Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Might do a stream soon

I'll probably do a live-stream sometime soon, and do some sprite-work for a boss. I haven't designed it yet, so I'll also be doing that on-stream. Might also animate an attack I want to add.


Also, did some more low-poly 3d work. This time trying to figure out how I would model a head if I were making a rig, instead of using textures for the face. Looking at most other games, even in anime styles, it seems like a lot of them just model the eye lines, and use spheres for the eyes.

One thing I find kind of annoying, is that it seems like half the time I'm adding more polys simply because I can't get normals to look work right with shadows. Right now this face is around 1000, but it would be much lower if not for the extra polys in the mouth and nose.


 If I made a 3d game, the first time around I'd probably use textures for the face, and just not zoom in on the animations much. Then I'd use rigs once I started doing games with animations/scenes that are were more worthy of being "scrutinized".  For example if I was doing animations where the movement of the mouth mattered.


37 comments:

  1. I like this one alot better. Alot smother without alot of detail. Me personally I dont like the idea of the 3D games in this genre. They seem to never come out "Ideal". I think the reason pixels and sprite media works better because you can make it alot more fluid and naturally flowing in all aspects. Where as 3D seems to be more about the creators skill using software... I dont know too much on game creation so I guess I should shut up. I think you got the skill to pull it off and I like the fact you are looking into other mediums.

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    1. I think it comes down to the fact that like 2d, there are a lot of bad 3d devs, especially when it comes to action games. As with 2d, I would more or less try and do simple things, but do them well.

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    2. I believe Boko877's works (even if a bit too brutal) are a really good example of 3d animation, with great fighting scenes. They are done on MMD though so they aren't completely done from scratch

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  2. Your 3D stuff looks like crap

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    1. Am I supposed to be offended or something?

      Statements like "looks like crap" or "looks good" are equally meaningless to a person who has a realistic opinion of their own work. You need a more productive hobby.

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    2. Your 3D stuff looks way better than I could ever personally hope to accomplish, and unlike me, you've actually successfully completed and marketed two full games. It's obviously not AAA-quality, but I don't have the expertise to critique your artwork beyond "I like/dislike what I see." That said, I've been following your work since you started, way back before Kurovadis when you put together a proof of concept with a school girl who ran back and forth and could get knocked down, and as much as I can see you've consistently improved your craft, I can also say with some authority that everything you've created has always shown a lot of attention to detail - if nothing else, the amount of care and consideration you put into your work shows through, and the extra time that your fans have to wait for a product never feels squandered when we have the finished work in our grubby hands.

      I know you don't let comments like the one above bother you, but that doesn't mean praise shouldn't be given when it's deserved. Keep it up Kyri - you rock.

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    3. Nah, I love it. It has that simplistic almost PS1-level aesthetic, and I adore that.

      Keep it up, Kyrieru!

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  3. So, when's the stream planned? Later today, tomorrow? Hopefully not tomorrow, I work tomorrow and don't want to miss the stream. : P

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    1. I don't know yet. Probably the day after tomorrow.

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  4. Eh, looks ok I guess. I'd rather see something 2D or from Noaika but whatever, go nuts.

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  5. no idea what time zone your in so ill probs miss the stream

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  6. Dont make 3D stuffs. I love yor 2D stuff. Its godlike. If you went 3D it'd be a lot of wasted 2D talent... just my 2 cent on this... ^^

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    1. Why not both? There's no reason why I'd stop making 2d games if I started making 3ds games. Both have their own merits.

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    2. 3d*

      I use 3ds max, so, Freudian slip I suppose -___-

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    3. You make a 3DS game (Nintendo) and shit hits the fan in the best way possible.

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    4. Well, that's true. You can always do both. It's just that I'm more of a 2D fan myself and i was pretty drunk last night while typing that x) Sorry if it offended you in any way. I didn't have any ill intent. Just really my own opinion. But yeah you're right. There's always the possibility to do both.

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  7. Two quick things, might actually be helpful to you: One, Anime style models actually use concave 'indentions' for the Sclera, and a seperate flat-ish oval for the cornea. This gives the eye the illusion of movement without the lighting giving away a roundness of the eye. You also have more freedom with the shape of your head models. Of course this is the most extreme anime example; your mileage will vary depending on the realism desired but I imagine the above would work well for you.

    Secondly, creating a Face rig can be incredibly time consuming and not completely necessary. Using morph targets for facial expression and movement is less technical than proper skinning and gives one absolute control over expressions. I would consider using morph targets for models in your particular style.

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    1. I was actually taking a look at some Kingdom Hearts cut-scene models today, and realized that about the eyes.
      https://i.gyazo.com/1dd80665f3f2f5954d4019da0fd59e65.png

      Before I made the eyes the way they are in this post, or saw the way it was done in KH, I tried it that way. However I didn't really get a good effect, so I wen't with the spheres. I'll have to try again some other time, and take note of how other models do it specifically.

      As for the lighting, regardless of how I do the eyes I'll probably make them self-illuminated and unaffected by shadows. Even in traditional animation you often see the effect where the eyes are white, even in darkness, and I like that aesthetic.

      When I said "rig", I was actually referring to morphing. I just meant "rig" in the sense that it's a mesh that can be used to make different expressions, as opposed to the face just being a static texture. I tried bones before I knew that morphing was possible, and it was...the worst thing ever...

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    2. I usually just use a subdivided/cut up plane for manga styled eyes. I model in the eye lids and sockets and use an object to project a procedural texture onto the surface of the plane.

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    3. Well, one of the reasons why people use a squashed sphere, or at least a curved plane, is so that the eye still looks right at an angle. Otherwise it can look pretty weird when you actually look closely at it..

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  8. Using bones in the face IS the worst thing ever; as far as skinning goes at least. Densely packed vertices all being fought over by bone weights quickly becomes a nightmare! I stubbornly tried to wrestle that bear several years ago and ended up quite frustrated.

    I'm not familiar with the kingdom hearts models, as I've never taken any time to seek them out and deconstruct. However examples of the eye styles I was referring to can be seen in the Teatime game Love Death 2. I found their models to look very good in different lighting situations as well; but again one's mileage will vary. Personally I would be shooting for a shader akin to Guilty Gear Xrd, if I could remember where I put all that documentation.

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  9. Heyho Im the "your 3D stuff looks like crap guy" I just wanted to say it looks like crap but you already answered your own question in your reply but why you are even replying when its meaningles?

    I mean it just really looks like crap, maybe you get better after finishing your game.

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    1. Hey, my drawings look like crap. I'm cool with that. And if someone comes up to me and says "your stuff looks like crap," I'd just nod and move on without paying any heed.

      I fully respect dissenting opinions, but if you're going to claim that so-and-so is crap, I'd highly recommend you back it up with some constructive criticism. Otherwise, like Kyrieru already stated, your comments are meaningless - not because they're negative, but because they don't add anything to the conversation.

      I don't mean to go all white-knight on you, but you're kinda asking for it by posting this sort of stuff twice. Shame on me for taking the bait, but at least anyone else reading this will understand why your comments are not needed.

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    2. Calling someone's work crap without anything to back it up is meaningless, and a waste of both people's time, but letting someone know that you want more detailed feedback isn't. On a blog like this, where there are still a relatively small number of people who comment, the potential of turning comments like "this sucks" into more helpful comments like "this sucks because ____" in the future outweighs the minute or two it takes for me to write a response.

      If someone said "this looks like crap, the lips look really stupid". Even without any advice, or specifics, it would at least let me know that "Oh, even to the casual viewer, the lips stand out as being wrong", which is important, because the majority of people playing my games are casual viewers, not artists.

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    3. Looks like two guys are really offended by my simple opinion, so lets get more detailed: It looks like crap overall and I dont know what you could do to make it look better cause its that worse...

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    4. You just want to waste people's time then, got it.

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    5. LOL @AnonymousMarch 13, 2015 at 10:40 AM

      Your "it sucks just because it sucks" comment made my day :)

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  10. Honest criticism here. If you're going to show something like this do it in 3/4 or different perspectives like you did before because I can't tell the volume of the 3d in that image. For example, I don't like the hair nor the chin, they annoy me but I don't know if it looks good in other perspectives, I can't even tell what the hair is supposed to look like in the whole thing. So, from the information I get the hair is just tacked on there and I just... think is crap, sorry but that's what I see.

    I like the shading (simple but it works) and the mouth btw.

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    1. Fair enough. I guess I'm just hesitant to fill a post with in-depth 3d stuff because of people's attitude towards it thus far -___-
      Ideally, I should have an rotating gif of the head, one with shading, one with wiereframe, and then each of the basic angles.

      And yeah, the hair looks pretty bad, regardless of the angle. It's one of the most awkward parts of modeling to get used to, so far, when compared to drawing the same thing. Right now, it just kind of looks like a mess of polygons.

      Next time, after I model the head I think I should actually sketch hair over a screenshot of the head, to give myself a reference to work from

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  11. Taking a look at the models and faces for the latest 3ds Fire Emblem game, it looks like they use minimal geometry for the faces and simply rely on well-animated 2d textures, which works well on the cell-shaded geometry. Granted these are all pre-planned cgi cutscenes with the angles carefully cherry-picked to ensure fluid face animation and proper facial feature angles, but it just goes to show you that it doesn't all have to be 100% pixar animated models for anime-inspired content (which leads to the "what the fuck were you thinking" quality doll-looking sphere-eyed anime models you see so often.)

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    1. Well, games like Kingdom hearts use spheres, but the idea is that they're squashed a bit to compensate for the anime style. Of course, it's always going to be difficult to avoid the uncanny vally if you're trying to use lighting without drawn textures, the way I did here.

      Ideally I want to have a style that gives me a lot of freedom to animate the face, so that I'm not limited when I want to do expressions. however, next time I should operate on the assumption that I won't need to rely on natural shadows to show lines.

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  12. So I take it with you working on all this 3D stuff, that the other game is on hold. ....again.... T_T

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    1. This is just something I'm doing in my free time. It doesn't take very long. If I were spending as much time on models as I do on the game, I would have more detailed, fully textured models by now

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