[Sedone]

I was meaning to update my site with this stuff, but I thought better of it because an "update" to me means redesigning the whole damn thing.

These are a couple of characters I'm modeling, and an environment for them to move around in. The first guy is a new version of the one I have on my site. It's loosely based on the storyboard I did a while back, but the animation's going to be very limited compared to that. I'm just now starting to put textures on it. If anyone has any tips/links on texture mapping characters I'd love to check it out.








3D modeling is fun and all, but I really wish I had some time to draw. Ah well...



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sedone's artfolio

[napalm]

Specular maps! Specular maps! PleeASee.. Your models are beautiful but they could really use some uneven textures, color maps and most of all specular maps. The metals appear too perfect and the faces too plastic, some noise in the specularity should help a bit. Specifically on the faces you need some more realistic skin tone, it doesn't look like you've done any texture work with them yet so I won't be too critical until I see how they turn out, but the models themselves are looking real nice. May I suggest Jeremy Birn's new book [Digital] Lighting and Rendering (on amazon or wherever)to help you with some of the more subtle aspects of 3d lighting and surface treatments that really sets apart good 3d from all the rest of the generic crap out there. Looks like a great start though!



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[email protected]
personal: http://www.deadzebra.com / cia productions: http://www.creators.org


[This message has been edited by napalm (edited November 07, 2000).]

[balistic]

I'll whole-heartedly second the recommendation for Birn's book, but without hesitation tell you to avoid Flemming's. His lighting is awful, his ego is worse, and he knows jack about photorealism.

As for your pictures, they would be greatly improved by rendering with shadows. Light and shadow must exist simultaneously, or a scene will never look right.

---edit----
Looking at your stills again, I see that you do have one shadowing light source, but its being totally overwhelmed by your non-shadowing fill lights. Try starting your scene with just /one/ key light source . . . get that looking interesting, and then slowly bring up a fill light from a logical direction. One of the most important things to remember when lighting in 3D is that you don't need to elimate darkness . . . darkness grounds objects, and provides visual interest in the nooks and crannies where it should naturally occur.

Here's an interesting research paper that I stumbled across this morning:
http://www.cs.utah.edu/vissim/papers/glue/node2.html#SECTION00020000000000000000

Note how shadows and subtle reflected light dramatically increase the percieved realism of the test scene.

But hey, I'm just another 3D guy who doesn't know anything about lighting
---edit---

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Brian "balistic" Prince
3D Artist
Eggington Productions http://www.bprince.com

[This message has been edited by balistic (edited November 07, 2000).]

[laps]

just wanted to say that I agree with balistic..avoid fleming..don't like his books at all, he makes it seem like there is only one way to do things, his way.
so. avoid avoid.
Inside series have been good before..at least the ones for 3dsmax 2.
and lighting..veery important...sometimes it can be good to set up the lighting before you start all teh textures..just set the models to the general hue. its muuch much quicker..it can be a pain in the but to lighttests when your seen is big and complex. takes forever.
ok. messy post..but, anyway..glad to see more 3d posts here. keep it up..character model is nice. like it.

[eetu]

here's once more: definitely pick up the birn book rather than the flemming ones.

the faces look terribly good, the environment screams for a better lighting. (at least shadows :).
just listen to the prince ;)

eetu.

[silber]

hey the second one reminded me of the old man from the movie ''tron''

love these faces

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-----silBer--
http://silber.atariflys.de

[TheMilkMan]

Hey man what is this demo for anyways. If you are trying to break into the game industry you need to use low poly models for your demo..nothing over 2000 poly and use a 512x512 map over he entire character...as far as your textures go you need good base textures to work from so I would get a digital camera and take some pics of everthing your need from skin to wood to stone to metal....it would help a lot!

[Zephyros]

I guess I would have to agree, that Flemming is very egotistical, I just started reading them, he does have some good advice in his book 3d creature workshop though in character creation. I will defenitly check out that other book thanks for opening my eyes.

[shahar2k]

milkman, I'm not sure this demo is meant to be realtime... unless it's running on that Playstation 9 that's being advertised all the time, damn electronic spores

[samdragon]

hey dude! Glad to see you back.
Love the 3D stuff!
have you checked out www.highend3d.com?
You could start there and look for some tuts.They usually have plenty of stuff like that.

[Francis]

That stuff looks great Sedone! I was wondering where you had gone...



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Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[Zephyros]

wow, good characters, but I love your backgrounds, very professional, sorry not any links you would'nt of heard of, but there is 3 great books! Advanced 3d photorealism, 3d creature workshop, and just photorealism techniques (I think) all by Bill Flemming, great books, I recommend them if you dont have them yet.

[Joachim]

heeey sedone, nice of you to drop by

Great characters. Nice colors on the face. Very clean and professional...and very your style as well. Great stuff.

The backgrounds looks really good too. Could use some more "volumetric" lightning. subtle hazing, etc...to give the feeling of bigger space and more cinematic lightsetting. But, i guess you have that mind allready

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Joachim's Place

[Rag]

Being a total 3D artist until I came here, I may be able to give you a little lighting advice. I learned most of my lighting, not from 3D tutorials or books but from photography books. Learn how professional photographers set up their lighting or if you can find them, books on stage lighting for stage or screen. I've learned from those type of books about bounced lighting, bounce a light from a solid white flat plane onto your scene instead of pointing a parallel light or radial light into it. It will diffuse slightly without creating alot of harse shadows. Also try and use some colored lighting if your program allows, yellowish light is more prominent in indoor scenes than white light and the size of your room will greatly affect your lighting. Not sure how much of this you already knew, but hope this helps.
Nice images btw. Wouldn't want to see the file size on those interiors.

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I don't believe in born talent, only born desire. The rest is all work.

[Sedone]

Francis, yeah I've just been cooped up in my room, avoiding sunlight and people. I have to ration my time online because I usually lose track of it (like right now).

Zephyros, I just bought a couple of 3D books recently so I'm looking for free tutorials at the moment But those photorealism books you mentioned are definitely on my list.

Joachim, thanks for pointing that out. I'm essentially learning everything as I'm doing it, so I'm going to work more on the lighting. I'm about halfway there right now, but I just wanted to toss it out and let others take a look. It was getting to the point where I couldn't tell whether something looked good or not.

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sedone's artfolio

[Sedone]

I appreciate all the comments. That's a lot of stuff to think about.

Napalm, I agree!

Balistic, I haven't really devoted that much time to the lights, mainly just modeling. What lights I threw in there were just spur of the moment. But thanks for the tips because some of that didn't occur to me. That webpage was good, but I had to read some of those paragraphs out loud to understand it.

laps, maybe I'll try it that way. I have two more models to build, anyway.

eetu, thanks for the compliments on the faces. I was kinda obssesive about them.

silber, I think Moebius designed some stuff for Tron, and I'm fairly influenced by his work, so I can see how you might say that.

MilkMan, I'm going for a more cinematic feel with this, and it's only going to be 1-2 minutes tops.

shahar2k, I had the sound down when I first saw that commercial. Had my hopes up for a second.

samdragon, thanks for the link. Good luck with your own project.

Rag, good tips. The huge file size has definitely made me familiar with the group and hide/unhide functions.

As for texturing the characters, I only know how to do it the low-poly way, as one map. It seems to be the best way for me to do it in MAX. Well, I'm off to work on it some more. Thanks for the help everyone.



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sedone's artfolio