Work in progress

2nd one is cool

That is awsome work there, very spooky, but also trippy at the same time. Looks like a Silent Hill style. Also, I love how you do introductions to your work, very professional.

As i moved further to the coast the insectile creatures started to appear more and more female, the screaches and howls of a night were always followed by whooping and clicking.

If i can make it to the coast by sunset or late afternoon, i might last another week on fish.

[IMG]http://members.optusnet.com.au/alti3/studio/lobuzwom.jpg[/IMG]

The night came on sooner that i would have hoped, i heard breathing in the shadows then turned to see them scatter back to the woods.
[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/alti/pp.jpg[/img]

heres the origional pic, and the orc version side by side,

i used all photoshop

[img]http://members.optusnet.com.au/alti3/zombs/morf.jpg[/img]

hey the face thing is cool, well done

[IMG]http://members.optusnet.com.au/alti3/zombs/bleaker.jpg[/IMG]

some oc fun.

[IMG]http://members.optusnet.com.au/alti3/zombs/shee.jpg[/IMG]

oc fun

[IMG]http://members.optusnet.com.au/alti3/zombs/blooder.jpg[/IMG]

now that one i like
itd be cool to see you take one of these drawings and add detail to it, after youve made your initial peice of abstract style.

[IMG]http://members.optusnet.com.au/alti3/zombs/jahses2.jpg[/IMG]

OC action, mine is on the left, amer's is on the right, i just introduced him to the program i think he did ok.

Great work Alti I really love your style, Ever considered doing a comic book?

hasnt he allready?
anyways armers is pretty cool, love that expression and pose

[IMG]http://members.optusnet.com.au/alti3/studio/apf.jpg[/IMG]
When the maidens fail to keep their border secure there is a breech.
One of the planes is habitat to this dark ancient race- The Marra

They are both nice, but their poses are very similar.

i really like the first one, you have a fairly high level of detail but still maintain a certain looseness in the drawing. not so keen on the second one, the proportions of his right side seem to be off. hopefully you will continue to add to them cause i've always liked it when people build up a series of characters along the same theme.
this one being my favourite [url]http://wormwood.gfxartist.com/[/url]

wow thanks for that link that art is awsome

yeah sites designs not bad at all... I like your use of script to do rollover etc..
I wouldve tended just to use something like onmouseover="document.getelementbyID['blah'].oldImage.jpg = newImage.jpg" inside of the href, or something like that.. but I like what yourve done too..
You could add a Character style sheet in there to take of format and pulling that kind of stuff out of the body of the document, I guess then you could even seperate your script and CSS into seperate documents..
Cool enough dude.. nice and accessable and functional

good one!

Thanks for the feedback Me109 ;)

page dosent load for me

The server is currently down, should be back up soon ;)

Sites are back up (problem with the server ;) ).

pretty good site setup wise (like navigation is fine etc), but the overall look is pretty basic, some nice graphics would help.

A big design no no is using Photoshop bevelled buttons. They rate up there with starfield backgrounds, midi music playing in the background, and pictures of your pet dog on the front page. [:)]

Navigation is fine, but personally, I think everything is too BIG! The logo is huge, same with the buttons, partner links, and the news font. I know I'm bordering on tiny on Sumea with the fonts on the main page (I wouldn't go any smaller than the news font there, which is at 11 pixels - but I reckon your news font can go one or two steps lower). As for the graphics (and in general), making things a tad smaller makes it look sharper and more professional, plus you get more space to use. Less is more!

I know you probably don't wanna hear fancy shmancy designer talk, but the white glow on the top left of the page takes the visitors eye away from other parts of your page - your logo needs to stand out a bit more as it's kinda lost in the blue, personally I'd do it in white.

Thanks, I have a 19" moniter so judging size is a strange thing here ;)

thats cool :)
looks like krakens making an appearence

[IMG]http://members.optusnet.com.au/alti3/oc/loshin.jpg[/IMG]

Nice, though I must admit one of the first things it brought to mind was a mix of and X and a Y wing with bits added. The colour scheme probably adds to that image. But still good stuff.

Pantmonger

doh! now you have pointed it out it looks VERY X + Y wing. It is meant to look starwars derived but it hasn't really made any new ground has it :(

Your fast response spurred me into action to do another concept this arvo. C&C welcome, I might aim to do a few more and then refine one design over the next few weeks (time permitting)

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/johnn/200491165110_Space-Racer2L…]

looks cool but the back of the ship looks a bit too square for my liking, detracts from a streamlined face moving machine image.
great drawing though :D

ooooh, love the second one! Has an awesome feel to it, I actually like the chunkyness of the body, I mean if its gonna be for space travel than it can just tear thru with guts!! haha, but thats my chunky leanings showing thru!! Once again an amazing piece of marker-mastery there John!!

okaysie, some more concept spaceRacers. I've attmepted to get a bit of variety across the designs. As I mentioned above, I'm thinking of developing one further. So if anybody would like to see one in particular developed further say so :) as usual C&C welcome and appreciated too.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/johnn/200491802618_SpaceRacer_v2…]

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/johnn/20049180320_SpaceRacer_v3…]

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/johnn/200491803330_SpaceRacer_v4…]

Damn! Those last three are just spectacular! I especially like the first one with the two large side parts like boats have. Sorta like the boat in Waterworld. Anyway keep it up. :)

Fantastic work [:)] Those vehicles would look awesome in a game.

Just a question on your perspective lines. Do you have a huge ass ruler to make those lines meet up or do you just estimate it roughly?

big ass ruler! ...no not really, I just wanted to use the word ass in my post :P
no ruler used for working perspective lines, or in the drawings in general (with the exception of the top and bottom lines of the twin engines on the third one up.) - I have followed almost exactly Feng Zhu's process for marker visuals. So the only ruler work was for adding in perspective lines at the end to encourage the perception of space, done again by eye. I did draw in some rough perspective line framework by hand before commencing drawing. I think this step is worth doing as it is easier to see if the lines are converging correctly.

REally nice work John :)

that recent batch is fantasitc, like the last one especially

sweet stuff,,spaceships are cool, for some reason i really like the first one, i dont care if its very x/y wing

A bit of an update - I've done a second version of the ...urr second version! Just sleeking things up a little and added a spot of colour too.
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/johnn/20049253629_SpaceRacer_v2_…]

Personal opinion: They rock, but for racers (even space racers) I think they're a bit big I know a lot of the space is probably used ofr making more powerful engines and stuff, and not being limited by air resistance means that it doesn't matter as much, but just by looking at real-world racers forumla 1 cras and stuff are usually only just big enough for the pilot/driver and the engines.

Syi

sweet! I like nothing more than sexy space ships with big engines!! lol.. what would be nice thou is too see a dirty racer or introduce some alien styling into the engine bays or cockpits etc... sortof a hybrid racer put together in someones backyard... top work all the same!

Cool :)

nice one for a quicky. Looks like you pretty much coloured from top to bottom! No laying basic colours to get an initial balance. Worked out fine though.

damn, i wish i could consider that kinda thing rushed for my work standards :P
nice work

real nice! It kinda looks like he's sruggling to carry a heavy axe!

man, he has some wicked scalyness hapening there!

looks like he spent too much time in the sun...

very kool! [:D]

Nice man, that your first go at normal mapping?

Looks tops dude.. you got the normal mapping figured out thats for sure.. nice work..

awesome work, damn im happy you arent in this challenge ;) love the scale things on his shoulder.
he looks like hes coated in oil though :P

Its come along way since I saw it the first time, looks great Joel [:D]

mmmmm slimy!
Looks cool, although like Moony said he is a bit oily.

lil' update - just having fun with him really, testing out new methods and techniques and what not.
[img]http://server5.uploadit.org/files/jistyles-nakahrell_pose.jpg[/img]

definetly rivals some of the doom3 work, great stuff

This is sweet! I was going to learn how to do normal mapping anyway, but seeing this has made me want to even more! Nice work

once again you put us all to shame

what res is that texture map?

that's sitting at 3 1024x1024 texture maps (specular, normal map, diffuse)

here's the updated source sheet:
[img]http://server5.uploadit.org/files/jistyles-nakahrell_sourcesheet.jpg[/i…]

and the updated close ups
[img]http://server5.uploadit.org/files/jistyles-nakahrell_pose2.jpg[/img]

So which one is it JI a frogman or a Lizardman? it clearly can't be both as that would be a paradox [:P], sorry i'm just trying to find an error anywhere and tryin to stop you from putting us to shame as Livewire said [:(] and seeing as your models are always 200% i just thought i'd pick on the naming [:(]

isn't it obvious?! he's the love child of a lizard and frog, freakishly obtaining humanistic characterics, and with enough chromosones to be male [:)]

Looks really cool dude.. be awesome to see the whole thing animated..
If you need to compress it you should use divx(avi) or sorenson3(quicktime) both codecs are comparable in quality with quicktime being cross compatiable with macs.. the lowest quality usually works out to be a 1mb for a minute of footage.. at 320x240.. you should however for quality output at about 4-6mb/ minute..
I usually make three versions low bandwidth through to high b/w
hope that helps you out..

perhaps you could find hosting with a friend or something, cause id love to see that in a high resolution, looks great. As Me109 seaid, DivX is probably your best bet. If you want it extra crisp try Xvid. Its better quality then DivX but the file size is slightly higher.
Cant wait to see :)

just google search for "free web space" or something. theres free webspace from 10-500 mbs floating around. www.tk is free with just one pop up add(and browsers these days blockout most popups) and yur domain is just www.domain.tk which is very easy to remember

I use dbspot.com, from darkbasic but i think yu have to actually be a DB forumn pal of that very cool guy, I got mine ages ago(UNLIMITED WEBSPACE) OMGOMGOMG, so he's prolly forgot about me, lol. note: always read the side notes, host always have some wierd restrictions/conditions. like on dbspot it has to be 3d, game programming related, and .tk has no this, that and more random stuff(like porn). neway GL ^_^

thanks for the tips guys, ive already got a .tk and a .com site www.colmdoyle.tk and www.touchmydesign.com (site not finished) so thats no prob, but its the web spaces thats a problem, ill re compress the movie at a smaller size soon because rite now its about 60 mb at 640 x 360 in divx! anymore more comments and tips are welcome ! thanks

colm

i thought tk was just a domain thing, not like a hosting service?

hey moonunit yah .tk is just a domain service, half the time it seems to be down aswell. you just link the .tk address to forward to you own web space provided by your internet provider

model wise its very good, though i dont know about that sort of split in the boots, what is that exactly? im not really one to crit on texture :P

well i chaned some perportions with the boots and stuff and working on retextureing him at the moment

Nice flow going on in there dude, but he needs some accesories like you say. for almost 3000 tris theres very little complexity to him bar the details in his boots.
Id go as far as saying that the boots look quite tech / savvy then the pants and belt look more bystander like, then we have a combat vest, with a business shirt underneath.

Also im guessing the knees are where you have the concentration of polys above the boot - in which case they are a bit far down [;)]

Theres quite a few mismatched ideas going on with this guy i think, nothing that a few accesories will fix, maybe some goggles or a sholder holster for a gun. Thats if your going along with your business man turned SWAT team member type styling you have begun with.

look forward to seeing the texture complete [:D]

typo, it's 'critque is most welcome'

Looking good to me, can't wait to see it textured.

Looks quite good - although, considering that it's a mechanical unit, maybe you should take some of those smoothing groups off?

I'd be interested in seeing it with all the bits and bobs bolted on - it looks a bit bare at the moment (which is the point, obviously).

been busy the last few weeks but only recently manage to work on this design lately. The texture is still wip and the armour design has be implemented. The armour is a separate mesh.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/panzer/2004930191441_wip01.jpg[/…]

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/panzer/2004930191527_wip02.jpg[/…]

lookin good :)
the head textures pretty neat

Loks cool, nice construction, whats the Triangle count?

3582 :>

Looks really good. Are the open triangles a glitch in the program or part of the model?

wiffle: just looks like he has some form of backface culling on (heh.. i use maya, dont know if thats a term that translates into max) and that he hasnt completed adding the end of the tail and head yet.

Great looking model church, in my nerdyness i got a little diablo toy (about what 4 inches tall) thing to sit on my desk and rarr at any passersby (along with all the other little things i like to collect) so if you like i could do my best to take some digis to provide like an orthographic set for you. Ofcourse it wouldnt be lineart but if you need a good reference thingy just say so :D

Looks really good to me, are you going to Rig it?

that would be AWESOME moonunit :D if you could do that I'd appreciate it alot :D!!

Wiffle: yeah the open triangles are unfinished parts :<, will be finished asap :D

Codyaldy: I might just release an sdk and see if people want 2 skin him :O

zip file here: [url]http://www.vooks.net/moonunit/diablo.zip[/url]

though i gotta say, looks like you got him pretty much down pat anyway :D
note: the model has two different styled hands and is not symetrical, dont get confused :P

thank you very much moonunit :D! i was working from a pic of that i got off the net! Now that I have these i should be able 2 steam along!! THANKS AGAIN!

hey no worries :) glad to help

well have been VERY slow with this model.. havent even finished modelling it yet :|!! I still have the entire head 2 model... but I started skinning him anyway 2 give me some motivation:

[img]http://users.bigpond.net.au/gatsu/diabloc.jpg[/img]

heres some colour variations:

[img]http://users.bigpond.net.au/gatsu/yer.jpg[/img]
[img]http://users.bigpond.net.au/gatsu/yer3.jpg[/img]

thanks again 2 moon unti for the awesome pics!

crits and comments are more than welcome!

(sorry if this is counted as bringing up an old topic ;x)

it sux smo
:p

post one with the bump map set up properly for the ppl

:( u stink, ok i will 2moro after work!

its not traditional diablo but i love the grey one, soemthing about it just makes it feel so much better then the red (that might be because (im guessing) the grey was made first and then the hue was just altered to get the red?)

correct sir!

Looks cool. I like the black the best too. Looking forward to seeing it finished.

Looking good. Nice model btw.
As for the skin, its going well keep at it. I prefer the darker one as well.
How is your UV map? If its good I wouldnt mind having a shot at skinning it, if thats ok?

im pewp at uvw mapping ;/ but once i finish this pewp master ill release sdk for you :D

[img]http://www.zeq2.com/forums/files/4_182.jpg[/img]

some slow progress, shot with 3 lights and a smelly spec map :O

its looking great, keep it up!

[img]http://www.zeq2.com/forums/files/bodyd.jpg[/img]

BAM >_

really nice body shape, looks very natural considering the subject matter, looking forward to the finished product.

wow very cool, i'm an oldschool diablo fan from way back.- might reinstall it see if the servers are still online.

We want the head... we want the HEAD!! hehe... nice work man. Keep it up!!!

yay! the weekend :D ill be working on it! ;D

i just want more head :/

u need a cool spec map homofag :p

these are all really cool, but I love the first one. I like how loose it is but still has good anatomy too. The face of the decapitated head is great.

pretty cool, the last one reminds me of some concept art for fable (xbox)

wicked stuff man !!! i really like the second image but they are all great, what process are you using to create these great works?

Thank you, glad you liked it.

Images were all done in PS8. Here is a matte painting I'm working on.

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v352/weather/desert.jpg[/IMG]

wow :o ! thats really great!! looks like a photo but so much more alive and dramatic.. if that makes any sense

Thats a really nice matte painting. Is that 100%? If not, could you post a few detail shots?

Wow, very nice! I the matte painting is great, but my fave is the first, it reminds me of the concept art book for metal gear solid.
Can you post a quick tutorial on how to achieve that style? do you use custom brushes in ps?

some really great works, i particlarly like the second, youv'e done wonders with giving the mist enough volume to take up that much of the shot (hopefully you know what i mean), although all them are superb. looking forward to more[:)]

Hi people,
Here is another one.

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v352/weather/lethal.jpg[/IMG]

awsome stuff :)

that style reminds me of MGS (concept art)for some reason. ^_^

Nice work.
Totally dig that matte, mind showing the photo?

Hi people,
The matte that is present in this thread is the combination of about 50 or so photo plus a whole heap of painting. So there is no original photo. I start with a simple line sketch to get the composition down, then I start to introduce photos that fit into the scene I am trying to create.
Then I paint and "grade" the image until the image "sits" to together.
Its a flairly time consuming process.
Here is another matte I did a while ago. This one is created via the same process, except that it was a bit trickery, cause I had to comp in the figure in the foreground.

Cheers
Weather
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v352/weather/LADY64.jpg[/IMG]

Mnn not bad..
phahh who am i kidding, great stuff, I espacially like the B nad W's.

pretty neat, though he dosent look like he really has much in the way of muscles and bones, just sorta blobby goo :P

EEEK! He has the physique of a Gungan and looks like he'd walk like one too. You seem to like making everything smooooooth in your modelling.

Yeah for a high poly model, it doesn't have that much definition at all. It just looks all the polys are being used purely for smoothing. I like the overall look though, great job.

heres a bit of progression from this afternoon. tried to put more definition into it
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/conundrum/200482674350_Quog-Rend…]

It's looking good :)

Coming along well, couple of things I noticed though:
*maybe give him an actual mouth, rather than just a lip lump.
*His toenails look too flat, like they're not even three dimensional.
*Same with his hands, they look a little flat.

Really like his shoulder pads/helmet combo, nice design, I want one!

[IMG]http://members.optusnet.com.au/alti3/oc/zombiewrench.jpg[/IMG]

he's a zombie done during an OC session

I like the first one more. Although it is a fairly generic pose, he looks cool with it.

I really like the first one too, i think it's that cool face and the gun/mecha arm, and then the cool striped shirt, that touch reminds me of bengal a bit. Have you heard of him?, plus it kinda has a more human structure to what you usually dream up.

the first one looks nice

would like to see a fineshed character tho where u can see whats doing with the whole character

glamour shot with updated skin....
[img]http://mathewstwins.customer.netspace.net.au/ship/ship05.jpg[/img]

A very interesting design. Defenitely looks like something I would expect to see in an Asteroids remake. The vapor trail effect really makes it.

looks pretty neat, its good to see a ship that isnt sort of following a Xwing type design yet is still feasible.

Thanks, tho its not my design, only model and texture :)
its 3.1k triangles

Can we see a wire Bron?

[img]http://mathewstwins.customer.netspace.net.au/ship/wire_side1.jpg[/img]

ok which is beter of the 2, the back one it the skin from above, the closest ive rusted up more and messed with the lighting more....

[img]http://mathewstwins.customer.netspace.net.au/ship/skinupdate1.jpg[/img]

the closer one, the one behind looks dull in comparison (note: in comparison, dosent look dull entirely but the one infront stand out from the two).

ok updated

[img]http://mathewstwins.customer.netspace.net.au/ship/skinupdate2.jpg[/img]

ok another update, any more crit?

[img]http://mathewstwins.customer.netspace.net.au/ship/skinupdate3.jpg[/img]

The tip of the tail seems to kink off, maybe you could align some of the verts to allow it to follow the flowing curve of the tail. Also I know this might take you over budget, but you really need some kind of detail in the cockpit even if its just a silouette.

the tail, you mean from the side view or from the top view?
putting a silouette in the cockpit i dont think would help much as its very dark in there anyway and if it was like a sprite you would only see it from certain angles...?

Nice Model - a question, do the trails retract and expand depending on thrust and how would they handle thrust direction ?

ive only put them on there(and the plsama fx) for looks, theyre on the concept art so i decided i should put them on just to get an idea for it....
I would guess they would be simmilar to how the trails work in games such as homeworld, theyre controlled in the game engine and theyre kind of like tyre trails as they fade out but follow your path... if that makes sence :P

tis a Red X

sweet looking skyline dude... how fast can it do the quarter?

despite the fact that its missing some nescacary bits and peices (like a grill and so on) that last render is very close to photo real, well done mate

thanks 4 the comments so far, as i said ive only done about 40 % of the modeling i want to do, but it good to here its on the way to being photoreal, moonunit i think they do the 1/4 mile in about 14 seconds as a stock car with no mods. thanks again 4 your comments keep them coming ill try work in the car more over the weekend; here is a render of the rim and tyre (not quite finished)

[img]http://home.iprimus.com.au/colmdoyle/threadpics/32r_rim.jpg[/img]

thanks
colm

awsome work :) Can't fault it atm. The tyre treads are a shiny but thats it. Keep it going.

Coming along great Doyle, what are you using for a reference? pics? model kit? Only thing I can see is that the tyre treads are way too glossy, rubber is much more matte than that, they look like they've been dipped in oil.

thanks 4 the comments guys, the tyres are way to glossy atm ill try fix that when i get into textures a bit more, im using some plans i found on the next for referance, tho im not sticking to them 100 % will post up some more pics over the weekend

thanks
colm

wow thats really nice, can you give us a run down of your how you modelled it? id love to know becuase it looks clean and has all the really subtle curves that make the car look good. Also what sort of material are you using on it?

thanks for the comments guys, haven?t had any time to work on the car at all with tafe (just started a graphic design course) but i will work on it more very soon and post up some updates.
Avalanchex ive just been modelling the car with polys start at the front wheel arch and move out from there, ive also been modelling each "panel" of the car as a separate object not really sure if this is a good thing to do but it give you realistic lines in the body work of the car, the materials used are just standard 3dsmax raytraced materials, using hdri for lighting, will post up some wires etc soon

thanks
colm

Hi - Here is a slight update not alot changed added a intercooler, and some mesh for the grill, and im trying to sort out the headlights, i still have to model some "globes" to go behind the glass of the headlights, they should look better once that is done.

[img]http://home.iprimus.com.au/colmdoyle/threadpics/yellow_32_2.jpg[/img]

anymore comments !!!!!
thanks colm

wowzers, thats pretty amazing, great work!
though perhaps a bit too much white light on the side in that render

working on the head lights a bit still dont really like them; but ill leave them 4 now.

[img]http://home.iprimus.com.au/colmdoyle/threadpics/yellow_32_3.jpg[/img]

Colm

would you mind sharing your renderer settings and scene setup? you're getting some nice bleed and lighting ranges there (nice cool shadows, bled from the warm lights etc). Just interested how you've gone about that, it's looking nice [:)]

What renderer you using? is it just lighttracer or Vray or something else? How long does it take to render a frame?

thanks 4 the comments guys below is link to a short tut on how to achive the same lighting ive got here;
and btw im just using scanline with ligthtracer, anyways have a read threw the tut below and you should get the same results, tho i am using max 5.1 and its hard to use hdri maps in this ver of max, so if your using max 6 i think it should b alot easyer then the tut below (im gonna install max 6 sometime this week)

anyways there is the link to the tut on hdri:
[url]http://www.xenomorphic.co.uk/doc_hdri.htm[/url]

ill work on the car a little bit later in the week got a heep of assignments to do 4 tafe atm

thanks
colm

little update havent touched 3dsmax for a good few weeks, nothing major changed here just door handle and some trims and the headlights.

[img]http://home.iprimus.com.au/colmdoyle/threadpics/yellow_32_4.jpg[/img]

thanks

Thats coming along really nicely.. you should go sick on the details to really sell the whole look.. adding the window wipers and the grill which sits just below them.. etc.. Brake calipers!! big fat red Brembo brakes! you need them! hehe.. also I think modelling parts of the interior so you don't have to tint the glass so heavily would make a huge difference... the glass just dosent seem to work as well as the rest of the model.. hmmmmm [:0]

cheers!! [8]

give that man a cigar! damn fine first character model!!! :D :D
were you following along with tutorials or just figuring it out for yourself?

Hey thanks moonunit! I used this tutorial for the body:
http://www.planetunreal.com/mentallic/Tutorial/Tute1Page3.html

and I used this tutorial for the head:
http://www.maya3d.dk/Tutorials/HeadModeling/HeadModeling.htm

Because the techniques were really basic it allowed me to adapt it to anything I wanted to model.

I have a question about animating. I was told that having triangles is bad for rigging/animation since they don't collapse/deform well and quads are better. But I've also heard that for game models people use the triangulate function on their models after completing them? Why is this? And why do so if triangles are bad for animating/deformation?

Any help is appreciated :)

Wow, that looks good for a first model. Congrats on getting it finished :)
Some parts of the hair could have been done using planes, so that you could have transparency for hairstrands and stuff, plus you will save polies.
I wont answer your question about quads VS triangles as I might be wrong and there are far more experienced artists that can answer it better then I can. Sorry :)

Thanks for the links too btw

Hey Makk, thanks for your comments. Next time I do a model I will use planes, I'm seriously running out of time to get this model done and rigged!

Anyway I'm in the middle of rigging and am having a weird thing appear in my skeleton:

[img]http://users.bigpond.com/jason129/armrig.jpg[/img]

What is that bone that is sticking out when I select the IK handle? Is it anything serious? Will it cause me problems later, should I redraw the joints to keep it clean?

Any advice appreciated!

Cool model.

Did you use a pre-made skeleton system (Bonus Game or something like IK Joe)? It looks like the IK handle has FK/IK blending enabled on it, and that is just an easy way to select the node.

Thanks Aven, I made the skeleton myself. Hmm I'm not sure if it's just an easy way to select the IK handles because it only appears when I've actually selected the handle. When I deselect it goes away. Is that what you mean?

Has anyone else seen something like this?

If not I might just redraw the arm joint.

I'd have to guess but it looks like you have an IK/FK switch setup on the arms, but its you're rig how come you don't know?

Malus - Jason said in his first post that it was his first character model. Making a character rig in Maya isn't the most simple thing to do. Especially compared to Biped. There are about four dozen buttons and they all have about a dozen values in the options. Plenty of things can go wrong.

Jason - Sorry. I couldn't help you out more. The last time I tried IK/FK blending was in Maya 4 using a custom rig tute (and I never really used the rig), so I am not too sure what is going on. My friend and I tried it out all morning. After having many disagreements, we don't really know what is wrong.

What happens is when you create an IK Handle in Maya, it now automatically creates two ghost bone chains that will store the IK and FK animation. You will animate using the main bone system, and the animation will feed through onto the two ghosts. You can then blend the main bone to go between the two bone systems that have their animation derived from the bone system that you are now blending. I hope that makes very little sense, as I am still confused by it :p So the addition of those two bone systems is not unusual (although Maya 6 will hide them until you start doing blending). What is unusual and confusing us is that we are unsure why neither of the ghost bones is following the main system. Here is a test that I did:

[img]http://home.netspeed.com.au/mlanham/tutes/FK_IK.jpg[/img]

You can see that the IK ghost is attached to the main bone system as the blend is set to IK. The FK ghost is off at a different state so that I can blend back to it if I ever need to. Now the main bone can be detached from the two ghosts, beut only when the IK Handle has a blend state between 0 and 1 (but not 0 or 1 of course). Here is a pic:

[img]http://home.netspeed.com.au/mlanham/tutes/FK_IK_02.jpg[/img]

With your example you have the main bone coming off at a completely different angle to both of the ghosts. SO I have absolutely no idea what is wrong. You can try to check that there aren't any keys set on any of the joints or the IK Handle. Make sure that you haven't disabled your IK Solver. If those things don't work, then just delete the arm and start again. It shouldn't take too long.

Although I haven't done it in ages, I always found that creating the skeleton, rigging it and then adding in the IK Handles later on worked a little better for me. I did this, as it allows you to just grab joints and rotate them to see how the skin weights are going, and not have to worry about IK chains going out on you. Just practice, and try some different things to see what works.

I'd personally clean it up(delete and remake that arm bit), with max, i remember exporting a bone rigged character and somehow during export it created an extra bone and screwed around with my anims, (I think the mirror tool glitched or something), but just to be safe I'd kill that arm bone and make a fresh one.

Aven: Just about to start learning Maya, I've had a bit of a play a while bak but that was with 4.5.

I just thought that if he had an FK/IK setup it would be something he had intended therefore he would know, I didn't realise Maya rigs defaulted to enabling FK/IK switching, haven't got that far yet [:P], cool feature.

Hey aven, thanks so much for your help, I really appreciate it!

You said: " Make sure that you haven't disabled your IK Solver."

I don't even know that you can disable it. So I'm pretty sure i didn't. I had a very general grasp of what your were describing, IE: how the bones work with the ghosts etc. But still a little confused.

I ended up just redrawing the arm joints. Hopefully they wont go out of whack this time.... But yeah, thanks again for the help :)

Ok I think I figured out why it's happening. Well I can't explain it but when I select the elbow joint and in the attribute box I go to the 'degrees of freedom' tickboxes. I turn off freedom in the X and Z axis, so the elbow can only move in the Y axis (like a real elbow joint)

Then when I grab the IK handle to test the new movement, that ghost joint separates....

For some reason it doesn't like only 1 degree of freedom. Only when X, Y and Z are selected that it acts normally. hmmm.

Site suits your art work and your art work rocks. The only thing is you may want to add an space in between your first and surname on your logo.

navigation by the top 3 buttons are quite unclear to where they lead unless you look at the status bar's path; I'd recommend simple small textlinks over mystery squares [:)]

eh? i didnt even realise they were button when i visited, needs to be more clear.

Top site :) Though I didnt realise they were buttons either.

You have some great work there.

Hi guys thanks for the feedback :)

Those buttons are a problem :/ Been trying to think of ways to make them more obvious without cluttering my clean design with text all over it. At the bottom of the page is a sentence telling the user the boxes are navigation, i might move that text up to the top of the page.

Also, I put in things so when you hover the mouse over the buttons, that little yellow box comes up with name of the section it is linking to. Though the yellow info box only comes up in IE and not mozilla which is the browser I'm using... grrr.

Anyway might have to go back to the drawing board and figure out a new design. Doh!

hehe, that is quite cool :)
Whats the deal with the bag, its a bit hard to see with those textures on it, they dont fit that well.
Some of the textures work well like the body armour stuff, but some dont work that well.

yeah. the textures on the gun look very bad, its mainly cause i smoothed it, they look pretty normal unsmoothed, i should re-render it as it does make a difference, cant believe i didn't notice[:p]

Dude! Mr. "I eat through a straw" is really, really good, although his nose is like Micheal Jacksons.
Those hands up the top look nice as well.
Yeah, its all good....except for that guys feet....what were you thinking!! ;)

You are an "artist" Joel. [:)]

Your work just keeps on getting better and better :)

Would you be able to post a smoother version of the monster with his crazy feet. I would like to see how the area between his pecs and shoulder turned out. Interesting way of making his hip bones as well. Looks like a very good way to make it more pronounced.

And what is going on with your female character? An achievable chest? What were you thinking? :p

Were these done with the new graphics tablet? [;)]

Makk: Hehe... maybe I should do a Thriller sequence with him? [:D]
Hazard: Hey, I don't wear a berret, click at people, and roll my r's just to be called an "artist"... artist? thankyou very much [}:)]
Aven: yeah... she needs bigger boots and boobs huh? [;)]
Souri: The homeless angel bum I did yesterday morning with the new tablet; I can't remember how much else was done with it [:)] don't worry -- it's being put to good use in other work too [:D]

sweet dump :D

Some awsome stuff in there. The lopoly girl is my favourite.

Keep em coming.

I'm finding it quite difficult to read -- I'd say study up on the subject matter you're going for and try and better define the elements you're putting down; I don't want to come off sounding harsh, but the only clear things I'm getting from it is it's a bipedal humanoid type of thing, with some form of interlocked plating, a hand, and a staff. The rest confuses me.

thanks for the reply, no problem with the crit, i have a habit of drawing stuff that makes perfect sense to me but completely starange to other people. the reason i put it up is so id get some idea of what im doing wrong as i find it sort of hard to tell
heres the original sketch
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/conundrum/20048125249_Robot.jpg[…]