Pat's 3D projects

[PatBest22]

Seeing as my old art thread is years out of date, and far less professional than I would like it to be, not to mention buried deep deep within the forums, I figured it would be best to start a new one.

Here I will post screenshots or links of projects I work on and try to explain the creative process as well as my own thought process. I'm a student in 3D animation ( going to graduate soon but still so short on experience ), doing my best to learn and work with the medium. I'm loving it so far, but there's a mountain of things for me to learn and master, not only in 3D, but some problems I've had back with drawings that still apply here.

Your feedback is welcome. If you're one of the many other 3D artists I've seen popping up on the forum, feel free to ask questions or provide your own knowledge on stuff.

-----------------

The project I'm currently working on is an animation project I'm doing for my portfolio and final project for my classes.
It's a simple, short fight scene, but we'll get to that in time.
The first step in the process was modeling the two characters, which I did in 3DS Max. Since this was oriented towards animation, the goal was to keep the meshes as simple as possible and have very few details in order to simplify the rigging and animating that would come later.

[PatBest22]

However, having a low poly mesh doesn't mean you can't have any details. My next step was to export the models as .OBJ files and import them as tools into Zbrush 4R7.
From there, I could bump the resolution waaaaaay up to then add a wide variety of details. Those details I will then turn into bump, displacement, normal, texture and ambient occlusion maps, which can be applied on top of the original low-poly model.
This means that I'll be working with the easy low-poly model for rigging and animating, but when it renders, it'll render the full quality model.

I'm pretty new to Zbrush, only had it one week, and played with it one more week prior to that several months back. It's neat and extremely fun and easy to use, but there are so many tools I don't know how to use and so many things I don't know how to do. I wish I had more time with this project to explore all of the options and learn, but I'm on a tight schedule and the production must continue.

[PatBest22]

Rigging is the process of attaching a model onto a skeletal structure. This skeletal structure can be custom created using CAT bones, or you can use the already existing biped skeleton that is included in 3DS MAX. The Biped can be modified in several ways to mimic the skeletal structure of most humanoid or common animals, but if you're going for something really fancy and fantastic, you may need to craft one with the CAT system.

Either way, Rigging can be a real pain as you have to attach each and every vertex to the appropriate bone(s) and weigh them properly so the model moves properly. There is virtually no way to have a rig that will accurately reflect the complete range of movements a living organic being is able to do so generally, you're limited to either making multiple rigs for multiple movements, or have one general rig that's "good enough" for most movements. In the best case, you'd have both a general rig and specialized rigs for movements that need it.

In my case, however, because of time limitations, I will simply have a general rig and try to hide the defects and model deformations with camera angles and stuff.

Not that the defects are that visible. Here I've rigged and then positioned my model in a way that bends the articulations further than I intend to have most of them go in the final animation and it still looks pretty decent. The hips are a problem area and always are, but even those are not all that visible.

[PatBest22]

You may also notice that the textures did not translate from Zbrush to 3DS Max all that well. I'm not quite sure what went wrong, if anything went wrong at all or if it's just a limitation of the programs. I will have to look into it in the future and figure it out.

Also, much of the rigging's success or failure can be associated with the initial low-poly model. Clearly, there are some things I could have modeled in a way that would have allowed better rigging, that's also something I'll have to work on in the future.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Is that face the way you want it to look? It looks like it could either be a mistake or highly stylized, I can't tell. I'm also in 3D school, and there's a particular face-loop strategy that schools teach to make 3D faces that I think is not a particularly good way to make faces, and not particularly popular in the context of game art. I recommend looking for 3D models and studying other strategies for face building so that you can incorporate the best techniques into your style.

A variety of face types:
https://sketchfab.com/models/f276fb2c8fd441509200f43a2cef6616
https://sketchfab.com/models/1acadc9a3d554a61b3e05a2d970ad296
https://sketchfab.com/models/0c2c222919944c1fb879764b03f424ea
https://sketchfab.com/models/4dbc20a3b8e044f894d669ea3a24b39f
https://sketchfab.com/models/006431ff9c704dff9d23261f3823daad
https://sketchfab.com/models/9b987dc62e0643c89c1f2afcbf42975b
https://sketchfab.com/models/1b7084a8d4e04620879610059d98951c
https://sketchfab.com/models/834557a6d26a4abbb5da18a3df3de447

You can press the cube-like button to turn on wireframes and study the model.

[PatBest22]

At 11/10/15 10:25 AM, AcetheSuperVillain wrote: Is that face the way you want it to look? It looks like it could either be a mistake or highly stylized, I can't tell. I'm also in 3D school, and there's a particular face-loop strategy that schools teach to make 3D faces that I think is not a particularly good way to make faces, and not particularly popular in the context of game art. I recommend looking for 3D models and studying other strategies for face building so that you can incorporate the best techniques into your style.

A variety of face types:
https://sketchfab.com/models/f276fb2c8fd441509200f43a2cef6616
https://sketchfab.com/models/1acadc9a3d554a61b3e05a2d970ad296
https://sketchfab.com/models/0c2c222919944c1fb879764b03f424ea
https://sketchfab.com/models/4dbc20a3b8e044f894d669ea3a24b39f
https://sketchfab.com/models/006431ff9c704dff9d23261f3823daad
https://sketchfab.com/models/9b987dc62e0643c89c1f2afcbf42975b
https://sketchfab.com/models/1b7084a8d4e04620879610059d98951c
https://sketchfab.com/models/834557a6d26a4abbb5da18a3df3de447

You can press the cube-like button to turn on wireframes and study the model.

My intention was for my models to look as closely to my drawings as possible, so the choice is stylistic. Yet, at the same time, seeing my drawings in 3D has allowed me to see and understand many mistakes that I did when drawing, so it's both style and mistakes.

The face loop method, I'm assuming you're referring to making loops around the eyes and mouth, allows for better animation of the face. Most of the models you've linked are either entirely incapable of having facial animations, or would make it harder than it needs to when it comes to moving the mouth.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

At 11/10/15 01:41 PM, PatBest22 wrote:

At 11/10/15 10:25 AM, AcetheSuperVillain wrote: Is that face the way you want it to look? It looks like it could either be a mistake or highly stylized, I can't tell. I'm also in 3D school, and there's a particular face-loop strategy that schools teach to make 3D faces that I think is not a particularly good way to make faces, and not particularly popular in the context of game art. I recommend looking for 3D models and studying other strategies for face building so that you can incorporate the best techniques into your style.

My intention was for my models to look as closely to my drawings as possible, so the choice is stylistic. Yet, at the same time, seeing my drawings in 3D has allowed me to see and understand many mistakes that I did when drawing, so it's both style and mistakes.

The face loop method, I'm assuming you're referring to making loops around the eyes and mouth, allows for better animation of the face. Most of the models you've linked are either entirely incapable of having facial animations, or would make it harder than it needs to when it comes to moving the mouth.

True, like I said these techniques are more relevant in game art where the face does not necessarily move at all. You will have to combine many techniques to get a face that is exactly what you need.

You seem to be pretty good at making faces on your dA page, it's only this one that looks kind of whacky. A little more work may be in order.

[PatBest22]

At 11/10/15 04:14 PM, AcetheSuperVillain wrote:

True, like I said these techniques are more relevant in game art where the face does not necessarily move at all. You will have to combine many techniques to get a face that is exactly what you need.

You seem to be pretty good at making faces on your dA page, it's only this one that looks kind of whacky. A little more work may be in order.

Mind specifying which of the two you find whacky? The leftmost character is a humanoid, rather than fully human, her design was to be elongated and skinny / boney

[AcetheSuperVillain]

At 11/11/15 05:54 PM, PatBest22 wrote:
Mind specifying which of the two you find whacky? The leftmost character is a humanoid, rather than fully human, her design was to be elongated and skinny / boney

They are both whacky for the same reasons. Too sharp chin and cheek bones. Wedge shaped faced. Lower half of the face looks caved in. The lefter one looks better to me, because it is more exaggerated it looks like it is supposed to be more stylized. The righter one looks like it was mistakenly made too sharp.

Actually, I think maybe the problem is just that the heads do not match the bodies. The heads are very stylized while the bodies are very normal looking. If you want to keep the heads the way they look now, you could add some more stylization to the body proportions or to the clothing styles. For example, maybe sharper shoulders, more flaring of the elbow, knee and waist, angular features where there would normally be curves.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I hate to explain when I can draw. Here's what I mean.

[PatBest22]

At 11/11/15 06:42 PM, AcetheSuperVillain wrote: I hate to explain when I can draw. Here's what I mean.

Mhm, I agree. It doesn't show now but until I got to the hips, the bodies looked stylized too. Though, even before then, the cheekbone / jaw thing was still a problem.
My brain doesn't understand hips. I model them, they look wrong. I fiddle with them, try to streamline, end up modifying to entire midsection abs / hips / legs to try and make it look right and then it just looks more like real human anatomy than the stylized stuff I intended it to be.

Both faces and hips will be a priority for me to improve on in the future.

Speaking of priorities, I'm rigging my second model now, and every single time I've rigged something so far, I get to a point where I look at a joint and go "hrm.. I should have modeled that differently to allow it to bend better". This model is no exception to that rule. The shoulders, the hips, the wrists, etc...

I suspect I'll go through quite a few models before I get one that works well with rigging.

Another problem this particular model has is finding a way to prevent the head from colliding through the collar :/

[AcetheSuperVillain]

To deal with the collar clipping the head, you can make an extra bone to control the collar and move it out of the way, or try attaching the collar verts to the neck or head bone so that it turns with the head.

I am no expert on rigging, but I've had success with this kind of hip joint. The body shape is whacky so you can clearly see the parts, it should still work as a normal human shape. If great flexibility is needed, you may want to try some twist bones.

[PatBest22]

The second model's hips are working considerably better than the first. Obviously there was some improvement there, which was intentional. The first model vastly served as a guinea pig for the second. There's still much room for improvement though.

Also I haven't gotten to the knees and below. I feel like I've been working on this all day and I needed a quick break so I came to post the progress here.

Also, the initial alignment of the hands and the shoulders has a lot of importance. This model was made with the palms facing forwards ( and this the elbow joint bending upwards ) which meant that to put the model in a normal standing pose ( when you stand normally, palms are facing inwards and elbows bend forwards ) I had to rotate the shoulder some 75-ish degrees forwards, which wouldn't be that big a problem if there wasn't a piece of armor attached to it.

So, faced with this problem, there are two solutions;
1- simply model the hands with the palms facing downwards and the elbows bending forwards, so you can later simply bend the arm down and it'll naturally be in a normal position or;
2- Make the armor piece a separate model that you can attach afterwards when the arm is in the proper position. I did this the first time I ever modeled something and had a few issues with that which is why I chose to integrate the armor as part of the model this time. This will require more experimentation in the future.

[PatBest22]

So, I realized I was starting to lose interest in this project because of all the mistakes piling up and overall lower quality than what I had wanted when I started.

One of the reasons for this is that, while I had theory about all the techniques and tools I have used and would use for the project, I never actually used most of the before, so I was learning as I went along. Every time I moved onto a new step of the project, I lost about a full week fiddling with things, finding out it didn't work like I had thought it would, playing with settings, etc...
I made small mistakes along the way. The mistakes piled up, were made worse as I progressed and added onto other mistakes, and as I understood how other programs worked as well as tools and stuff, I uncovered more mistakes, or things that could have been done better/

I talked to my teacher about this, that I was getting unhappy with my project and that the way it was going, I'd only be giving in something "above average" at the end, rather than my best, something I could be proud of and wouldn't feel like I'd need to be sitting next to the person I'm showing it to and explaining why everything isn't as good as it could be.

Luckily for me, my teacher shared my desire to provide a final product of the best possible quality, and knows how I feel because he's been in similar situations in the past.

As a result, he's granted me a full month's extension on the project's due date and I am starting over. Not entirely from scratch, as some of the elements I've already done are a good foundation and need only be modified to varying levels

So overall, I have slightly less time available than I originally did when I begun my project, but will probably work much faster and better thanks to all the things I learned along the way, as well as the recycled elements.

First things first, gonna fix those heads. Rather than model two entirely different heads, I will take the better one of the two I already have, since the geometry on it is good, and fix the shape and anatomy ( that whole cheek - chin ratio thing that's going on, as well as a few other things ) and then modify the fixed head to create the second character.

While on the topic of heads, I'm keeping the heads separate from the body this time, allowing me a greater level of detail in textures and Zbrush maps without creating a massive multi-million polygon model of the entire body. This will also allow me to use morph modifiers with greater freedom by not loading up my scene with copies of the entire model, and just have copies of the head instead.

[PatBest22]

So here's the new head.

I've shrunk the cheek bones, widened the jaw and mouth, lightened the brow, centered the ear, changed the skull to be more sphere-like.

Go ahead, hit me with all the anatomy mistakes you can spot. This head must be as close to perfect as possible.

[PatBest22]

I've further raised and lightened the brow. While both my characters will have it furrowed for most of the animation, it is best to model your faces with a neutral expression and leave the emotion to the facial rig later.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

At 11/16/15 06:27 PM, PatBest22 wrote: So here's the new head.

I've shrunk the cheek bones, widened the jaw and mouth, lightened the brow, centered the ear, changed the skull to be more sphere-like.

Go ahead, hit me with all the anatomy mistakes you can spot. This head must be as close to perfect as possible.

Looks good. We just finished up a lecture on making ears in my 3D classes, so I can see that it is not anatomical, but I don't think it's worth time fixing. Likewise, there's a kind of diagonal shape in the lower jaw that's visible on 3/4 profile. I think the jaw size is too small for the brow size. I don't really like it, but I accept it as a stylization, so I wouldn't spend a lot of time tampering with it if you're on a deadline (as you've seen, my taste in 3D stylization is not very mainstream). The sharp angry eyes look nice. If the character is not going to have hair, I would add more edge loops to the back of the skull to round it out, but if it's going to be covered up, there's no need.

It would be helpful if you can upload some concept art or examples of what your final goal should look like. Otherwise, I can only help you achieve what I would want, not what you want.

[PatBest22]

At 11/16/15 11:02 PM, AcetheSuperVillain wrote:

At 11/16/15 06:27 PM, PatBest22 wrote: So here's the new head.

I've shrunk the cheek bones, widened the jaw and mouth, lightened the brow, centered the ear, changed the skull to be more sphere-like.

Go ahead, hit me with all the anatomy mistakes you can spot. This head must be as close to perfect as possible.

Looks good. We just finished up a lecture on making ears in my 3D classes, so I can see that it is not anatomical, but I don't think it's worth time fixing. Likewise, there's a kind of diagonal shape in the lower jaw that's visible on 3/4 profile. I think the jaw size is too small for the brow size. I don't really like it, but I accept it as a stylization, so I wouldn't spend a lot of time tampering with it if you're on a deadline (as you've seen, my taste in 3D stylization is not very mainstream). The sharp angry eyes look nice. If the character is not going to have hair, I would add more edge loops to the back of the skull to round it out, but if it's going to be covered up, there's no need.

It would be helpful if you can upload some concept art or examples of what your final goal should look like. Otherwise, I can only help you achieve what I would want, not what you want.

Yeh, the inside of the ear will be done via texture. Otherwise it adds more subdivisions and attaching it to the head becomes more annoying. Also gotta keep in mind what will actually be visible in the final product, and there isn't really a shot that will show the ear well enough to warrant a full model of it.
There also will be hair. I think if I were to create a bald character, I'd make a cube with the proper amount of subdivisions, spherify it, then attach it to the head. That would save me a ton of headache trying to make the scalp look all round and head-like.

[PatBest22]

I am really happy I chose to start over. Things are already looking so much better. This new model is sooo much cleaner than the old one, while also being more awesome.
While originally, I had planned to have very simplified models and a ton of details in the textures, that idea did not work out as I had planned. There probably IS a way to do what I had wanted, but I do not know it, and I don't have the time to learn it, so instead of planning to work with things I don't know, I went with what I did know this time and simple modeled the details.

And thus, here's the new model for the first character, Chrona, with a cleaner mesh and some much cooler details.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

At 11/19/15 12:56 PM, PatBest22 wrote: I am really happy I chose to start over. Things are already looking so much better. This new model is sooo much cleaner than the old one, while also being more awesome.
While originally, I had planned to have very simplified models and a ton of details in the textures, that idea did not work out as I had planned. There probably IS a way to do what I had wanted, but I do not know it, and I don't have the time to learn it, so instead of planning to work with things I don't know, I went with what I did know this time and simple modeled the details.

And thus, here's the new model for the first character, Chrona, with a cleaner mesh and some much cooler details.

Good job here. The face looks otherworldly without looking unnecessarily ugly, which is a trait I love to see. The hip edge flow looks like it will work well for flexible animation.

As for using textures to create detail, I'm curious to see what you mean if you have an example you can show of what you wanted to do. I might know a few tricks I can share for future reference. It sounds like maybe you wanted to make a complex mesh and then bake the normals onto a simpler mesh, which is best achieved by using sculpting tools or a lot of soft-selection/proportional-editing on the complex starter mesh. But if you want details to appear in silhouette, you need geometry, there's no way around it. You could sort of get by with a displacement map and high automatic subdivision, but that's still ultimately tweaking geometry and it's difficult to get right.

[PatBest22]

At 11/20/15 11:38 AM, AcetheSuperVillain wrote:

At 11/19/15 12:56 PM, PatBest22 wrote: I am really happy I chose to start over. Things are already looking so much better. This new model is sooo much cleaner than the old one, while also being more awesome.
While originally, I had planned to have very simplified models and a ton of details in the textures, that idea did not work out as I had planned. There probably IS a way to do what I had wanted, but I do not know it, and I don't have the time to learn it, so instead of planning to work with things I don't know, I went with what I did know this time and simple modeled the details.

And thus, here's the new model for the first character, Chrona, with a cleaner mesh and some much cooler details.

Good job here. The face looks otherworldly without looking unnecessarily ugly, which is a trait I love to see. The hip edge flow looks like it will work well for flexible animation.

As for using textures to create detail, I'm curious to see what you mean if you have an example you can show of what you wanted to do. I might know a few tricks I can share for future reference. It sounds like maybe you wanted to make a complex mesh and then bake the normals onto a simpler mesh, which is best achieved by using sculpting tools or a lot of soft-selection/proportional-editing on the complex starter mesh. But if you want details to appear in silhouette, you need geometry, there's no way around it. You could sort of get by with a displacement map and high automatic subdivision, but that's still ultimately tweaking geometry and it's difficult to get right.

That's exactly it. I built the first, low-poly mesh on both of my characters in 3DS Max, imported them to Zbrush as .OBJ files, I then created normal, displacement, and texture maps on a much higher res ( about 15k poly to 25 million poly ) model, imported everything back to 3DS Max and realize it did not work anywhere near what I had hoped it would.

As I've probably said before; there probably exists a way to make it work how I imagined it, I simply do not know that method and don't have the time to learn it at the moment.

Zbrush still provides an extremely easy UV unwrapping tool though :)

[PatBest22]

Anyways, since textures are the least important part of my project, and arguably the only part I could afford to leave out entirely since everything else is necessary, my teacher has recommended that I leave them for the end, if I have time for them, and rather move straight on to Rigging and Animating once the new models are done.

This will leave more time for animation and particle effects, which was the primary goal of the project.

Still, I'll pass the models in Zbrush first if only to make sure they're unwrapped that way I can texture them afterwards if there is still time.

[XwaynecoltX]

Wow these are actually really good.

~X~

[PatBest22]

At 11/20/15 03:11 PM, XwaynecoltX wrote: Wow these are actually really good.

~X~

Thanks!

[AcetheSuperVillain]

At 11/20/15 12:29 PM, PatBest22 wrote:
That's exactly it. I built the first, low-poly mesh on both of my characters in 3DS Max, imported them to Zbrush as .OBJ files, I then created normal, displacement, and texture maps on a much higher res ( about 15k poly to 25 million poly ) model, imported everything back to 3DS Max and realize it did not work anywhere near what I had hoped it would.

As I've probably said before; there probably exists a way to make it work how I imagined it, I simply do not know that method and don't have the time to learn it at the moment.

Zbrush still provides an extremely easy UV unwrapping tool though :)

I imagine that would take a lot of tweaking to get right, not something you can do once and call finished. Normal mapping really isn't the magic bullet that some people think it is. If you've seen Tri-Ace's PS3 games, Star Ocean 4 and Resonance of Fate (probably others), they throw normal maps all over the environments and it looks awful to me. Maybe it's just because I can see that it's a normal map it's like seeing the special effects wires, but either way it bugs me.

[PatBest22]

So, I don't know if it's all the meds I'm on or just winter coming and hibernation setting in, but I'm feeling really lazy lately and it's been hard to motivate myself to work.
I've finished remodeling and rigging my models and have begun animating. I've been fiddling with this short 4-second shot for three days now when I know I could have had it done in 2-3 hours had I wanted to.

Also an image does not very well represent an animation. I already now I need to fiddle with the timings some more, add some drag to the coat, figure out the lightning and then play with the camera a bit.

[maficmelody]

Great thread! That's neat you're tracking your progress. I'm glad to see you cleaned up your edgeloops for the legs, but I noticed the arms are a tad lacking. You're in the animation stage of your journey, I get that, BUT hopefully you're referencing your model file in your animation scene and maybe you can save and salvage your weight maps if you find your current deformations lacking. Also, not sure if your program has muscle deformers or not, but that certainly helps thwart candy-wrapper bends

At 11/19/15 12:56 PM, PatBest22 wrote: I am really happy I chose to start over. Things are already looking so much better. This new model is sooo much cleaner than the old one, while also being more awesome.
While originally, I had planned to have very simplified models and a ton of details in the textures, that idea did not work out as I had planned. There probably IS a way to do what I had wanted, but I do not know it, and I don't have the time to learn it, so instead of planning to work with things I don't know, I went with what I did know this time and simple modeled the details.

And thus, here's the new model for the first character, Chrona, with a cleaner mesh and some much cooler details.

[PatBest22]

At 12/4/15 12:57 AM, maficmelody wrote: Great thread! That's neat you're tracking your progress. I'm glad to see you cleaned up your edgeloops for the legs, but I noticed the arms are a tad lacking. You're in the animation stage of your journey, I get that, BUT hopefully you're referencing your model file in your animation scene and maybe you can save and salvage your weight maps if you find your current deformations lacking. Also, not sure if your program has muscle deformers or not, but that certainly helps thwart candy-wrapper bends

I'm not sure what you mean by referencing my models in my animation, but every single step of the production is saved about a dozen times with various progress increments on them, everything can be pulled back, fixed, adjusted, improved and re-used at a later date.

I did recycle the arms on one of my models, and only tried to do minor shoulder improvements on the other, which I'm not sure worked how I wanted them to.
I mean, if I had my way, and all the time I wanted, I'd just model, rig, play with it to find all the mistakes and do it over again a dozen times over till I find the easiest way to model something that is going to be rigged later on.

The Skin modifier I'm using for the weighting does have some limited deformers, like joint angle deformers, and there's the Physique modifier that has all sorts of fancy stuff like muscles, tendons, bones, etc...
It's all awesome stuff I plan to practice with in the future but currently don't have enough know-how to make them work in a timely fashion.

Now, it has been a while since I've updated the thread. It's a little hard to do so since I've moved on to animation and I can't exactly post videos here, and rendering stuff to then upload it to youtube is kind of a waste of my limited time.
Still, I've decided I'd upload some rendered frames from my animation to show one thing or another.

I've begun working on the first few scenes / shots of my animation and am up to a point where the character and camera look up to the sky where their enemy awaits in a big spiraling cloud maelstrom.
Unfortunately, my clouds don't look too good and I think it's because they're not casting any shadows or generating shade, which makes them look very flat.
I'll let my teacher handle that problem and keep working on the character animations.

[PatBest22]

Finally, the project is done.

I can't really upload videos here but here's a link to the youtube page for it.

As far as final results go, even though I restarted my project two months in, I still somehow managed to finish not only on time, but a few days before almost everyone else.
I'm constantly questioning my final product. Before starting, I thought I would be able to create something of the quality level of Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series. It's become clear to me that I can't do that just yet, I need a lot of practice, learning and experience for that. Yet, I wonder if I could have done better with my current skills and the time that was given to me.
Many of the movements are not fluid, not natural. Camera movements could use improvement. Some of the rigging is still off. Many things that I could have done better ( and will in the future ) but leave me wondering what kind of impression this will give to future employers.

[PatBest22]

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