Nadia's Bell WIP

[tushantin]

Dang it's gonna be difficult finding em. Of course there's a possibility of alternative textures around the net. When I find em I guess it might be useful to the Compendium.

[DarioEMeloD]

PSX Multi Converter can extract the textures and then you can convert them into BMP format
I must warn you, there are A LOT of textures, so it's going to take awhile for anyone to find them =P
I think they're already on the Compendium, but I can't find them...

Uhmm... I gotta go...

[Cooper]

Nice work so far.

[Mr Bekkler]

This looks really cool!

[tushantin]

Thanks! Still quite a lot of work to do; texturing, re-organizing "ruins", expanding, etc. All done in Maya, and that PSX Multi Converter suggested by DarioEMeloD (I think pronounced "Dario-ee-mellow-dee"?) could really help for painting in textures and bump-maps.

Anybody knowledgeable in Maya that you know of who would help with the environs? XD

[fantasyanime_guy]

Very nice work! I'm looking forward to the finished product. (make it into a wallpaper!) I do have some tips for you.



[Arrow 1, the base] I recommend bumping up the edge count here to give it a more realistic feel. A quick way to do this is to create a new cylinder with a high edge count, duplicate it and fill the center, then perform a boolean operation to cut out the center. OR even better, jump into Illustrator (or Inkscape (it's free)) and create the outline of the shape there, then import it into Maya as a curve and extrude it. You can actually make the curve in Maya, but Maya isn't very user friendly with curves. Ask your teacher about it.

[Arrow 2, the arch] Same as above, I recommend bumping up the edge count. I would go the curve method and import a profile of the shape from Illustrator and extrude it.

[Arrow 3, the column] There are some unusual shadows here. Is that a regular 4x4 cube or is it split into parts? If there are parts here, I recommend swapping this area with a cube. It'll save you trouble when you enter the UV mapping phase.

[tushantin]

Thanks for the tips, mate!  I may not be able to work on this for a month now considering I've my hands tied with "Hunter" Project, a one-minute film. Though, once I'm done I'll return to finish this: it's actually a part of yet another AMV project of mine, relevant to Crono's final duel with Dalton. For some reason I prefer artistic-unrealistic shading style, similar to Blackwater Gospel, than any realistic rendering, and that's exactly what I'm focusing on.

And indeed, both Inkscape and Illustrator are rad!  Of course, I'm more of a supporter of OpenSource though. And holy shit, I dig that lighting/shading of your wallie!  Even without that Photoshopping it's... it's...    You seriously need to make a tutorial for it.

[fantasyanime_guy]

You support open source, ay? Then switch to Blender! Really, the only difference between Maya and Blender is that Maya has advanced features that, unless you're a professional 3D artist, you'll probably never use them in your lifetime.

Seriously, you can make some pretty impressive 3D models simply by using vector outlines. Check out this other wallpaper I made. See the books in the background? Those were made entirely by outlines from Illustrator. It would take longer to try to model them with polygons, and you'd also have to worry about having enough edges to make rounded corners look smooth enough.

A Crono AMV? Very cool! Post your progress here. What software are you using for it?

[tushantin]

I already have! XD I love Blender, and everything about it (except for its Spline IK module; needs more work)! It's often faster to work on Blender than Maya for me. The only reason I'm actually using Maya is because it's required by my semester projects, and that I need to know its workings in order to land a job.

Ah dang! I really don't know how to use vectors to make models in the first place. Any tips/tuts you have in mind?

  My preferred tools of choice for the animation are Blender, Synfig, GIMP, MyPaint and Lightworks. Yeah, since I'm doing my eProject anywhos I'd already have a portfolio for Maya; meaning I can export that Nadia's Bell model to Blender for the animation. Only problem is that I kinda like the "edge outline" feature Maya's got.  Blender's far from achieving results like that. Tried Freestyle, but... meh...

[fantasyanime_guy]

Tutorials? Hmm... let's see... ah, I remember this video was helpful with outlines:
http://www.gotoandlearn.com/play.php?id=106
Jump to 05:00. Just save your outline from Inkscape as an SVG, then follow this video. You can even smooth out your extruded object with "BevelResol".
Blender has "edge outline" too It just requires a few more steps versus Maya. It's in the same panel from the above video, using "BevOb" and "TaperOb". Google those features and you should find a tutorial on it.

Yeah, I would agree that Maya's character outlining features are easier. But Blender isn't terrible at it, just some things require more clicks. We'll see, the next release of Blender promises to be a complete overhaul aimed at making things easier. They've been working on it a long time.

[tushantin]

Thanks for the tut!  I'll try that.

That Curve Taper (or Taper Ob) looks tad hard, or probably I'm thinkin something else. You see, I was looking for ways to make my 3D scenes resemble 2D animation, just like I did here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUZ-FIgtLJU

Problem was that Blender DOES have the edge stroke option to get any models to have cartoon outlines, but there's no way to increase or reduce the width, especially when working with intensive animations. Besides that, I kinda love Blender's Toon Shader more than the one in Maya, because it lets you get away with gradient lighting along with cell shading to get an awesome look. Indirect lighting is just so easy in Blender.

Oh, and I use Blender 2.5. Not that it's too different from 2.49, but just putting it out there.