Cryptic Worlds

It’s been well over 11 years since Toy Story 2 graced the silver screen, I saw Toy Story 3 in 3D just yesterday and it was exactly what I expected from Pixar, a quality movie and a quality “threequel” to boot.  I read about what it took to make Toy Story 3 and it’s pretty interesting. The original rigs and models they had used 11 years ago for Toy Story 2 were incompatible with the current software they use so everything had to be recreated for the movie, amazingly I couldn’t tell the difference however Buzz Lightyear did have a helluva lot more detail and as they stated in the article he was made up several pieces instead of a single mesh. As for the human element in the films the Hair and Fur modifier they use now is definitely well beyond what they used in the original 2 films.  Now, I didn’t have to see it in 3D but I felt compelled to dish out the extra $2 to see just how different it made the experience. It was cool, unlike some other “3D” movies where the effect was thrown on half hazardly close to premier, Toy Story 3 used it very well. On a more professional note I have to wonder what all goes into the creation of content for the Real D technology and more importantly the new technologies video game companies are going to be employer when the 3D Fad hits game consoles. I wonder where it’s gonna fall on me when I finally get a job in the industry, just what am I gonna have learn or for that matter will I be involved at all? I think it’s important to wonder these things since if the “fad” actually catches on for a while I may just be involved in it somehow.

For the first part of my capstone an inorganic object is required, I split it up into 3 weapons for the game I want to make and the capstone is based around. I thought it’d be easier then it was to complete this part of the project but it took me much longer then original predicted. However I have finished them, except for the rather plain look of the PAK Rifles texture I’m pretty satisfied with how they turned out. The 3 weapons out of the 7-8 I had conceived for the game include:

Protonic Accelerated Kinetics (PAK) Rifle

This weapons I designed to fulfill the purpose of the token shotgun weapon, giving it a more sci fi approach as in it shoots out shards of energy instead of buck shot. I’m not as satisfied with the outcome of the texture of the rifles body however.

MKV Inferno Flamethrower

This has my favorite texture job of the 3 weapons here, I think it came out really nice however it does show the weaker texture of the PAK Rifle if they were placed side by side, I’ll have to think of what to do to make the texture better on the other gun.

Cryo Rifle

This is one of my favorite weapon concepts, a cryonics gun (a freeze gun).  I wanted to make environmental hazards in game like coolant tanks so a freeze effect would be cool to use for a weapon.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted guns to have secondary fire but I thought it’d be cool to make this guns secondary fire shoot a projectile that creates icicles when it hits a surface which you could then throw enemies into to impale them. The possibilities are endless! (At least.. as far as I can program lol)

Next up.. Characters

My attempt at a low polygonal character for an assignment going over low poly character construction. So far this guy is clocking in at 988 triangles. I find it odd actually wanting to use triangles since we had been taught that triangles are undesirable but they are used extensively in low polygonal modeling however if you have the ability to go high polygonal (4k+ Polygons) then triangles can be avoided. I want to add a cloak and a bottom jaw as separate objects to this guy but I have to continue to work it down further. I’ve seen people who have made working characters at 500 triangles but I don’t see mine being that low poly and functional at this point. It’s not suppose to look pretty by itself, the texture mapping will be what makes this look good. Though I believe I’m under the typical amount of triangles for a model found in a PSP game.

Lipsync assignment, I chose the chainsaw gag from the Simpsons. I decided to mod the premade rig to sorta look like Homer from The Simpsons.

I’ve been working on building up my portfolio for character design. So far I’ve been pretty slow at it as I’ve only gotten 2 fully modeled (minus a few accessories such as hair and cloth) characters done. My 2nd personal character is the 3D rendition of the Annulnali race from my Chronicles of Terrus universe. This one unlike the Vulkanian is skinned with 3DS Max’s Biped skeletal system which I’ve not really experimented with until the Advanced Animation class that I am taking this term, while parts of it are pretty cool others I don’t like as much such as some of the ways the bones rotate or turn as opposed to the standard IK Bone system I had utilized for the Vulkanian. It does however have a built in walk cycle but it yields rather weak and robotic looking motions so it really comes down to personal preference I guess. I’ve heard the industry loves the Biped system for humanoid characters but I’ve also heard that when hiring, they usually look for people who have used the systems walk cycle so maybe it’s better that I refine my standard skeletal systems and my walk cycles.

As I’m more focused on Character Design and Construction, it’s mainly my focus as of late but the progression of learning better techniques for character modeling have slowed me down a bit but I hope to start churning them out at a more steady pace so I have a stellar portfolio to show off my skills.

As part of the 4 part final for my Surface Techniques class we were tasked with taking a model of our own creation (preferably a non-organic object) and place it into a photograph with adequate lighting and the use of the matte/shadow material to make the object look like it was actually part of the scene. Well I decided to go with my Extreme Ghostbusters ghost trap model I created previously. I just threw on a reflection map, some soft lighting, added a trap switch (though I think the EGB trap was wireless in the cartoon lol) and angled it. I like how it came out but I guess it’s not entirely photo realistic, the way the trap casts a shadow seems to work but should it be softer? These are questions I’ll need to answer when I get a job in modeling.

So I’ve been basically working my ass off on this one so I could use it for a project due this coming monday. I can say that from unwrapping this model (which took me nearly a week x.X) I know how NOT to model a humanoid character, while I’ve cleaned up a lot of the triangles, 5 sided polygons (anything but 4 sided is a no no), stray vertices and overall shape of parts of the model there are still parts of it that need work but I’m at the point where this being my first humanoid character model ever it’s probably pretty good since without NURBS or Turbosmooth it clocks in at about 4,358 polygons which is a good number for a low poly model. Now I just finished putting together and implementing a basic rig for this model, next step: Skinning, this is where I apply the skin modifier where the mesh is directly manipulated by the IK Bone system that is the heart of the rig, and the most time consuming aspect of that process is adjusting the Envelope. This is what tells the modifier whether to warp a certain part for example an elbow to higher extent then say the mesh where the forearm is.

We’ve been covering rigging and IK bone chains in Intermediate Animation and I’ve been dying to apply it to some of my own models, well it’s not as easy as I thought it’d be. For the most part the original model had some sloppy work on it compared to what I can churn out now so that needed to be fixed. I’ve corrected the odd neck, better spaced the eyes, added a bit more girth to his frame and fixed a slew of bad geometry but the hands are probably the biggest tweak.. well.. tweak is maybe not the right word because I amputated the old ones lol. So the hands are brand spankin new and I think they better convey the bulky nature of the characters race. Now all I gotta do is unwrap this thing and my prior attempts have left me knowing it’s gonna take a lot of patience and time.. can’t say I’m looking forward to it but it’s gotta be done if I wanna apply a texture to the model.

I’ve learned quite a bit since starting my Surface Techniques class back in October. About a week ago our midterm was due for the class which involved texturing a gas station scene. This model was of questionable construction in my personal opinion with some awkward additions to the mapping and the overall design of the structures. One thing we were not allowed to do was alter any geometry in it so I had to use maps to my advantage. While this project doesn’t look as amazing as I had hoped it would I’m still proud of it, I was basically used as an example of what an A looked like in the class lol. That made my day.

(continue reading…)