Señor de Las Flores - Arbol - Character Modelling

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This is my latest dude I'm working on. I haven't finished my other little critter named Krahli, also located in the WIP, but this tree has priority at work atm...

So this was orginally modelled by someone else, but I had to update the mesh, clean it, change the face, add branches, etc. I did it mostly in TS. I had issues importing it, but quickly made a good LUUV obj button to import to workspace side directly.

(oh and btw! Simply love the tools and the lighting and the whole ambient for modelling, it's up to par to all the other programs!)

Later I'm going to import the mesh into Softimage to set up the UV's with a checkered texture, then direcly crosswalk it into Autodesk's Mudbox for normal maps, maybe a higher detail mesh, bump maps and textres.

Does anyone use Mari?

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I finally figured out the UV's in softimage. I can do them in TS, but the Texture Editor in Sofitmage is exceptional, even putting Maya's unwrap features to shame. But I still don't know how to cut good seams or do the unwrapping effeciently. I know TS modelside also has a UV unwrapper, which was also good.. I shall keep experimenting to which software I like to do UV's in.
At last the mesh is ready to Mudbox and Mari now. More learning to do! Yay!

Can't wait to do the same for my Krali character. I just need to get faster.

How do you guys do UV's? What software? You have tips?

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Man, mudbox is easy. Quickly made a sketchup of the texture, well a bump. It has a number of subdivision layers, and it works really well. I just used the sculpt tool at a small size, also inverted.

Considering texturing, hate painting in 2D, so in here it's nice. I may try Mari for better texture control, but I'll see how far I can push Mudbox.

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=)

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It has been a while since I've managed to get anything online, but I haven't left the world, for sure!

Here is the update for this character. The current project is really for next year, but I have yet to make a 20 minute pilot, practically on my own within the next 3 months. Which is gonna be killer.... But I'm looking forward to the challenge. This character is finally finished.

He just needs shapes and a good rig. I am not sure how I am going to transfer the shapes from each mesh detail yet, but I think Softimage has a good GATOR plugin that transfers the like quite accurately. I'll experiment.

I made 3 meshes, one is a Low poly count with a lower texture quality. The other two are close up and and extreme closup versions so we can do shots of bugs crawling on him.. as they are his friends. The high detail mesh contains texture maps of 8192 pixels square with a level 3 or 4 mesh subdivision extraction.

Concerning render times.. it does worry me, that is why i made a lower mesh detailed character, and we kept the leaf count low. I also plan to create all the scenery as seperate renders to recycle of the television series to then only have to render the characters over shadow catchers and clever composition.

The leaves and eyes and twigs were done in TS, even UV's in TS. I found out how to import *.X which preserve other programs UV's (softimage's) and used the Free OBJ importer/exporter to export the *.obj, which also preserves the UV's very nicely. Concerning importing *.obj's and *.x's, use the Modelside, Workspace side is lacking on it's import features.......

i like TS's previews, it aids on the whole texture process, visualization and planning of the production. Instead of putting up with great old OpenGL's lovely grey lightless schemes.... TS beats it.

I tried to simulate Parva's leaf effect in Softimage, but using SSS or transluceny made the leaves a bit heavier to render, so I had to sacrifice that feature and used different ambient settings. The ball was an inspiring texture i did simulate in Softimage and Mental Ray.

Also realized TS does go slow when you work with texture maps of 4096x4096 pixels or larger (works fine after it loads all the maps, but can take a while between camera moves or object selection). Good to keep that in mind and just work with 2048x2048 as higher textures.. unless I work with skies. Good to know. Need a dual card.....

I did all the textures in Mudbox. Mudbox certainly is a good leanway between Sculptris and Z-brush, and it is Autodesk compatible all ways.

I tried Octane and Thea recently also. With Octane, I had trouble with Softimage's plugin for Octane, so I could not test it... but other than that, I like Octane. Thea is more feature heavy than Octane, thus much more complex. Octane is easy (very easy) to pickup.
Concerning animation.. BOTH are lacking, tho Octane beats Thea for sure. Thea only does basic transform/rotate/scale animations. Octane can, technically freeze each frame from your parent program, exports it, then renders it, obviously after configuring the first frame's lighting/textures. It is not Batch render friendly tho..... Which sucks, as I usually put up multiple shots overnight sometimes.... Thea was also not batch render friendly... I guess in this regard learning to script in their language would help.

I need to try other render engines. I hear ARNOLD for softimage will be a semi hybrid render system, streamlined for speed and MentalRay like un biased quality. It is bloooooody fast. But it is only beta..... As far as I know, Rainy with a Chance of Meatballs and Monster House used ARNOLD in some shots to render near realtime unbiased renders with cinema quality. It looks promising. Can't wait till it's released! I found a Beta version lurking round in the internet, gave it a shot, but there is no documentation, no tutorials, nothing.. so no idea how to get it running properly, but it is much faster than Mental Ray. From sneek previews of 4 trillion polygon faces rendered in seconds with GI and raytracing, I DO like the sounds of it!! and it will be also fully integrated into Softimage, a program that is up to par with 3Dmax and Maya.

I'm giving up on the Render aspect of production for now and focussing on getting this Pilot done produced, let the render wrangling hassle me later....

Enjoy the pics!

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These are the leaves and twigs in TS

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Mesh comparisons...

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Strange I thought that you can batch render from softimage with Thea..... I know you can with blender and you can do all animations well..
I just wouldnt use unbiased I´d use biased... !
Peter

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Strange I thought that you can batch render from softimage with Thea..... I know you can with blender and you can do all animations well..
I just wouldnt use unbiased I´d use biased... !
Peter

Oh yeah? That's cool that blender's animations transfer really well. I couldn't transfer rigs with skins accross to Thea at all in softimage... I think with Thea and it's script based side, one can make a script to batch render a number of scenes, indeed, I can see it possible. I can see it done, but I only had trouble importing rigs....... Does blender import it's rigs w/ animation nicely?

Good to know blender is stepping up. =)

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Found out the animation aspect of the Softimage Sequence Export concerning Thea is still under development. Lol, why do I always use the weird software! =P