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Excitements! (Update-ish)
13 years ago
So, after nearly 2 months (Or maybe it was more?) of complete inactivity, I finally seem to have re-ignited that creative little flame inside. Yup, back to work on the Faust model, and now only 1 subdivision phase away from having the geometry done :D
Seeing as I have the Fur shader from the Alex model, that part shouldn't take long to get through. But anyway, getting ahead of myself here...
I scrapped the First draft of the Faust model back in the days, due to a bright idea (And it sure has paid off). The idea? To apply the box modeling techniques usually used for modeling cars. This has left me with a clean mesh, something I've never really had the pleasure of working with before, due to my usual f*beep*-ups.
Basicly, you take a box, and create a rough outline of the model through extrusions. Then sub-divide, add detail, sub-divide, add detail, sub-divide, add detail. To some, this may come across as standard box modeling. but yeah...I just laid down one night and constructed the model in my head, carefully planning out how many subdivisions I should start out with. The magic number: 2.
If I keep this pace up, I'll have a little preview of the finished geometry up early next week. With the guild wars 2 beta weekend though, I won't be getting anything done starting tomorrow afternoon. So yeah, back to Softimage I go, time to compensate for the past months.
Also, Faust, unlike Alex, has colour variations in his fur. This'll be a bit of a challenge, but I should be able to make the fur inherit the colour attributes of the underlying geometry. If I can indeed pull that off, it's as simple as painting the model with the wonderful tool that is Zbrush. If my theory works out...then holy crap, I'll impress even myself, as that'll bring a whole new level of detail to my work. And considdering the endless possibilities of the ICE engine, it should indeed be possible. "Just" a matter of building the right ICE tree. If I make it work as intended, I'll of course put up the ICE tree on here with an explanation of how it works, in case there are other modeling enthusiasts watching me.
And now that we're on the sharing bit, I've been considdering livestreaming work sessions. But in all honesty, I'm nowhere near dedicated enough for that sort of stuff. I pretty much do this stuff on and off at my own leisure. With that said, for my next model project, which will be a re-make of Alex from scratch, applying all of my new techniques, I'll try to either livestream, or record a tutorial with commentary. But all of that stuff in due time.
Back in November, I started talking to some of you about a little project I wanted to do titled "To be a furry", which would be a video with a 3D motion tracked Alex sitting next to me, as "we" explain what it means to be a furry, based on answers that the community would provide to that question. It never really kicked off, as you may have noticed. For starters, I got about 2 answers in total. Second, I never rigged Alex, as I wasn't satisfied with how the model turned out. So I'll keep that one in the project folder for later. (Speaking of which, 38 projects lined up in that folder so far.)
For now though, it's just characters, characters, characters. Will be fun to have a library of characters to play around with, and I'll pull a few animation tests once I get some done and rigged. Maybe even create some animation sets. It'll be a pain without motion capture technology, but it's certainly doable with some blood, sweat and tears....well, mostly sweat and tears...or just tears.
Seeing as I have the Fur shader from the Alex model, that part shouldn't take long to get through. But anyway, getting ahead of myself here...
I scrapped the First draft of the Faust model back in the days, due to a bright idea (And it sure has paid off). The idea? To apply the box modeling techniques usually used for modeling cars. This has left me with a clean mesh, something I've never really had the pleasure of working with before, due to my usual f*beep*-ups.
Basicly, you take a box, and create a rough outline of the model through extrusions. Then sub-divide, add detail, sub-divide, add detail, sub-divide, add detail. To some, this may come across as standard box modeling. but yeah...I just laid down one night and constructed the model in my head, carefully planning out how many subdivisions I should start out with. The magic number: 2.
If I keep this pace up, I'll have a little preview of the finished geometry up early next week. With the guild wars 2 beta weekend though, I won't be getting anything done starting tomorrow afternoon. So yeah, back to Softimage I go, time to compensate for the past months.
Also, Faust, unlike Alex, has colour variations in his fur. This'll be a bit of a challenge, but I should be able to make the fur inherit the colour attributes of the underlying geometry. If I can indeed pull that off, it's as simple as painting the model with the wonderful tool that is Zbrush. If my theory works out...then holy crap, I'll impress even myself, as that'll bring a whole new level of detail to my work. And considdering the endless possibilities of the ICE engine, it should indeed be possible. "Just" a matter of building the right ICE tree. If I make it work as intended, I'll of course put up the ICE tree on here with an explanation of how it works, in case there are other modeling enthusiasts watching me.
And now that we're on the sharing bit, I've been considdering livestreaming work sessions. But in all honesty, I'm nowhere near dedicated enough for that sort of stuff. I pretty much do this stuff on and off at my own leisure. With that said, for my next model project, which will be a re-make of Alex from scratch, applying all of my new techniques, I'll try to either livestream, or record a tutorial with commentary. But all of that stuff in due time.
Back in November, I started talking to some of you about a little project I wanted to do titled "To be a furry", which would be a video with a 3D motion tracked Alex sitting next to me, as "we" explain what it means to be a furry, based on answers that the community would provide to that question. It never really kicked off, as you may have noticed. For starters, I got about 2 answers in total. Second, I never rigged Alex, as I wasn't satisfied with how the model turned out. So I'll keep that one in the project folder for later. (Speaking of which, 38 projects lined up in that folder so far.)
For now though, it's just characters, characters, characters. Will be fun to have a library of characters to play around with, and I'll pull a few animation tests once I get some done and rigged. Maybe even create some animation sets. It'll be a pain without motion capture technology, but it's certainly doable with some blood, sweat and tears....well, mostly sweat and tears...or just tears.
