3D character MODELLING - First King Project

[lostanimator]

Hi vermeer:

Firstly, and to answer your post, a few things:

1) I'm not claiming that the sketch is perfect, not even close. I assume I'm drawing a game character, and I was sketching as I felt at the moment, in a probably viced, and influenced by comics "style", assuming that what I call "style" is definetely a sum of my skills, mistakes, subjective observation, and taste or possible lack of it (I like the aesthetics of "Den" by Richard Corben, in this particular matter). I didn't say that arms weren't big... so forget about the canon, just for fun...

2) Totally in disagreement with

PS: Besides...trust me..."averages" do work among human bodies way more than we'd would like to admit...

Of course! No problem in admitting proportionality and geometrically precise ordered DNA coded instructions for anything that grows (uncluding all of us), but, it's undenyable that we all show a combination of characteristics that don't match exactly with any canon (Umberto Eco recently publish a couple of books on beauty and uglyness, along times).
Not that the "average" gets close to the "average", but that would be valid if required by the aims fo the sketch, here, it's not that clear...

I agree on the need and convenience of knowing spatial distribution of the body, but again, I wasn't defending that position in the first place, this is for fun, and clearly an exercise with some freedom (at least for the sketch, Christian actually wants me to get closer to the ref...)

3) This is a quick sketch, flattenened towards a plane, with the exception of the knees for rigging ease, and the arms, which I wasn't so sure about the best way of placing them (on the same plane of the body, or the hands forward...), due to my limited skills on this process. What was intentioned in both cases, was that their hands were threatening, and yes, bigger than the average (maybe is a short something complex... who knows?). Solutions about drawing arms on an inclined plane don't help me much, or maybe I'm still too clumsy with max modelling tools, so what?

4) A litlle less talk and a little more ACTION, illuminate us, exercise your wrist (no ofense...), and draw on top of this sketches, if you wish, or even more productive, let's do a sketch based on a natural pose, of a proportioned body (ancient greek rules?, today's fashion standards?), and then help complete my aim of doing a mixed handout oriented for 3D modelling, but filtered by people's experience and knowledge (like you or anyone that volunteers...)

I would upload a bouncing ball I did long ago, but I don' know where I have it...

Sentence: I will do my hundred times skecth and throw away, draw until your fingers bleed, only then you'll know you're drawing...

[vermeer]

Sentence: I will do my hundred times skecth and throw away, draw until your fingers bleed, only then you'll know you're drawing...

Ryu ....Wins !

XD

Okey. Barco animal acuático :p

illuminate us, exercise your wrist (no ofense...)

Too much light for your mortal eyes hahaa...sorry, couldn't avoid that.

And an overall sorry for being a pain in the a$$... :s

exercise your wrist (no ofense...)

tsk, tsk...always thinking in sex...ppl who draw we'r always like that...

About the iron glove throwed noisily to the flor, dunno if ur enough rival,...mwahahaha....no seriously, that would be fun but does not bring money which is only reason to me lately for producing anything... XDDD

And otherwise, more seriously, i feel slightly (not too much) embarrased if you were pursuiting more an style than anything...

Sentence: I will do my hundred times skecth and throw away, draw until your fingers bleed, only then you'll know you're drawing...

yeh, you know, been like 29 years of some longer quantity of living ones doing that dumb activity with the whrist (will not get into details of the other one...) ...and sorta got tired XDD

PD: just for those not getting the spanish humor: the model and sketches are amazing, I just looove soo much to make him full of spanish-celtic furor...

[lostanimator]

Hi again:

I have to say your observations were all legitimate, except for that intolerance for "freedom of use", and for being so picky with an excuse which led the music industry, as instance, to where it is now... (eurovision 2008?)

Due to Christian's requirements (not religious, I mean what Chris wants), I'll have to redo a sketch for a plain human being dressed up as a soldier (no scary villains here). I liked the "Village People" looks of the current sketch, though... Anybody knows how to say "Slap you hard, I will" in egyptian?, it's for the dubbing...

Well, next time, more academical, with golden proportion mantras along the process (second and third voices by my man vermeer...).

Bye now, gotta work, a lot...

[vermeer]

hehe, well, was fun. I also gotta say I observed very deep anatomy knowledge there. Very deep. I was a coward rat for not mentioning...

[christianclavet]

Hi! Been looking at the scketches. Great work, David!

For the reason of theses soldier based on the game story:
The single soldier doesnt need to inspire fear. It's only a standard soldier that will guard the pyramid when the player will try to infiltrate the site.

He's have more or less war experience and theses guys will be on the first level (So it will make no sense to put "terminator swarzy type" ultimate war machine soldier there to kill the player instantly (the player will arrive at the site with only a pistol and some equipment!)

Theses soldiers will be there to protect the site because something as been discovered under the pyramids. They will try to stop anyone to reach the site while some digging equipment is there. When the player arrive they will patrol the site.

We'll see with the IRRai engine, but would be fun to put some squads of these guys (talking together like in fear). The player will retrieve the weapons from them (mostly machine guns like AK47 and ammo)

I'd found some picture of theses "real" guy that are really protecting the piramids right now and the reference pic is to give hint on the uniform style and ethnical particularities of theses soldier. David would put some variations so the player will not kill the same character all the time.
You could check my game design docs to check the picture.

If you'd go in Egypt right now, the country is poor and they surely don't have gyms and suits with armour. So I doubt the character will be highly muscular type like Arnold or Marcus Fenix(GOW). The body base muscular proportion is looking the right size for me. The idea is to try to merge reality with pure fiction that should give an good immersion feeling while playing the game.

If you'd like to fight with REAL big baddy, the anubis warrior will be there and there an warrior cast based civilisation...

Thanks for you all on giving us good inputs for having the character looking right! Don't hesitate on giving your opinion!

If some of you have some more details about the egyptian guard there (weapon type they currently use, vehicles, more details on the uniforms and grades design, pictures etc.) we'd really appreciate it.

[vermeer]

game sounding more and more interesting...

[lostanimator]

Next versions of the soldier will comply with your considerations. I'll have a look myself for pictures, and post them to assure I don't miss the point.

No Arnies then...

[JP]

Christian, i think it should be pretty easy to get the soldiers to stand around in groups chatting or whatever. Basically you'd just have to tell the NPC to remain stationary (though no doubt still alert to his surroundings) and then play an animation of him interacting with someone such as talking to them.

And i'd say that Egypt would still have gyms, or at least its inhabitants can still be muscular. In Tunisia they had gyms (not 100% sure how close the countries are in economic terms) and even tribes who live in the jungle tend to be pretty damned muscular, so you don't need gyms to get buff hehe. But i would agree that the soldiers shouldn't be ultra-buff like arnie or marcus fenix but those sorts of guys are a bit of a minority really, most of the guys down my gym aren't up to that size, only professional body builders or gym addicts

[lostanimator]

Here it is, he's still a killing machine, but more discreet in the outfit, which was lend by his cousin, who is even more lethal...

[lostanimator]

And this one, for vermeer... (who has been sharpening his knives all night long waiting for this)

[vermeer]

HAHA

XD

[lostanimator]

This one more similar to actual infantry

[dlangdev]

that's pretty cool.

i wonder how hard it is to model and rig a model that is:

1) muscular. having big bulgy muscles.

2) clothing that follow the contour of the bulges.

see for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRaFB6wP ... re=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRLSH78UZxQ

female: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhJosE2PqbI

it would be nice to have a discussion on that here or somewhere outside of this thread.

[Halifax]

that's pretty cool.

i wonder how hard it is to model and rig a model that is:

1) muscular. having big bulgy muscles.

2) clothing that follow the contour of the bulges.

see for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRaFB6wP ... re=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRLSH78UZxQ

female: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhJosE2PqbI

it would be nice to have a discussion on that here or somewhere outside of this thread.

You'll probably want to talk to some of the Epic Games modelers/animators/riggers than. You can talk to them if you know where to look.

[lostanimator]

Hi dlangdev:

Cool reels in that vancouver school...

Been checking lately the cloth tools and modifier in max, but coudn't figure out much out of the tutorials (up to now, don't mean they're not good tools). Meanwhile, when doing tests for the normal projection and armour mesh modelling, I saw a cool modifier taht could do the job in many cases (at least for following kind of rigid geometry, and more flexible results with a good weighting) called "shell". It projects the geometry as if pushing it form the inside, giving you an equidistant mesh you can tweak and add wrinkles to, if you want. I can't figure out how to deal with flaggy pieces of clothing and such (need to study a lot more...)

For this thread, the anubis model had a similar (in geometry terms) situation, with the pectorals and shoulder frame, which suggested to add some more bones (the least you can) to provide the weight in intermediate areas between rigid ones. You adjust part of the weight for each bone in the surroundings, and that's it (roughly, it takes time, and I don't master the technique, so I'm sure there's a lot to say about this).

This post is just subjective opinion, I'm not saying this is the optimal way, the only one, not even a recommendable one... as always, any suggestions will help me with the job that's left to do, so please...