3d Character : Beast Warrior

Beowulf · Post by **Beowulf** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 5:32 pm

Hurry up and finish your stuff so that people will come in here and read my work

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 10:52 pm

Darkside;

I'll do my best man

roid;

hm...How about you eat a bag of hell!!!!

Sergeant Thorne;

Thanks!

Duper;

I'd like to see it... Can you get that for me?

Robo;

interesting... I might look into that.

Beo;

Rooooofffllleessss

For now, I started the rig and facial morphers... But man there is so much work to do! (ugh) So far the sword arm is rigged, or at least sort of rigged...

I just realized I have the sword rotated the wrong way in his hand as I am posting this. I'll correct it tomorrow. Also his gums and tongue only have base colors on them I will texture them shortly.

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Sat Jul 31, 2004 11:13 pm

DT, how much you charge per hour? I'd love for you to make me a animated icon for teh DBB but in a medival time period.

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:06 am

Hi Merlin,

I no longer do freelance artwork. Sorry - I'm just too short on time right now to take on any outside projects.

Btw everyone I had a job interview at a very large, popular game company a couple days ago. Not sure how things will pan out but I'll let you know if anything comes of it.

More shots of the rig later

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:58 am

Good luck on the job. I didn't think you did freelance but hey I wasn't expecting it anyways.

Any chance you telling us which company?

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 2:15 pm

This is still really beta but I'm plugging away at it! I know there are many things to fix

As for the company, I suppose it doesn't make a difference either way... Electronic Arts.

More soon!

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 2:58 pm

Good luck with EA dude. Would be wicked to know someone in the gaming industry.

Just point them to this thread and they should have no reason NOT to hire you.

I visit www.renderosity.com daily and your work is by far the best I've seen.

Ferno · Post by **Ferno** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 4:27 pm

EA? oh nice.. I'm in the same neck of the woods. maybe we should grab lunch or somethin.

Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 1:32 pm

holey *uck balls 0_0

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 4:58 pm

Let me start by apologizing for the size of some of these images.

The rig is complete! It's far from perfect but I think I can get what I need out of it.

Merlin;

They've seen this model in moving video and were very impressed! Too bad I couldn't pose it in time for the interview

Ferno;

Not sure what you mean, EA is stationed all over the world if I were to work there, I'd work at there Tiburon division here in Orlando.

Warlock;

Hehe!

Ferno · Post by **Ferno** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 11:39 pm

ah ok... I figured since you said EA, you meant the one in Vancouver B.C..

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 12:36 am

I'm working on the hair now. Most of the day was spent with Shag Hair without much to show for it. So at the end of a long disappointing day I decided to try something else.

Robo, your suggestion of using the scatter tool to simulate hair is showing a lot of promise. It definitely has the potential to look good, the question is whether I can get the whole thing rendering with the amount of poly's it adds.

In the test I ran (on one section of fur) each hair was 7 polygons with the section totaling about 9k. The render was promising, as was the result for the amount of time I put in.

Problem is, even at 9k a section I'm looking at somewhere in the range of 150 to 200k just for hair if I do both legs in entirety. This character is currently 300k so that's adding a lot.

If it really does end up looking good but won't render as a whole... It might be time for me to finally break down and start looking into composite rendering. Maybe then I can figure out a way to get the animations I need....

But that's all beside the point. I'd like to thank you for your suggestion! If this works out I owe you one.

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 12:04 pm

Here's the fur, it all renders.... Not that great but I think it should be enough for what I need. In moving video it looks pretty good with motion blur. For my final still I create I will probably touch it all up with photoshop.

Don't pay attention to all the little things clipping, its just an issue with the rig that will have to be compensated for in all my final renders.

Robo · Post by **Robo** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 2:10 pm

Wow, a suggestion of mine actually worked.

Make sure you tell it not to display the actual number of iterations though, thats bad news

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 3:00 pm

Not rendering it with meshsmooth anyway, that would send the poly count through the roof. But yeah, I have to have meshsmooth off in viewport + mesh select on everything to even rotate around this guy. And its slow.

Darkside Heartless · Post by **Darkside Heartless** » Fri Aug 06, 2004 7:39 pm

I can see why

very well done, I don't need to do a full-on review, the pics do it for me

Badboy · Post by **Badboy** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 10:43 am

Once again I must pass out and die

/me is wishing I could do 3d work like that

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Mon Aug 09, 2004 12:54 pm

Thanks guys. Heres a quick composite test. Nothing fancy. Hopefully he'll be better integrated in the real thing

The background is 2 layers, the ruins/terrain and then the animated sky behind it.

I think I'm going to start animating by wednesday... He's got a little beard now too and I just have to tweak a couple textures then I'm setting the posed animation to render. Should be doing that tomorrow.

[]V[]essenjah · Post by **[]V[]essenjah** » Tue Aug 10, 2004 4:55 am

Really nice work once again. I wouldn't imagine EA games not hireing you after they see this.

If I had the tools and the time right now I would love to do something up to this scale. Hopefully one day. I could actually model it but the problem would be with hair and rendering the actual model.

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 9:43 am

Hey guys I heard back from EA

phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=50689#50689

I'd like to keep this thread on-topic about this project, so any comments regarding EA can be posted there. Thanks!

Plebeian · Post by **Plebeian** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 10:33 am

There must be a pool of Talent that we all get a bit of when we're born... and you got a whole heap from those of us who didn't get any!

Just saw this thread (don't often check the Gallery), and I'm with Merlin: jaw's fallen off, rolled off somewhere, I hope I can find it.

Looking at some of the base weapon models, they look like studio shots of very high-quality plastic models (in other words, extremely detailed, and extremely realistic). If some of us had about 1% of that talent, we'd be satisfied. Glad to see you've been working on this and will be able to do it for a living!

Keep up the awesome work, and watch the drool puddles. We can't help it.

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 5:06 pm

Thanks Pleb! This however, is where it starts to get ugly.

Here is my first preview of the animation :

link removed, new version below

It's encoded in DivX 5.2 to keep the filesize down to something reasonable. This clip is one meg.

Animation is not my strong point (at all) so please feel free to rip this as much as you want. Just be specific as to what I need to focus on & improve to make this decent! I'm not aiming for the most amazing animation in the world, just something that doesn't look stupid.

Thanks again, input is needed more than ever at this stage!

Tricord · Post by **Tricord** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 5:33 pm

Good work D!
Maybe the swing could be a bit more swift at the end of your animation. Seems like the character is cutting butter with no particular rush

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 6:11 pm

is he just making a posturing gesture ... ie roaring.. or is he swinging in attack? If the latter, he's swinging with the flat of the axe along the path.

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 6:43 pm

Yeah man I need to fix that... Damn this is tough hehe

Someone passed along a site to me with some really helpful information on animating and I'm going through the steps now. I think my next attempt will be better (or so I hope)

*JBOMB* · Post by ***JBOMB*** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:25 am

it doesnt surprise me that you were picked up by EA..
Your stuff is imaginative and executed on a pro level. Congrats to you on that and the beast is super wicked DT..

I have a feeling the only thing holding you back right now is your own computer..

i hope in madden 2k7 all the players have horns and swords

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 11:45 am

Hey everyone here is an update, let me know if you think this looks better. I reworked a lot of it and added camera shakes too.

http://plaza.ufl.edu/jeremyg/hidden/minanim2.avi

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 5:45 pm

Awesome! way WAY better!

just a couple quick thoughts. You might to bring the tip of the axe back in toward his head and roll the blade around as it decends .. which I think it does, but it goes out of view.

Also, keep the eye-line pointed focused in the same area throught the swings; like he is looking at his target which is to his low right.

Great job! Keep it up!

Do_Checkor · Post by **Do_Checkor** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 2:40 pm

whow man! R-E-S-P-E-C-T and congrats!

Defender · Post by **Defender** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 12:56 pm

Darktalyn1 wrote:Hey everyone here is an update, let me know if you think this looks better. I reworked a lot of it and added camera shakes too.

http://plaza.ufl.edu/jeremyg/hidden/minanim2.avi

Maybe I'm missing a codec or something, but when I play that AVI it's just black.

Weird.

Robo · Post by **Robo** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 1:43 pm

^^ The same...

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 1:47 pm

Get the current version of Divx. what.. 5.03 or something?

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 4:10 pm

What's up guys you're going to need the latest DivX to watch the vid (like Duper said)

I'm making slow but steady progress on this guy but school has started and I have 4 tough classes so I'm not working on this as much as I'd like anymore. Plus my girlfriend is back in town so I tend to get... distracted on my free time

I'll see if I can get something posted up tonight. It's actually much farther along than what I have shown so far.

One of the big issues I'm having right now is that I downloaded a nice collection of sound files that I want to edit together to create the audio clip for this animation, but Premiere isn't reading them. They play fine on my machine but when I import I get nothing.

Does anyone have a program for converting mp3's or wma's to wav files? I think if I convert them to wav it might work... If no one has something I'll have to hunt for a program myself.... Nothing is ever easy, it seems :/

Robo · Post by **Robo** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 4:31 pm

Musicmatch has an mp3/wav converter... and you can convert it back if you like, to any quality.

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 9:41 pm

Thanks Robo tomorrow I'm going to try to tackle the sound issue, see if I can't start getting this whole thing wrapped up.

Here's some stills from the video as it stands right now.

There's some problems with the render so I'm going to have to render it again tomorrow but I'm pretty happy with how its going overall. Let me know what you think.

Darktalyn1 · Post by **Darktalyn1** » Mon Aug 30, 2004 5:12 pm

hey guys i uploaded a pretty low quality divx of the animation, let me know what you think. im planning to make any changes then re-render + add sound. You'll need divx5.2

http://plaza.ufl.edu/jeremyg/hidden/minanimtest.avi

So, now is the time for any final crits and comments! Thanks

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Mon Aug 30, 2004 6:14 pm

DarkShadow · Post by **DarkShadow** » Mon Aug 30, 2004 9:38 pm

Wow you never fail to impress me.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Mon Aug 30, 2004 10:50 pm

Very "Edgy"! It looks great.

you realize that there is no way you can post crap any more.

Robo · Post by **Robo** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 5:17 am

Amazing