Help: Stick Figure Modeling

Zash

Hey there,
I wanted to get some help on modeling a StickMan. The main issue with the structure of the mesh is to get the legs properly there. See with a Stickman as such in 2d the legs take up the same space.. while in 3d they can't. The strusture needs to be able to animate it for a beat'em up game. I've messed around a lot with it using cylinders but can't seem to get it right. I was curious if I could get any help here...

The design would be something like this..


As you can see in this simple test image..
The hips leg part are stuck together which makes the animation of it very hard using either bones or envelopes.

Nike did it well in their ads, but I can't figure out the structure of it.
Thanks for any help, this is for our Society project as GDS leeds - www.gdsleeds.com
Zash.

Eric Chadwick

The easiest way would be to use the setup as you have it already, and simply bind all the vertices of each leg to a single bone, no deformation. Then use a shader like the first example, where you have no shading at all.

In fact, if you're going to do that (no shading), you might as well go for sprites instead, that are always flat to the camera.

You might want to play with your proportions a bit to match the illustration, or maybe you really do want a different-looking character...

Gmanx

You could tackle it 'old skool' with each limb section being a complete capsule shape - toe to ankle/ankle to knee/knee to hip - with the ends of each being the same radius. That way you'd get the proper curve at the elbow/knee etc. That would probably force you into a 'forward kinematics' situation, which may or may not be what you want for animating.

Jeff Gran

I think Gmanx has it right. Just make capsule shapes and instead of binding it with skin or physique or rigid-bind or whatever, just parent (link) the separate geometry shapes to the respective bones. They'll be interpenetrating but it shouldn't matter if the shader is gonna be flat like in the concept...

Toomas

Heres some Kingdom of Loathing fanart i made few months ago

Zash

Guys,
Thanks for the comments. I've tackled it old school with the capsules, but it doens't look that brilliant. What would be nice and this is the apporach I've taken is to make the use the capsule technique, but have everthing merged togehter.. Here are some problematic shots:

The way it's meshed now...


The way the streching and horrid stuff happens...


The old skoll prob:


Thanks for the help.. I tmight be that I'll need to add some sort of hips..

Toby.

Eric Chadwick

In the bottom pic, did you try overlapping all the caps? If you think of each cap as the end of a sphere, then you could reposition the capsules so the "spheres" are in the exact same position. The bone for each capsule would rotate about the center of the "sphere," so the capsules are always interpenetrating...

How are you going to shade the model?

Gmanx

I'm with Eric. I had envisioned connecting capped ends (half spheres) sharing the same central pivot, then your outline is always clean. Maybe add a small horizontal capsule 'pelvis', that your hips can revolve in?

Zash

Interesting I'll have to mess around with that.. give me a day..

Zash

Zash

Ok..
Worked on this a little but still got some issues..

This was an extra try... the problem with this one is that it is hard to attach the verts to the correct edge...


I think I might have interpreted what you guys explained a little weirdly, as my outcome was this for the old skool style.. so we have problems with the legs crossing over...


Any other ideas?

Toomas

Do limbs and torso as 4 sided cylinders then do all the welding and stuff and subdivide it.

Zash

Toomas: 4 sided as in a full 8 sided cylinder.. or essentially a 4 sided cylinder.. which makes it a square.

That lowers the poly count by a lot though, plus doesn't solve the problem of how to approach the structure of the model.

Zash

Toomas

Thats why you SubDivide it, to make it round again.


The less polys you have to work with the easier it gets.

Gmanx

This is what I had in mind. Simple shapes with common pivots - linked to the torso in a parental hierarchy. That way your silhouette stays exactly true.

P.S, I only just got the whole 'GDS Leeds' thing, I'm a Leeds man and a Leeds Uni graduate from way back!!

Zash

Toomas,
I like the style and the output of your model... I understand now the 4 sided cylinder.. but when you mean subdivide... I understand that for the sort horizontal areas like arms and stuff.. but length-wise on the whole thing... that would be a bit hard to get it accurate for the legs and arms to maintain the same around of polys? Understand what I mean? If you subdiv the torso section fine.. but how would you get the legs and arms with the same amount of subdivs? detach them, subdiv and then re-attach?

Gmanx, Yeah I'm helping setup a lot of game stuff here. You're option looks good too, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to make it look good.

I'll have a go with both model types, check out which works out best.

Thanks so much for your continuing help! Seriously appreciated!

Toby.

Toomas

You make it continious mesh and then subdivide it i would also recommend to rig and uv-map (if you want to use textures ofcourse) before you subdivide it.
If you use Max then its Modifiers > Subdivisional Surfaces > Meshsmooth (each iteration multiplies the polygon count by 4)

Zash

Toomas,
I presume in your pictures that you did basically a cylinder, then another, rotate, add it to the torso, then weld the right verts and continue. Because when I do a meshsmooth on that method, the arm joins all mess up - Not entirely sure why.

I'm making progress actually! I'll post a couple of models up for you to see once done.

Toby.

Toomas

Thats why you add edgeloops where the limbs attach to torso (and to animate aswell)

Zash

Toomas,
I hate to be a total pain.. (and I thought I wasn't too bad on the modeling).. run me through the steps... and define what are edge loops?

1. Make four-sided cylinder
2. Rotate,center and scale the thing.
3. Make into Poly or Mesh?
4. Select Poly and extrude?

This is where i get lost... that step.. to extrude.. or chamfer the edge.. umm could do it so many ways.. but edgeloops?

THANKS!
Toby.

Gmanx

Edge loops:

http://cube.phlatt.net/home/spiraloid/tutorial/modeling.html

very important for animation these days.

Zash

Umm Thanks for the link, it doesn't specifically explain anything about how to use them or where to even start with it.

Thanks,
Toby.

Rick Stirling

An edge loop is a loop of edges - each vert has only 4 edges coming out from it, so the loop goes forward and there is an edge to the left and an edge to the right. This means you can start on one vert and follow a straight path along an edge, and end back at the starting point.

Anywhere where you have less or more than 4 edges per vert breaks the loop.

Zash

Right, so it's just adding an extra line of verts really...

Toby.

KDR_11k

Right, so it's just adding an extra line of verts really...

Yep, adding edges to a box and pushing around vertices is all there is to box modeling .

Zash

Guys I've been working on some of the models. I understand the Edge Loop Technique now which is cool.

So you know this is the stort of style we're heading for:


Where I'm still stuck and this is silly is the the creation of the arms and legs. Using a four sided cylinder, how many section should it have? I usually give it a couple, then extrude two sides of the cylinder as to make the arms. but this tends to lead me to more rectangular shapes in arms. This can be fixed by chamfering the two faces I would extrude (moving the verts into a square shape), and then extruding them to make the arms. I can't quite figure out how to really put two cylinders together, not that I have a problem with welding verts, it's more the possition of the verts that really bother me on the torso as to link them with the verts from the arms. I'm not quite used to it...

I'll post some images a little later today when I get back.
T.

Zash

Toomas,
Could you post a front and side view of your stickmen, just to help me look at the structure. I've been makign good progress! I'll put up soem shots once I've gotten a little further..

Toby.

Toomas

Zash

After a few month of heavy duty research and questions i finally got somewhere with the actual NS player model. Here is a final version, as we don't suffer from any linking problems, although there needs to be some vertex clearing up in the groin area as that's the most difficult and it's causing some issues with the meshSmoothing. This is essentially what it will look like, there might be some proportional changes and some mesh tweaking, but this is it basically - Unless animation reveals mesh problems.

Front View - Normal


Perpective View - Normal


Perpective View - With MeshSmooth


Toomas, Thanks for you help on this! You've been superbe!

Toby.