Anim8or Community

The more bending you want done on it, the more divisions you need in the plane. Make a new single-poly plane again (if it's triangulated then select all the faces and go to Edit->Merge Faces). Select the model and then go to Build->Subdivide Faces and use a Tension of 1. Do this a couple of times until you get your desired divisions.

Alternatively, you could make a cube and specify a bunch of divisions in the parameters and then delete all but one side, or use the knife tool.

Heya, per usual I disappeared for a while so I'm picking up from where I left off. I appreciate your c&c!

Mactetra: Dunno about making tutorials, everything I do is already tutorialed up in some shape or form, not to mention texturing isn't anim8or specific so it's as simple as googling. Seems to be a lot of comments about the colors I chose, I might desaturate it later on when I get back to it.

Dosser: It's 2700 triangles. The wireframe only shows the source mesh which hasn't been converted to triangles yet. Any triangulation you see were done by hand to control some areas that might not automatically triangulate the way I want it to.

floyd86: Originally I want the guy to be tribal, so adding small tribal stuff wouldn't hurt it in the long run, especially for a sidescroller. But it's all pending the direction I want to take it now that I've gone and veered off the trail again.

Guilherme Amorim, VBSmiles, KiwiNM8OR, and 3D Joe Wiltshire, thanks!

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Ok, as you can see I've gone ahead and ditched the original concept for the head. I've been googling burlap sacks here and there during my hiatus and found that it just wasn't feasible to use that kind of head shape, so I stuck with something less original yet proven in design.

So...now he just looks weird. To top it all off, I gave him a dressage hat (was gonna be a derby one, but it didn't look as slick ).

Moral of the story: If you make your own concepts, draw out what he'll look like textured as well, or get a clear idea ahead of time. Otherwise you'll wing it like me and get a character that looks like he's made from parts of 3 other characters.

But anyway, what's done is done. Time to draw out some of the lil' enemies and model 'em. I intend to come back and see if I have to match my old work with my new work once most of the set is complete, so for now this guy's labeled "complete" and ready for animation (maybe I'll give him a walking cane for a weapon).

Thanks 3D Joe Wiltshire. I don't really get much inspiration, except that after a few weeks of staring at the computer screen in my free time, half-stupid and drooling, I dredge up enough motivation to start something I usually don't finish

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Alright, figured I'd update a little regarding the texturing. The uvmapping was easy enough, but the texturing isn't much up to my standards. However, I'm way out of practice with texturing and I was never that good to begin with, so hopefully by the time I finish this project I'll have leveled up a little

I also want to add a few more accessories like a tribal necklace and bracelet, so I'll probably have to increase my poly limit to 3000...which isn't good I've seen better models done with 2000, so apparently there's room for improvement in the modeling section as well.

Thanks for viewing!

Nice, I liked his little slow-motion tumble in the beginning

hihosilver: With only a min of 6 samples and max of 10 for each light, and it's low poly, it's gonna be pretty fast

I liked how the AO has that kind of subsurface look to it (though it's not really there), and the shadows are more dispersed and even. If I cared enough to though, I'm sure I could've matched it pretty well in the scanline version though. Either way, it takes too long doing AO, so I'm going to use the scanline version from now on

3D Joe Wiltshire: Thanks, though your last sentence is confusing. Do you mean that you'd still use AO even though it takes hours to render? Admittedly, it's not hard to set it to render while you're sleeping, but if it's an animation then it could take days.

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Alright, I'm just about done. There's some areas I need to tweak still, like his toes and back, but for the most part he's finished. The interior of the mouth will be very simple since any openings in the bag will be completely black (though I might make a big sloppy tongue). He's at 2550 triangles, 50 over the goal but pretty good considering I wasn't going to give that much detail originally. Most of the tweaking will be in his posture...he seems to be leaning back a little, so I've got to straighten him out a bit and align his head with his heels, etc

My next update will be after he's uvmapped and textured, so it may take a while. Thanks for the C&C

hihosilver: Thanks! I consider the silhouette most of the time, but there's also the textures that aid in the effect as well. Originally, the character was going to be a ways away from the screen, where such a blocky silhouette wouldn't be noticeably different from a smooth one. However, I reconsidered and thought of some possible gameplay ideas for the sidescroller, and figured I'd add more detail. Besides, his arms and hands are probably the most important parts!

Mactetra: Hah, didn't know I had fans already, I only posted one doodle in the past But I appreciate others appreciating my work, so thanks!

As for your question, the image was rendered using Anim8or 0.97d's AmbientOcclusion feature for the ART raytracer. I'll discuss that further down in my post.

thecolclough: Glad you like it I might link up if it ever gets done

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The game itself may or may not just be a fairy tale, I don't know if I want to bring it that far. What this project is is just a model pack, really. I just make the art for it under a scenario for a game in development. I think I might be able to do it all the way, but the actual game development, if any, will take place after I do all the artwork and animations for all the characters, creatures, props, and environments. But expect some interesting posts once I get to the texturing/animating

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Alright, up there's an update, got his hands done and added more divisions to his arms, made his little skirt thing.

The left render was done using the ART raytracer. I enabled the AmbientOccluder attribute, gave it a global intensity of 0, and ambient intensity of 4, with a 144 AA sample rate. It took ages to render (approx. 2 hours on a 1.6 ghz 1.75 gb ram laptop). The effect is nice, but is it worth it?

So, later on I decided to go ahead and fake the AO to see if I get better times. I tossed in 9 infinite lights casting shadows with 29 29 29 RGB, 100 percent dark shadows, Soft with 40 radius, Monte Carlo 6-10 samples, (4 lights facing down at 45 degrees, 4 lights facing parralel to the ground at alternate angles to the 45 degree lights, and 1 facing straight down). I also added 4 more non-shadow casting infinite lights facing upwards, 20 20 20 RGB.

It doesn't look quite as good yet, but it's certainly faster at 362 seconds (approx. 6 minutes). I could tweak the scene a bit more and it'll look even more like it.

So my verdict is that it's not worth it to use the RayTracer for AO until it gets some speed optimizations! At least, it's not worth using if you're making pretty little claylike WIP renders like what I'm doing. Not to mention AO means no normals which means you can't crease edges and expect them to show up in the render. Hard/Creased edges are still common in video game art, and I'm using it to make details stand out (though the scanline render highlights some edges that aren't creased--that's the result of having a lot of monte carlo lights with large radiuses...the AO in the ART render shows it as well but is more subtle).

Render->AA Setup... while ART is enabled allows you to specify the sampling. So just type in 256 in the field and you're done. Unfortunately the ART raytracer is horribly slow, and in most cases if all you want is the Ambient Occlusion effect, switch to the scanline renderer and add a bunch of lights casting shadows to fake ambient occlusion.