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3 Dimensional Chat / Seppuku's Ronin Media Thread

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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 14th Apr 2012 21:29 Edited at: 15th Apr 2012 15:07
I'm working on a project in Unity3D (may post progress in GDT eventually), so here is where I'll post up some shots of media I'm working on for it. I'm gonna try and keep it all fairly low poly and am trying to make the media for the project manageable. This means I'll be using detachable limbs, in theory I'll only need 2, maybe 3 rigged characters. Male, Female and maybe a second female for characters wearing a skirt. The heads will be interchangeable, so will hair and accessories and the body will just use different textures.

Tools:
Hexagon 2.5: Modelling & UV Mapping
Carrara 5 Pro: Rigging & Animation and exporting to .FBX for Unity3D (also rendering)
Gimp: Texturing

I'll start this off with the main character, Akai.

Rendered in a Carrara example scene:

3D View:

With Wires:


[edit]
Detachable parts are as follows:
Head, Hair, Hands (useful for gauntlets), Feet(for different kinds of boots), accessories and hair. So I'm only going to need to rig the body and attach the rest inside Unity.
UV Mapped body & head:


[edit2]
In the spirit of being manageable, I'm doing a cartoonish style...and my texturing skills aren't that great.


But gonna call that a night, I'll do more tomorrow.

[edit3]
Rigged, posed and imported into Unity3D. Seems to work (and can add stuff to bones and pose bones inside Unity, thus proving Hexagon + Carrara + Gimp + Unity3D works )




Travis Gatlin
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Posted: 15th Apr 2012 16:48
Quote: "Carrara"

What is that, anyway? It sounds familiar.

But nice start! I like your interchangeable clothing system. I've always struggled on how that would work in my head.

http://www.talenthouse.com/travisgatlin
You can find my latest work here. Please comment on my work and tell me what you think!
Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 15th Apr 2012 18:07 Edited at: 15th Apr 2012 18:12
Cheers.

Essentially all you need to do is have multiple textures for 1 main object (the animated one) and then attach all the extra bits you need to the bones. Luckily in Unity3D this is easy as pie (as you can do it straight from the editor), in DBP you'd use the limb commands. With mine the bits you attach are: the head, the hands, the feet, the hair, the extra bits of armour and clothing. So I actually have the bones for the hands and feet where I've places the placeholder boxes.

Also, Carrara is a full 3D modelling, animatiion & rendering package. Same price range TrueSpace was before it was released for free. But in my opinion, it's a lot better (also comes with neat things like cloud, terrain (which you can export as heightmaps) and tree generators). I own Carrara 5 Pro, which was Eovia's last release before selling it to Daz3D (which might be where you've seen it, either that or Unity3D's asset pipeline) and it's pretty awesome IMO, but I don't know how it's grown since Daz3D bought it. The latest is Carrara 8. The bonus is, because Hexagon was originally made by Eovia, it can export directly to .car

Anyway, uploaded a test walk cycle:



He's imported just fine into Unity3D, but I'll actually need to work out how to play an animation in Unity3D to test that the animation is working fine, but I can move his limbs without any problems.


WLGfx
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Posted: 16th Apr 2012 20:52
Wey, Sepp got his own 3D thread...

But, A human doesn't walk like that really or is it just the darkness of the video. It looks like the legs and arms move forward and back at the same time instead of the arms and legs moving opposite to each other... Kinda like left leg forward and right arm forward...

Mental arithmetic? Me? (That's for computers) I can't subtract a fart from a plate of beans!
Warning! May contain Nuts!
Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 16th Apr 2012 22:25
Cheers for the feedback and you're quite right and I can't believe I didn't realise that. I ought to study some walk cycles and other human movement for my anims.


zeroSlave
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Posted: 17th Apr 2012 02:26
Looking good. The video is really dark, though.Here is a good walk cycle guide.

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 17th Apr 2012 13:09
Cheers and thanks for the link. The scene wasn't too dark on my screen, I guess I should change my brightness on it.


Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 20th Apr 2012 21:08 Edited at: 21st Apr 2012 17:27
Testing to see how well my 'add body parts' idea works; I've stolen parts from Keats from Abeyance to test this.

[edit]Posted better shots:



Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2012 17:43 Edited at: 22nd Apr 2012 17:43
I've got one set back. Carrara 5 Pro's FBX export doesn't support animations, it supports bones though. To me, that doesn't make much sense and unfortunately I've not found any solutions - so my animations are wasted. Gonna have to suck in my gut and use Blender's animation tools. Oh well, at least it'll only be 2 rigs in Blender and I'm sure it won't be THAT bad.

Anyway, giving some consideration for style, and I've put this stuff into Unity



The level was built in MapScape, exported to .x and converted to .obj in Lithunwrap. The normal map were created using this neat tool.

Unfortunately I can't use the lightmaps, as MapScape uses a .fx shader to display them and Unity doesn't use .fx shaders. It would be possible to translate the code over to Unity's shader language, but I'd have to learn to use it first and I might be tempted to give it a go.

Design Runner
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2012 18:58
Couldn't you export the animations in a different file format and convert them with blender? Seems easier than redoing them.

Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2012 20:01 Edited at: 22nd Apr 2012 20:15
Tried .3ds but the anims didn't seem to load in either. Also did .wrl, which Blender natively supports, again no anims or bones.

.obj doesn't store anims and my other choices are .b3d, .cae, .dxf (might see if this one works), .w3d & .wrl

I could find plugins for those, however, Blender likes to crash on me whenever I decide to go to the User Preferences, so I can't install any addons it seems. Still figuring out solutions though. Gonna see if Lithunwrap will retain any animation data.

[edit]

Apparently the only file format to retain animation data is .cae, an After Effect file, but I can find no importers or converters, but found exporters, which isn't useful.

JLMoondog
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Posted: 23rd Apr 2012 01:56
.3ds doesn't support bone animation..trust me, many hours were spent loading models into DBC and pulling my hair because I was unaware of the fact.

I'd try exporting the mesh and bones separate. Try exporting the bones as x or a bvh file. Then reattach them in Blender, or try Truespace. TS has a fbx export that works great.

Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 23rd Apr 2012 02:08
TrueSpace might be easier to stomach, don't like its modelling tools, but I always got along with it for composition. Only downside is I was gonna go Mac eventually and my entire workflow is Mac compatible but then I could still upgrade to Carrara 8(which has much better options) after all when I can afford a Mac will also be the day I can afford to upgrade :p

Cheers.

JLMoondog
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Posted: 23rd Apr 2012 07:12 Edited at: 23rd Apr 2012 07:14
Yah, the fbx plugin is really easy to use once you know how to use it.

First thing you need to do is download TS7.61 Rosetta. This is the unofficial update to TS and the only version the plugin works for. Then do a search for true space fbx plugin. Download and install. The plugin page has a video tutorial on how to install it. To prepare your model first you need to offset your animations in your modeling package 1 frame forward so that frame zero is free. At frame zero set all bones to angle 0. Then detach the model and bones and save them seperatly. X for bones or bvh if you can. You can then import them into TS and reattach them. You'll have to reset the bone envelopes etc, but TS is very easy when it comes to rigging. Then you just have to load your fbx button and hit export. Simple as pie.

If you have any trouble just send me an email bud.

Edit: just realized you can just export the entire thing as x and import into TS without re-rigging...*facepalm*

Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 23rd Apr 2012 13:12
Actually I probably will have to, unless TrueSpace can import .cae. Carrara didn't support .x until version 6. Or unless that .fbx plugin has an importer too, whilst animations won't be retained it ought to remain rigged as Unity3D imports it fully rigged.

Anyway, cheers for the pointers.

JLMoondog
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Posted: 23rd Apr 2012 13:54
TS can import both cae and fbx. Fbx is limited to something like 256 points, but the importer allows you to import in sections so it doesn't really matter. The cae importer is available through the Tentacles extension, which is a free download.

Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 26th Apr 2012 16:25
Not tried the solution yet as I felt like working on the model some more. Gonna try and get away with more polygons for this, one the head anyway, just so it looks better.



Represented in a scene:

Toplogy


Think I'll need to model a Hakama as it looks a little imbalanced

WLGfx
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Posted: 26th Apr 2012 17:09
Yep, that's a lot of poly's on the face were everything else is low poly. Odd mix unless you're planning on doing some cut scenes showing the face. Another alternative is to have two different faces, one for cut scenes and one for the game play.

Apart from that, it's looking good man...

Mental arithmetic? Me? (That's for computers) I can't subtract a fart from a plate of beans!
Warning! May contain Nuts!
Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 26th Apr 2012 17:42 Edited at: 26th Apr 2012 18:52
I might up some of the detail on the rest, I figured if I'm going to use shaders on the characters, they'd be more effective with more detail (particularly with phong shading) - but not a lot more detail, just to make it look less 'edgy', because looking at some games, it can be effective to have a moderately hi-poly head with a lower poly body so long as the body isn't blocky.

There is a lower poly(not subdivided) version of it, which could work when the camera is not close up.

Anyway, cheers.

[edit]
It never occurred to me to try my copy of Cinema 4D 6 (as I recently found it amongst my old computer stuff), sure it's ancient, but it's an awesome program to use, can do IK and exports to decent formats, which iirc exports animation. Not to .fbx, but that can be converted.

JLMoondog
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Posted: 26th Apr 2012 20:13
The progress is looking good. I like the new detail in the head. Only suggestion is to give him a beard of some kind. I agree he needs a Hakama, as it looks like he's currently pants-less.

I don't think the face has too much detail. Just need more detail in the body now. I think the arm and leg armor should have layers like the body armor. Also give them a bit more curve so they wrap around the limbs.

Keep it up.

Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 28th Apr 2012 19:18
Cheers for the feedback Moonman. Definitely a good idea, I shall do exactly that.

I've managed to get my Cartography shop models & light maps working in Unity, so it should mean an improvement to the lighting.



Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 5th May 2012 21:57 Edited at: 5th May 2012 22:29
Got time to work on the high-poly version today, it's not finished, but this is what I had time for. How am I going to deal with clothes underneath the armour? You will see.






[edit]
I've just tested 3 instances of this model (lined up by the low poly one) in Unity3D to get some stats, hoping I'm not going overboard on polygons, considering I'm running an Intel GMA it's not doing so bad, though this is lacking textures - still, if in game I get 30-60fps I will consider it to be a 'good' frame rate for lower spec computers like mine.


Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 6th May 2012 16:45 Edited at: 8th May 2012 23:04
And complete. UV Mapping & texturing next:




[edit]

Le Texture (start)


In my Unity3D scene (with different lighting, hence he's more orange)


Running at over 200fps

Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 15th May 2012 19:18 Edited at: 15th May 2012 19:44
Done the texturing. I need more practice - but I'll try a retexture at another time - I'd rather get to focus on other things. The good thing is that the UV Maps seem to be good enough and I should be able to have not trouble going over them in GIMP at a later date.
[edit] Just realised the quality of these JPEGs aren't that great.





zeroSlave
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Posted: 15th May 2012 21:23
Your stuff is turning out really nice, Seppuku! I'd maybe decrease the size of the head just a bit. A person is generally 7 to 7 1/2 heads tall, and it seems like his head makes it about 5-6 heads tall. Otherwise, everything looks awesome. The anatomy looks very well done.

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 16th May 2012 00:04 Edited at: 16th May 2012 00:04
I hadn't noticed that - I did each part separately and threw them into the same scene and scaled them on a whim rather than paying attention to the size. But nice one for noticing, I'll fix that.

Thanks for the compliments. I always used to struggle with anatomy, but found some useful references (which also include edge flow) so I'm glad I've managed to get it right. I'm still unhappy with the armour texture, but I guess practice will make perfect.

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