Blender character rig

oldskoolPunk · Post by **oldskoolPunk** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 1:47 pm

Hi!

Since the .b3d exporter was completed, I've been wanting to test it out. So I stopped what I was doing and made a character to test it with!

Animation list:

breathe (1,40)
walk (51,130)
open door (141,190)
climb up (191,271)
run (181,401)
slide (411,421)
jump (431,481)

Here is a link the the latest .rar, containing the texture, the .blend file(set up and ready to click export) and the exported .b3d file.
http://www.cafes.net/ladyb/character.rar

Perceval · Post by **Perceval** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 9:20 am

WOW !!! This rig is really well done

!
I've tried it, it seems that you're very experience with blender and character rigging. Congratulation, it's one of the best rig i've seen

EDIT : looks like Spiderman

! Cool

BlindSide · Post by **BlindSide** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 4:34 pm

Hey on the most left side panel of the Editing group of buttons. On the bottom there is Set Smooth and Set Solid. Make sure to set this to Set Smooth so that it looks much better when under low level of subsurf. Im not sure if it was enabled or not but in the .blend file that I downloaded it wasn't.

Oh yeah and nice work I must say again

oldskoolPunk · Post by **oldskoolPunk** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 3:18 am

Hi again.
Made just a few updates to my little test model.
I have improved the armature only slightly. The hip handle still must remain separate from the base bone, unfortunately.
Ive added improved breathing and walkcycle animation, a door open animation, and a climb up animation.

Here is the .blend
Here is the .b3d file.

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 4:11 am

cool, i'll try this one.

i'd like to shade this character.

i have question.

how do i reference the gloves and boots separately?

i think i found them...

do you have the code written for this character?

that will save me time, though.

oldskoolPunk · Post by **oldskoolPunk** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 8:37 am

Hi
To reference those areas separately, you'll need to create some materials for him. I went ahead and did this for you and updated the .blend file. The materials are located just to the right of the vertex groups you have selected in your screenshot. It says "0 mat 0" but now it says "4 mat 4". Now is as good a time as any for me to learn how the textures are accessed in the different materials.

Although my lack of knowledge in this department didn't seem to stop Irrlicht from placing my texture and shader back on him correctly.

My next task will be to create a nice high poly normal map for him. Hopefully this will also get rid of the seams. Do you have any suggestions on software to do this? I have downloaded Melody but I havent tried it yet. I also have DNormGen stuffed away somewhere. It works really well on some things, but it didn't do very well on this little guy.

As for the code, well... To save myself much embarrassment I will keep that to myself for now haha. But maybe someday I will be ready

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 8:44 am

awesome, this is my first time handling subgroups in blender and irrlicht. most of what i've worked on are mesh files, so i will need a little time figuring this out.

to state it clearly, i will need a reference to the set of materials named "gloves", "boots", or it could any name relating to that. i'll use that reference as a material so i can hook it up to an effect.

i'm seeing myself writing a test program for loading the character and then iterating the structure of that character so that i can get a reference of the gloves and boots. i have not done this before so if anyone has an idea how this could be done let me know right away.

this is important to me because i need this code to shade houses, buildings and other mesh objects later.

by the way, i'm also working with other volunteers who're trying to join the source forge hosted project. it's not related to this. if they choose to continue, they'll be writing a parser program for procedural building. this is definitely exciting as buildings can be procedurally built once they get it working. (see http://www.public.asu.edu/~pwonka/Publi ... al-web.pdf)

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 9:12 am

ok, i just downloaded the updated blend file

i see four materials, some of which have material and shader properties.

also noticed the uv mapping in the uv/image editor pane. minetex.tga and minetex.tga.0001

nice work, looks pretty complete.

i was wondering about the nodes, though. i saw the head had node settings, are you planning on adding more nodes to the character.

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 9:49 am

ok, i'm done going over the blend file, i'm familiar with how the materials are set up now. we're on the same page.

let me start playing with this model and i'll use this character as reference to all of my demo programs.

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 9:55 am

'Now is as good a time as any for me to learn how the textures are accessed in the different materials.'

this is nice, we'll be able to reference the texture(s) for a given material. not sure how irrlicht implemented this feature, though.

we'll just have to wait and see later.

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 10:26 am

by the way, when you're at the point of shading the material, you'll need to test it by turning the texture of the material to bright red, in the fragment shader

Code: Select all

out.r = 1.0;

once we're done with that, we'll begin to test multi-texturing.

so we'll get to implement applying decals to any part of the character, by means of multi-texture shading.

and then after that: real-time multi-texturing with variable shader pass.

at this stage, we should be pro's competing against the best.

after that we retire rich!

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 11:25 am

hey, i just realized you will need to re-UV and re-image your mesh.

why?

initially, you had this one big mesh. (no, not mess)

then, you created four materials.

now, you have to setup a new UV map for each material.

this is how irredit works, it has four materials with six textures per material. (skybox example)

hope that made sense.

oldskoolPunk · Post by **oldskoolPunk** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 7:35 pm

Thanks for the tips, dlangdev!

Yes the unwrapping that is included is old. I need to update it. You will notice gaps and holes. This is where I have begun to optimise the mesh. He is quite high poly at the moment. I have reduced the fingers to 4 sides, but cannot reduce them any further. After I have removed as much verts as I can I will unwrap him again.
Although I will continue to use just one UV map for the entire model.

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 8:59 pm

that's cool, keep it up. you are way ahead of me in terms of modelling skills. so i might be stuck depending on your skills for a while.

keep on going, i think you'll be able to bind an effect to a material later, you have the code already in place. and i still have to write mine.

for now, i'm going to work on the labyrinth map i made, start putting materials and uv maps to it, piece-by-piece. we can share resources later in order to save time and effort, though. plus, we use the same tools, there's a lot of common stuff in there.

i'll setup the models in blender and then assemble them in irredit. it is much easier that way.

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 10:40 pm

"Although I will continue to use just one UV map for the entire model."

yup, that's right.

i just did that in this sample demo. i was able to use one tga file for several unwrapped faces.

see sample image below.

large size: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2352/213 ... 27e8_o.jpg

although, using this method of sharing resources for uv mapping has a limitation. i can live with this style for now, unitl i get to the next stage.

by the way, a neighbor saw this and said i could create a 3d world that's safe for kids and he'll let the kids play in there.

looks like i have one waiting customer now, hehe.