality. Apart from that working becomes much faster if you're able to see everything in realtime.

I've tested out dynamic fur on the body, but even at full 1080p output the results where practically the same as with static fur. It's barely possible to tell the difference since the fur is just too short for that purpose, so I thought it would be a waste of computing power. I figured that the dynamic fur would make sense on the tail whatsoever since it's much longer than the body fur there. I'm still working on getting the physics right. I looks pretty good so far, I'd recommend to smooth the polygons before rendering though since the edges would otherwise be visible in the tailfur.

Haha thanks, I'll check it out now.

Do you think it would be possible to PM me a link of the other version of Furryball? It's not as easy as I'd thought it'd be to find it... :D

How did you select black joints?

Go to Maya's Outliner view (Panels > Panel > Outliner), there you'll find a set called TSM2Controls which allows you to control everything.

Actually, I went to the layers instead, and unchecked the "R" for "controllers" (or something, dont remember). That way, I could select the circles in the view directly.

Alright mate, there you go! :)

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HDAP4BAF

There's a readme file that contains a changelog. I'm currently sending the animation test I did with her to the Krystal archieve for uploading so it should be there soon as well. ^^

I can't seem to download it from megaupload =_= Maybe try something else?

Did you get my PM? :3

Here's the animation test with the updated model I was talking about earlier. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8nKNEW4oew

Hey Rhyfe! I've been trying to make some further improvements on the model lately and tried to add some new blend shapes for some more facial animation. I've been creating these on the geo_main_body model and added them to your already existing blendshapes named blendShape2. The problem is that everytime I place them before the skeleton (so they still get affected by it) the polygons screw up big time. Is there any special method you used to create your blendshapes? Or is it impossible to add new ones after a character is rigged?

Nope, I definitely added all the blendshapes after the rigging was done o.o Maybe create another blendshape node?

I wonder though... I'm also trying to work on the rig o.o; So who's going to release 1.2? XD

I think you should do that since you did the biggest part on it. Maybe we can merge our updates together later on, I've been mainly working on facial detail and shading. Right now I'm trying to make her ready for lipsync stuff, but obviously with some issues. I think I finally found the problem by the way. Since I've been using custom mouth parts I had to delete the super low poly teeth and tounge by removing the polygon faces in the main model. I've just tried to create blendshapes on the 1.0 model and it worked just fine. After removing the faces the model always screwed up when adding blendshapes. Can you think of any other methods to remove the faces without getting this issue?

Here's what the model looks like so far from the progress I made: http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/48.....stalnature.jpg

Did you have any success with ncloth? ^^

Yup, I think it's been working fine, so far, with the default setups.

I think the model looks great so far, although I'm a bit on the fence when it comes to smoothing her model, especially the edges of her cheeks and the tips of her ears. The sharp edges are probably part of the design, so if possible I would prefer to keep it that way.

Did you add/remove any extra polys to the mesh? That might screw blendshapes up if you did that after the rigging... but you probably knew that already.

As for how I assigned my blendshapes to the head controller... I just added the attributes to the NURBs curve, then linked them together with the Set Driven Key function. Normally I'd set it to overshoot by 200% so that I can push the shapes further if I wanted to.

I hope you're doing the phonemes for her facial features... it'd be cool to make her talk :P (In fact I was wondering if you could set up a scene for me in which to animate in... I have zero experience in creating environments, LOL)

Yes, it's definitely caused whenever I add/delete polys from the mesh. I found a workaround by making a quick selection set for the certain polys that need to be removed, with that I can remove them once I make renders and leave them there while working on it. For smoothing the model I'd just use the smooth polygons command everytime before rendering.

I've created some various new lip expressions that include closed and open lips, as well as forming an O with the mouth, tongue can also be animated now, so she should be ready for lipsync. \o/

Furthermore I've added some new facial expressions like a skeptic looking raised eyebrow and the ability to control her eyelids a little. I've rendered a little test video that shows some of these features: http://www.megavideo.com/?d=YR4AU213

I could hand over the mall scene environment I used for the earlier test video I showed you. It's pretty much ready to go for rendering... well, for Furryball at least. Speaking of which, did you get it to run?

Oh, the one problem I have with nCloth is that it drives the polygons directly instead of through a curve deformer like the hair dynamics I used in v1.0, which means I can't blend between manual and automatic control any more... :/ Hopefully it's good enough that I can make it fully automatic without needing to touch it ever again.

Since you just mentioned it, do I have to toogle the dynamics for her loincloth somewhere? Whenever I do animations with her it usually stays static or screws up and never goes back to the normal position. D:

Yup, you do. I believe there's an attribute somewhere... on her waist maybe? ... that lets you toggle between pure dynamic, pure manual control, or a blend of both. Always set it to static first, when you animate: you can't just scrub through or the dynamics won't be accurate (i.e. you'll see it jump all over the place). After you finish animating, you can use the cache to temporarily bake the dynamics to the curves, allowing you to scrub and preview the dynamics through the timeline.

Do note that it's pretty limited, though: it's liable to screw up in more complex poses, and it's prone to stretching unrealistically as well... which is why I'm switching to nCloth in my next version. :P

Actually, if I sent you my new version, would you be okay with implementing all your new features on that instead? That would probably make things easier for us in the long run. :D (I sure hope you referenced the rig for your animation...)

Oh I see, I guess I missed that then. It shouldn't be a problem to implement the new features to your model if you send it to me. I just hope the new blendshapes are still going to be compatible since redoing them would be quite a lot of work. I've only shown this animation to you and don't plan to post it anywhere else since it was just done to show the new facial features to you. Once the 1.2 model is finished I'll probably do a new facial animation test and reference everything. You could probably include it into your submission then to showcase what the model can do. :)

Gah! I totally forgot to mention: I tried using nCloth for her hair, too, with stiffer settings. It looks alright so far, but suffers from the same problems as the loincloth (i.e. can't be manually controlled anymore)

I think I've found a workaround. Could you tell me how you assigned your blendshapes to the head controller? With that I could could them where yours are. :)

Thought you'd be really interested to see this new blend shape: http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/.....1/eyeblink.jpg

Took a lot of time tinkering around with the polygons. The result isn't perfect, but probably more usable. :)

Yeah, that looks good ^^ way better than mine lol. I'm still not a fan of Furryball's lighting and fur solutions, but eh, whatever. XP I think I'll try to redraw the original eye texture, though.

I know, their missing support for point light shadows is driving me nuts. They're going to release a new 2.0 version soon which will hopefully be better. Can't wait to see the new eye texture. I hope you're working with your model, since the 1.1 model has different polys which makes it unable to add blendshapes later on.

Hey Rhyfe, no need to redraw her eye texture anymore, I've created a physically modelled eye with blendshapes for her pupil size. This time it's also positioned correctly unlike the old eyeball which was completely inclined.

I didn't like the realistic look either. This time I worked with eye references from the character and modeled the scales correctly. Since the eyeballs are phisically modelled I was finally able to get that Pixar-like shiny crystal eye effect, looks really neat! I'll give you some pics soon. I've redone the furmap as well with references this time. All in all she looks a lot more like in Adventures and more comic like with these new changes, I think you'll like it. :)

Nice! Anyway I've stopped working on it for now, since you're getting it done. I'll see what I can do about trying to import the ncloth stuff I did from my previous rigs onto yours.

Okay, no problem! Getting the ncloth stuff would be great, the facial features are basically finished now. The last thing the could use some shape is the rest of her body since it only has these flat clothing textures. I wonder how Littledragon did his clothing, I played around with ncloth but found it quite hard to handle, it always screwed up.

He built and textured his model from scratch so it is easier for him. The best we can do is to make the textures better, if we're working with the original model. Anyway, the only thing I'll be turning into an nCloth is her loincloth and maybe hair, since those are the only things that move outside of limbs, eyes etc.

Hmm, maybe I'll ask him if we could use some of the clothing he made for his model. It just looks a lot better if it's 3D modelled. Here are some tests with the new eyes and fur by the way. Eyes still need some specular reflection, apart from that they're pretty good so far. The colors of the iris, pupil sizes as well as the shinyness is adjustable.

http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/.....eyesandfur.jpg

It probably wouldn't work... his model and the original Krystal's models would most likely have different proportions, so I'm going to say probably not.

Just gave it a try and it would actually work with a few modifications. :) I'll try to make some small fixes on the rig by repainting some skin weights, the pelvic/leg region bends into her body when she's trying to sit for example, maybe I can work on that.

I´ve saw this a while back in Krystalarchive.com an it´s awesome. really congrats one of (if not) the best Krystal render I´ve seen, applause.

Hey Rhyfe,

I'm about to clean up the new model right now but can't get around a few issues. While your blendshapes only deform facial regions my new ones deform some body parts as well since I slightly altered the geometry. Can you tell me how you made your blendshapes only affect the facial region? O_o'

Probably doing a version with Mental Ray shaders as well, but at first I need to get rid of the bugs.

Paint blend shapes weight, just found it. :3

WOW!!! >^_^<

THAT's one cute, hot (pic at the bottom) Krystal!
I wish I'vae only been taught how to render with AutoCAD and that doesn't look THIS good...

Great work!

I hate to be the kill joy in this conversation but I spy a small error that the ripper forgot to acomidate when he packaged this model. its flipped a crossed the X axis (left/rite). the GameCube rendered its scenes wierd and when the geometry and textures where in memory they where flipped. one of the post process cycles the GC had reserved for effects was dedicated to flipping the frame back when it was pushed out to the TV.

thankfuly in 2k9 they had rigging tools for replacing geometry without affecting the vertex weights called [drum roll while I go check] Skin>Edit Smooth Skin=Subsitute Geometry Options. the Geometry could be: copied, flipped and its history and transforms deleted and then reapplied to the rig, no harm no foul.

brought me to this conclusion was a subtle detail of the character that I've burned into memory (because her hair always drives me insane when I model) the part of her hair is flowing to the wrong side...

Interesting... I wonder if that could be why Maya Fur didn't seem to work properly. Hmm! In any case, I think it's a small problem that doesn't really need a fix ^^ Substitute Geometry didn't quite work properly either, I tried before and it just screws everything up XD

on the subject of fur, in my experience if you are attempting a [texture] map based approach the character usually has to have 1:1 unique texture space with no overlaying UVs. it can be done with multiple pieces or even separate UV sets but more often than not the best approach is usually to knuckle down and make the texture space dedicated. just screwing around with a character back in o-10' I threw an automatic map onto the mesh and then baked the textures over into the 1:1 space and started painting. I never really completely understood texture based fur flow but I've seen it done. Though all things considered with this model it really is a gimick to sell when packaging the model. the geometry of the character is to low to really take advantage of it and there is no clear topology difference between what is supposed to grow fur and whats not, I.E. cloths...

I digress though, furry Krystal would be a fun thing to screw around with ^.^

Oh, right. Overlapping UVs. Forgot about that. ^.^

In any case I'm not the one who's working on the model/rig right now: Greyfirefox is. He's making a whole new model based on the original, so, yay XD

Wonderful! But there are a few things. Can this model be imported in Blender (what format does it have)? And is it free to use (a specific license would help too). Also, the download link in description is broken... can you post a new one please?

This is actually an outdated version of the rig: Here's the latest one so far - http://files.krystalarchive.com/Gre.....al_Rig_1.4.zip

You can import the model itself into Blender, but not the rig - It's way too complex for that. Maya isn't free usually, but you can download an education version that has a few limitations.

Thanks. I will try this later on

Will it work on the later versions of Maya?

It will, but if you want to use it please get the latest version instead! (The link's a couple comments above yours). The only reason why you'd still want to use 1.0 is if you don't have FurryBall to render the fur out.

I just tried the link but it gave me a 404 error.

Try this: http://files.krystalarchive.com/Gre.....al_rig_1.4.zip

I got the file, but now whenever I try opening it out comes a file with the extension "cpgz". What does that mean?

Might be a couple of problems if you're getting a cpgz file: try using a different program to unzip, or download the file again. Try Googling your problem next time, it really helps XD

I downloaded as a rar file this time. It kept saying "No files to extract."

Apparently I missed out an uppercase letter: http://files.krystalarchive.com/Gre.....al_Rig_1.4.zip

I tried downloading it myself and opened it in WinRAR, seems fine.

I couldn't get WinRAR to work on my Mac.

Try Zipeg? WinRAR is for Windows, obviously.

Is Zipeg for Mac?

Well, nothing I tried works. The file keeps coming out corrupted.

Sorry, I really can't help you then :/

Never mind, I just got it working! ^^

Late, I know, but the rig link is long dead

Yeah, I took it down after some time. There's other, newer versions and other rigs (like yours!) so I didn't think it really mattered! :P

Oh, well I was just wondering, sorry to bother ya! I didn't want to compare the one I recently made with yours or anyone else's since mine probably isn't that great in comparison

Psh, they're two totally different things (yours is in 3dsMax right? And meant for real time rendering.) so it's actually kinda hard to compare. :P

Alrighty then

Does this work on gmod?