Latest artwork: I made an animation!
I made a little animation and put up my very first YouTube video!
Pics and link to yt on my site:
https://michael-thomas-greer.com/art/wbm/
For the uninitiated, this is using Blender3D, a very old, yet very modern program designed for computer animation. The animation uses:
• HDRI and Filmic lighting
• Cloth simulation
• Bone physics
• Subsurf scattering for the skin
• Inverse kinematics for controlling the armature<br>
<sup>If your eye is keen enough you’ll see where I messed up</sup>
• Cycles rendering with node-based shaders
Alas, this particular model will not get real hair, probably ever. It has already been pushed waaaay past its original design... ages ago...
Now all I gotta do is figure out how people format their yt documentation so nicely... markdown isn’t it, apparently...
Pics and link to yt on my site:
https://michael-thomas-greer.com/art/wbm/
For the uninitiated, this is using Blender3D, a very old, yet very modern program designed for computer animation. The animation uses:
• HDRI and Filmic lighting
• Cloth simulation
• Bone physics
• Subsurf scattering for the skin
• Inverse kinematics for controlling the armature<br>
<sup>If your eye is keen enough you’ll see where I messed up</sup>
• Cycles rendering with node-based shaders
Alas, this particular model will not get real hair, probably ever. It has already been pushed waaaay past its original design... ages ago...
Now all I gotta do is figure out how people format their yt documentation so nicely... markdown isn’t it, apparently...
Makes me think what Eric Schwartz would have done now if the Amiga were still a viable computer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gozwu7MxXQ
The animations/shorts Eric did were done back in the 1980's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gozwu7MxXQ
The animations/shorts Eric did were done back in the 1980's.
Holy--! That’s some rando stuff!
I suppose you can make cartoons with furries and not get hammered by the law...
Of course, it didn’t stop them from making Cool World.
My little cartoon was just meant to be cute.
I suppose you can make cartoons with furries and not get hammered by the law...
Of course, it didn’t stop them from making Cool World.
My little cartoon was just meant to be cute.
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WOW, that is beautiful and I would love to be able to do that. Any chance you will make a how to video set detailing each step? I am going to start learning Blender this year.
Heh, there’s waaay too much in that to distill in a single video, even if it were an hour or two.
I recommend you start with the official Blender tutorials (https://blender.org/support/tutorials/) to learn the software well enough to get started — the tutorials are very good.
After that you should look around for character modelling tutorials, I guess.
For Little Bebil’s Mom I had to know:
• modeling, with an eye on good edge loops for proper deformations
→ body, eyes, hair, eyebrows, teeth, tongue, clothes, shoes, apron strings are all separate objects
→ vertex shape for keying specific deformations of the mesh (mostly the mouth)
• rigging using:
→ vertex weight painting to get proper deformations with bone movement
(I did not go all out on the shoulders — this one is just a simple blend over two or three bones, lol)
→ advanced IK (hand/feet + elbows/knees, spine, head and eye targeting)
→ various constraints (joint motion and tracking, mostly)
→ custom shapes for the control bones (which are the bones you see in the video)
→ cage deform for the cartoon eyes (heh, I learned what not to do)
→ bone physics for hair and breast motion
• key-frame animation in the NLA editor (with fine adjustments using the Graph editor)
• lighting (admittedly I am still learning this — one of d’raison d’être)
→ HDRI world illumination
→ additional light sources (“emitters”) to supplement the lighting (just like real life)
• texturing and shading (with the node setup):
→ subsurface sampling for skin (eg. see how the light filters through her fingers)
→ cloth weave for the clothes (admittedly the apron is just a quickie procedural)
→ real-world material characteristics which distinguish, eg. a tooth from the eye
→ UV unwrapping (“skinning”) and image mapping
• cloth simulation (which is really the most obnoxiously difficult thing to get right)
Heh, I think that’s a pretty good overview.
It looks like a lot — and it is — but it is not an unmanageable amount to learn. You really just have to jump in and get started. And remember that learning is more effective if you target your study to learn a specific thing.
This animation was so that I could improve myself in three things:
• my ability to handle lighting (still working on that)
• cloth simulation
• animation
I have improved, but I still have a lot to learn. The thing to remember is that it can be done. Identify what you want to know, then do something that specifically targets learning it better. I dusted off an old model for this, and the improvements impressed me enough to want to share with the world.
I recommend you start with the official Blender tutorials (https://blender.org/support/tutorials/) to learn the software well enough to get started — the tutorials are very good.
After that you should look around for character modelling tutorials, I guess.
For Little Bebil’s Mom I had to know:
• modeling, with an eye on good edge loops for proper deformations
→ body, eyes, hair, eyebrows, teeth, tongue, clothes, shoes, apron strings are all separate objects
→ vertex shape for keying specific deformations of the mesh (mostly the mouth)
• rigging using:
→ vertex weight painting to get proper deformations with bone movement
(I did not go all out on the shoulders — this one is just a simple blend over two or three bones, lol)
→ advanced IK (hand/feet + elbows/knees, spine, head and eye targeting)
→ various constraints (joint motion and tracking, mostly)
→ custom shapes for the control bones (which are the bones you see in the video)
→ cage deform for the cartoon eyes (heh, I learned what not to do)
→ bone physics for hair and breast motion
• key-frame animation in the NLA editor (with fine adjustments using the Graph editor)
• lighting (admittedly I am still learning this — one of d’raison d’être)
→ HDRI world illumination
→ additional light sources (“emitters”) to supplement the lighting (just like real life)
• texturing and shading (with the node setup):
→ subsurface sampling for skin (eg. see how the light filters through her fingers)
→ cloth weave for the clothes (admittedly the apron is just a quickie procedural)
→ real-world material characteristics which distinguish, eg. a tooth from the eye
→ UV unwrapping (“skinning”) and image mapping
• cloth simulation (which is really the most obnoxiously difficult thing to get right)
Heh, I think that’s a pretty good overview.
It looks like a lot — and it is — but it is not an unmanageable amount to learn. You really just have to jump in and get started. And remember that learning is more effective if you target your study to learn a specific thing.
This animation was so that I could improve myself in three things:
• my ability to handle lighting (still working on that)
• cloth simulation
• animation
I have improved, but I still have a lot to learn. The thing to remember is that it can be done. Identify what you want to know, then do something that specifically targets learning it better. I dusted off an old model for this, and the improvements impressed me enough to want to share with the world.
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