Anyone seen nutsy? A model I've been working on

nutsy

Hey y'all...
This is an old model I've been revisiting as I get back into the whole 3d thing....it's a werewolf!!!!
I gotta say, I sometimes easily get lost in the whole edgelooping thing, but am really enjoying this so far. I won't be modelling the eyelids around the eyes, just gonna go with a couple of hemispheres so as I can keep him nice and "cartoony".
Hands not done, that's why you cant see them, still need to fill out the ears, and haven't really done much down through the abdomen and legs, all that and some other tweaks, and maybe I'll finish this one

Been a long time and I am hoping to remain active here once again, especially with polycount being home to my favoritest dirty hippy in all of Indianna.

Oh yeah, images!!

yeluis

seems more "bull like" to me

Joao Sapiro

too....meshmoothed...

MoP

Bear in mind it's a very rough start, johny, nowhere near done

However nutsy, seeing some control mesh might be good for crittin'!

As I told you in IRC, getting some harder edges and definition in here is definitely the way to go, and you already know that ... I think yeluis made a good point though, something about it is seeming more bull-like than wolfish at the moment, possibly it's the large lower jaw, or maybe just the huge upper torso proportion.

Keep working on it and we'll see how it goes

nutsy

Thanks guys.
While it is true he is looking "too meshsmoothed" there is a certain look and feel I am trying to get with this. Take the shoulders/biceps/chest area. That is about as hard edged as I want it to be with the definition. Realistic isn't the goal. Now a lot of work does still need to be done, as you pointed out MoP, the upper arm to lower arm transition is not right, and as I go into the hands I can fix this.
My goal is not to create overly defined, extremely ripped, realistic musculature. I just want it to be a nice soft cartoony little dude.
And I can definitely see the "bullish" look to it, and hopefuly things like filling out the ears, and getting the feet (when I get to them)to more resemble paws than hooves will push it in the right direction. He will be keeping the huge upper body and the apish lengthed arms.

dur23

NUTSY!!! wooo!!!!

Looks great so far. In that ever so enticing way that nutsy brings.

msn me fool: hisdurness@hotmail.com

noritsune

looks cool, love the purple. Mop mentioned the large lower jaw, and I agree that it's too heavy for a wolf character. Dogs and wolves and cats always have these thin little chins. Also I doubt you're too meshsmoothed, I think you can get away with all that's there as long as there are enough areas in "sharp focus" to fool the viewer into thinking the whole model has as much structural detail... ya know?

SkullboX

Looking cool nutsy! Like you I'm also trying out a more cartooney style - mainly because it's simply more fun to animate, though it's more stylised than cartooney on my parts.

I'd personaly make the eyelids part of the model itself, it's a lot easier than you think and with sime simple rigging tricks you can get them to move along with the eyes automaticcally (it works great).


You said you had some problems with the edgeloops, but the key as I'm sure you've figured when working on a more cartooney character is to use as little as possible creating a clean result - but as mentioned before you might have used too little as some area's do have that overly meshsmoothed look, just add some more definition. More importantly, don't be afraid to just get rid of an entire area of topology, as lok as you keep the edges of that area intact, you can redraw it very fast. it helped me out a great deal. In any case, some wireframe screengrabs are a must if you want better critique on that. Extra edgeloops do not necassarily mean you lose the soft look, it can very well improve it.


As far as the character itself is concerned, I don't think it has a bullish look, especially when imaging a big set of teeth this is looking very werewolf to me.

If you want to I could send you the model I'm working on with a rig for reference purposes, it might give you some ideas on how to define and smooth, and some rig-reference might be useful.

bearkub

Only one "n" in Indiana, dork. =]

Good to see you back, dude. =]

nutsy

And only one TRULY dirty hippy.

Duuuuuuuuurrrrrrr......thanks man. I'll hit you up tonight after work.
Skullbox, what's happenin'? Maybe you are right, I'll try dinking around with the eyelids.I am figuring out some things with the edgeloops yeah. I've already decided I need to relook at the nose and brows, particularly the brows.

As far as the physique of him, yeah it is going to remain, for the most part, including the big lower jaw, some things are more than likely to get tweaked as I progress.

Also Skullbox, I would love to see your rigged model if you don't mind, nutsy16athotmaildotcom.

I'll post some wireframes when I get home from work.

John Warner

nutsy! hah i was just thinking about you the other day for some reason. good to see you posting stuff again.

do you have a webpage with your stuff on it? i'd love to study some of your drawings now that i've done a bit of practice in the 2d dept.

as far as the model goes, it looks like you've got a good start. every section i'd crit looks like it's set up properly to be defined well so it looks great to me hmm the hands might be a little yucky but it's hard to see.

nutsy

Hey Jon, what's up?
I don't have a website, need to get to work on one. Lost my webspace when my ISP partered with Yahoo and all the webspace went Geocities. Once I get a site put together I'll get some webspace, but who knows when that will happen:)
Yes the hands are yucky, very, very yucky. Lots to do there yet.

I have reworked the face from what it originally was. Skullbox your reference was a great guide in figuring some things out, thanks a lot. Reworking meant a lot of cleaning up of polys in the face, and the mesh itself is still a bit of a mess. Originally I just had too much shit going on for what I was trying to acomplish, edges where they shouldn't be, and edges not where they should be.

I did some work on the face tonight, it is different from the original, but I do like it better. And yeah, Skullbox, I did steal your method of handling the brow, I just like it that much.

SkullboX

Wow, that's a huge improvement over the first version. Looks kickass! A brow like that also works great for animation by the way, not to mention making the morphs for it is second to no work. Here is some of that brow action. I had to rush things and in spite of that I think the end result looks pretty cool. It's going to be so insanely cool to animate, but first I need to redo the body...



Two things, render a little brighter and don't forget to post wireframe shots on the next update. Looking forward to progress!

dur23

Nice update nutsy. Looks clean and fun. Nice lids.

skully you need to be posting more, or at least just let me see what your doin;)

nutsy

Update.
Front, smoothed and low poly cage with wire.




Head shots.












All kinds of images for ya to look at.
Hands and feet are blocked in and require a lot of loving still. Gotta tweak the ears a bit more, and a tweak or two to the corners of the lips. On Skullbox's suggestion I am probably going to add another loop through the cheek.

All in all I am very pleased with my progression on this model, and once again, have learned a lot. I am looking forward to taking these lessons and applying them to future models as well as past models.

Fire away.

nutsy

GRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH.....



Not much done on the model today, but I did do a quick and dirty face rig to check out deformation. I'm not unpleased with the results. Some work to do around the jowels to get it where I want. I also came up with a simple little controller that will cheat dilation of the pupils for the little fella.

dur23

Thats damn sweet nutsy. I like the new cleaned up mesh you go going on there. The loops are where they need to be to animate i would say. Now i wanna see what you can do once you have a kick ass rig in there.

You gonna do a very basic bump map or what not for him?

SkullboX

It looks really cool. As I already told you on msn I think the nose is a bit bear-like, and you might want to try making the end of the jaw less massive just to see how it looks, as wolves' mouths end smaller than they are at the base. Still looking really kickass, I'm looking forward to more facial expressions, and those teeth.

Dur, you seem to be more experienced with stylised characters, do you have any tips to get good and professional looking shading/materials for a style like this? I have no textureing experience at all, but I think for this very minimalistic stuff I might be able to pull something off.

dur23

Lately i've been forced to learn how to tone down on the texturing due to the style the artists here at work have. When i was making skin i just tried my best to replicate the skin shader used in the incredibles. Honestly most of the time there isn't even textures involved. Skin for example, is kept down to the absolute basics. For my most recent all i had was a diffuse map plugged into a sss shader (no bump, no spec, nadda). The little guy on my site (juka) was done without a single diffuse map (anywhere on his entire body), all he had was a couple bump maps and some incidence stuffs (fresnal). It really is all about the lighting when it comes to the styles of characters, i find that if there is any black in the shadows it takes away from the fun of them. Thats one of the perks of doing these meshs is that you don't need a whole lot to get the point across. With these meshs i think that it is really easy to over detail. To much of a bump in one direction and you lose the look your going for completly. You want the textures to stay as simple as the mesh is. The lighting and animation will do the rest for you.

IF you wanted to skull you could send me that lil sheep of yours and i would show you what i think should be done texture wise

nutsy

Update....now with hands!







THe hands are still rough, lots of verts need pulling. They were just quickly stitched on so I will need to work the polys through the wrist transition.
Also, I reworked the nose and snout a bit.

-nutsy

Empty

Aw I liked the old nose. The hands look a bit boxy. The knuckles might just be too lined up.

Looking hawt though.

noritsune

this is turning out awesome! all the new planes and geometry you've added to the facial features are looking just beautiful, and making incredibly pretty shapes under the light.

honestly the only thing that looks "off" to me is the thickness of the chest in proportion to the size of the shoulders. I think he could have a bigger barrel chest to support those large arms, maybe?