Helena from DOA (sarah carter) wip
polycounter lvl 11
Hey everyone,
Been teaching a (fairly basic) max course part time for a couple of years now at the local uni, spend so much time working with other people on their stuff that I never actually do anything of my own. So in order to remedy that - also because there's a pretty cool sounding 3D job on offer near(ish) to where I live - I decided to pull my head out and do something focused of my own from start to finish.
I think I'm pretty much completed the modelling phase - it took 23 hours and she's currently 3268 polygons (I'd love some feedback from anyone who does this sort of thing all day every day, are these good stats?). Anyway, here are some references and screen shots from the project so far:
Been teaching a (fairly basic) max course part time for a couple of years now at the local uni, spend so much time working with other people on their stuff that I never actually do anything of my own. So in order to remedy that - also because there's a pretty cool sounding 3D job on offer near(ish) to where I live - I decided to pull my head out and do something focused of my own from start to finish.
I think I'm pretty much completed the modelling phase - it took 23 hours and she's currently 3268 polygons (I'd love some feedback from anyone who does this sort of thing all day every day, are these good stats?). Anyway, here are some references and screen shots from the project so far:
Replies
As you can see from the side pose of the face, her jaw-line, the tipology is a bit off..leading to the neck and the end of jaw-line. Now I havent reached using mesh and poly quads togather but if you are using quad polys, stick to them.
Also the nose and lips are a bit thiner if you are following the ref picture.
Other then that...Nice work! If you plan on updating this character. Do post an update.
Thanks.
- you made the most classic facial morphology mistake : You shaped the eyebrow bone by looking at the 'hairy' eyebrow instead of looking at the bone itself. The bone is horizontal there (check your front ref, look at the highlight from one brow to the other, its all there) ; the hairy eyebrom line crosses it at an angle. Look up a skull reference, it's very obvious when looking at bones only.
-in that one body pose, the forearms twist 90 degrees between elbow and wrist. Do so in your model too. Also that default pose will give you tons of problems later, make it more straight up.
Good luck!
Thanks for all the good feedback, those suggestions are very helpful.
Pior, with the last point you made about the pose, do you mean I should face her palms forward? And can you recommend a pic showing a better over all pose?
Cheers
I think palm down is fine - but if you do pose it face down, then you need to suggest the rhythm of the flat of the inside of the elbow slowly becoming the sharp edge of the wrist box. I did it both ways in the past, ie either flowing the edges diagonally or not depending on the animation needs. But yeah you need to mark that change of cross section at least in the volume. Like here (disregard the transvestite face hehe):
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/pior_ubb/pior_femalebase_wip_001_small.jpg
Hope this helps!
As for the smile and pose, its normally harder to fight some kind of posed position. It's especially true for faces and moderately true for bodies. Are you trying to model in the pose shown in the ref?
If this character was given to me to rig, the first thing I would do is take out the smile and give it an easier to rig pose. Or I would have two poses for the skeleton one that is rig friendly then animate it into the bind pose.
Thanks for the feedback, I don't have to stay with that body pose or face pose.
The body pose is just one I've always used, because I had a feeling that modelling joints with a slight bend in them made for a better mesh for animating (I think a long time ago I had some problems with biped joints being difficult if they started locked in a straight position). I like the stand tall hero pose better anyway though.
With the face pose I didn't even realise that it was a smile until you guys started saying so, because she's one of those girls whos lips pull back to reveal nearly *all* of her teeth AND gums when she really smiles. I'll have to have a hunt around for a neutral expression, I think I saw a couple there in the DVD caps. It also explains why the bottom of her eyes in the side profile don't match up with the front profile...
She's going pretty cool so far though, unfortunately I think I can already hear the silent whistling of that job I mentioned in the first post sailing past just out of my reach even though there's still a week left on the clock. Ah well. I'll keep working on Sarah, then I'll be more prepared for when the next opportunity comes along...
P.S. can anyone recommend a nice face rig (system or tutorial) for max? The one I've built is probably not very good.
Here is an update to my Helena model.
I've unwrapped everything (took a bit over 10 hours) and then textured her face (4 hours) and hair (3.5 hours).
I don't think she's looking very good yet (normal at this stage though) so keep the excellent feedback coming
the modeling stance is a little weird too lol
I replaced her eyes and put some makeup on her which made a huge difference (who'd have thought?).
Also did a bunch of subtle tweaking with her face... I think she's *starting* to look a bit better now...
I do see a problem with the eyes they are too dark and it makes it look buggy on her..
nose is about right now. I think the nostrils need to be pushed more in a bit..
the top lip needs to be a bit smaller
probably fluff out the ears a bit just push them out too far back
other than that its looking close.
Her lips also look a little full compared to the refs, especially the lower lip. Her nose looks more petite in the refs too.
It's looking better though, keep it up.
Also added a necklace, and positioned a biped inside her ready for rigging.
(apologies for the big pics, some of the relevant details disappear in smaller sizes)
The same holds true for the bottom of the jeans, there is no stopping seam or anything down there, the texture just stops.
Other than that, it's looking rather swell :P Keep up the good work!
Keep the outsides more of a straight curve, not really the large indent for the arch of the foot that belongs on the inside.
Great to see your improvements.
I'll definitely fix the shoes and the jeans, for today though I probably need to focus on getting her going in UDK as the job app deadline I'm doing her for closes tomorrow. P.S. got her rigged yesterday down to the tips of her fingers - looks fantastic - hope to post some youtube clips soon
Been working my arts off all today learning UDK, exporting sarah was easy (using actorx) but then spent HOURS stuffing around with materials and textures. Then I got stuck on the lighting in my (very) basic level, she was just a black sillouette.
Anyways, that's all sorted now. My new problem is when I import her with a test animation into an animSet in her skeletalMesh the skinning goes nuts and I don't really know how to fix it (so time to ask online). I made a couple of screenshots showing her behaving in max but being naughty in UDK :
There wouldn't happen to be any UDK gurus around here who could offer a few suggestions would there?
*edit*
Ah... apparently the actorx plugin for exporting models from max to unreal can't process vertex weighting generated by envelopes. (I'm hoping there's a way to work around this rather than having to manually weight every single vertex).
For a long time I've had a little technique where I slap an edit poly modifier on top of a characters modifier stack to delete out body polys hidden by clothes (in order to optimize the poly count). Turns out actorx doesn't much care for this, and once I removed it the import to UDK works flawlessly.
VERY happy Jan
First rough animation tests for Helena:
camera orbiting low poly
[ame]
camera orbiting high poly
[ame]
camera stationary high poly
[ame]
Hey nice, it youtubes for you automatically
[ame]
Geez louize biped is a pig to animate...
Her hair is also a bit odd, why do her haircards have a black outline to them? It makes her look dirty.
Also, I'd tighten up her waist around the belly area a bit.... make her less wide. Right now she looks kinda butch because she doesn't have any curves. I know she's wearing a shirt and all, but it's not a super loose shirt as it's got ties in the back of it (I'd assume) to hold it tighter.
Your animations are lacking any real depth to them. The walk animation has no character to it, she's a bouncy and fun person in the movie, try to add that into the animation. Also, when she steps down on the right foot it looks like a pop rather than weight being shifted.
I think the real thing here is just that there's no life in the animations. She likes to rollerblade, try putting a playful sway in her walk or something :P
As for the sword animation, her head is always fixed on the camera. Always. Her feet slide all over the place, and again there's no emotion to it. By the stiff motions that she's doing I'd assume she's just learning how to play with the sword, rather than actually trying to "dance" with it.
Overall nice work though, I can't wait to see this finished :P
The top is a bit different from what she's wearing in the movie, I tried photoshopping a bunch of different tops in photos, and that one was the 'least worst'. And the jeans, yeah that's on my shortlist too.
I did the hair to a certain point then left it cos I knew I could come back to it later and repaint it a bit nicer.
Good point
Quite right, and worse it took me way too many hours to do even just that
Also, I (sort of) have to use Biped which seems to have been deliberately set up to be sadistic to animate.
But I think the main thing is that I just haven't practiced animating enough, so hopefully this will all help.
P.S. what frame rate do people recommend animating with in Max? I've always used 25fps because I was always targeting video and that was what the frame rate was. But rescaling my timeline to 120fps in max lets me animate Helena a lot more smoothly.
Me too, she's turning into a bit of a time eating black hole...
we don't get OMFGWTFroflcopter 'good' overnight
but i don't think it looks that bad good job