View 3
 

Here is for all the wireframe people.

OOOOOooooOOOOooo
lookin very nice man, got a few comments to help ya out though, bring it up a notch:
The fallen hero, you might wanna through some nobility into his outfit, and mix in the dark side with texturing blood, rust, or what have you. The skulls work for hte dark, but seem to uniform, maybe having them lop sided, un evenly spaced, and dangling with md_controller... very cool possibilities
As for the flow of polygons, lookin good in the body, but you need to work on the muzzle of the face. The flow goes from the bottom of the lips to the top of the nose, and smaller circles between, this will add some rugged wrinkles to your character :)
As for modelling, i like the look, very simple yet dynamic. I think you should try making the teeth and lips, if even cruedly, so that when you pose him you have more options :)
Lookin good man, keep up the awesome work!

Hmm, is that you oracle... If so hi... Nice to hear your comments on the subject. Well its my first time working under a dateline, so i am going as up to speed as possible, careful not to make bobos. Once i get the entire look, i will begin texturing and then will go back and forth between texturing and fixing the smaller details. And for the teeth,,, Man thats going to be a first for me. Never actually did human teeth yet. Hmm i will see what i can come up with,,,, provided i have the time to do that.

if you do make teeth for him....then pose his mouth in a smirk and have him show just a little of his blood stained teeth:)

Well, guess i have to think about it. I still need to set the weight maps,,,, get the weapon modelled and then start to texture the guy. Then rig him for animation. Maybe when i reach the animation or IK part and i still have time i will add the teeth in.... Or i should start the teeth first. Man its confusing... But all will be decided once i finish the weapon.

Weapon Test 01
 

Well this came out of my imagination and so i modelled it to see how it held up. Might do a couple and see what comments are given,,, so please do tell which one looks nice...

My mind keep going back to helberg or trident. :confused:

Weapon Test 2
 

Well here he is with a great axe. Hmm, looks fitting for him... But then again in case anyone wondering a easy way to create an axe... I did it like so...
create a disc and get the height and other settings done. Make sure you have segments on the y. Sym on and then select and smooth shift polys into the direction you want... You might want to knife some polys to give you the desired look. I used the drag tool to get the shape going. The smooth shift the top to get the spike and stretch away to get the look right.:D

Nice weapon choice, i would pick the first one that you posted,
also try to give the first weapon a bit more width so it doesnt look so flat,
One question: Are you going to detail your first weapon with barbarian marks?

i think an axe like your second one works better.
i have attached this image of a axe that may be of some help.

Dae

Thanks guys, thanks for the image dae, guess i still havent finished tweaking the axe yet. Hmm i think i will try one or two more weapon testing before the next step that will be texturing and rigging. I am thinking on trying proceduals first. UVs will take some time, so here is the plan that i have...

1. Create UVs, and get the wire screen shot out.
2. Texture the model using procedurals
3. Rig the character with Skelegons
4. Create the respective weight maps.
5. Start the IK setup with nulls goals and stuff.
6. Meanwhile i do UV texturing in the background from step one.
7. Apply UVs and start animation testing.

Man i know that its going to be a long way, and i need to learn IK and other stuff, but hopefully this competition gives me the boost to go and learn it. :)

Rigging/WeightMapping Complete
 

Well, two days and no update,,, well was doing the time consuming rigging and weightmapping the different parts. Man that takes forever for a newbie like me. Well Here is a screeen shot of his arms i moved about and fingers clenched. Sorry for the large image size.

Procedural Testing
 

Well here is a render of the barabarian with only procedurals. Well i know that UV would be better but guess this is a start.

Oh ya, i know he is missing the skull chain,,, but i think i will add it later with Md so that it can move about his neck. Will see how it goes.

Looking really sweet there Kumar.

Thanks Mark.

very nice work kumar.. the head looks like its not attached to the body, will you fix that?

Well Digi, having some problems there, the head has many more points than the body, so i tried to bansaw a couple more, but ended up making the rest of the body angular. So i am still thinking...

The solution i have is that weld the front, put the skull chain and hope it blends well enough to avoid the seams... Any idea to solve this,,,, The neck has like 20 plus points and the body has 6.

ahh I see.. I dont have any really good solution to give you.. you could make some kind of necklace which sits very tight to the neck and covers the seam.. like a metal spike necklace or so.. but then you would probably have to drop you skull chain and that would be a pity..
However, it doesnt look all that bad as it is now.. maybe its possible to disquise it even more with texturing I dont know..

good luck to you!

Skull Chain
 

Well guess thats a bobo, too bad. Well here is the chain from before, hope this hides it better. And yes i think the red eyes give him a better look,,,, what do you say Digi?

At this point i am very tempted to start keyframing his move bit by bit... But i know that i should learn and give IK my first try. And must somehow keep going and get UVing done also.

yes, the skull chain hides the seam pretty well, I think I like him better with the normal eyes though.. but thats just my personal oppinion so you go with whatever you think looks better.

Im looking foward to seeing him with UV mapped textures :)

Hmm, at least the skull chain hides the seam. I am happy :). But i tried the MD with the skull chain as the target and the body added a FX_Collison with object_subdiv and the whole thing went.... Hang!!!!:mad: Man that was a irritating!!!!:mad: Another time all went well and the chain just slipped by the body. I think i am doing something wrong.... But guess i have to start creating some UV Maps and get the painting started.

Well just thought of something, How about FX_Gravity and the usual collision dection. Well its a thougt

Any updates on the texturing or the rigging?

UVing the eyes
 

Well, guess i took a few days since the last update,,, is because i went back and forth between understanding IK and UV texturing.. Guess i wont be UVing,,,, its too tiresome,,, and i am not good at it.. So i will only UV the details,, I have done the Eyes, and plan to do some others...

IK Setup on Arms
 

Well here is the IK Setup on the arms. Finally i learnt IK the hard way. Well i was surprised when it worked. Well now i know that its easier to animated when you only have to move one item. Now will start to IK the legs, and add a few more nulls to control the spine and get the eyes to focus. have also added a few expressions to this fellow, but that will be shown later ;)

yo kumar, its me, firefist566 from 3d links!!;)
noe wat, ur character reminds me of the barbarian character from the diablo 2 game!!;) but then, good job!!:)

Hmm,, but this guys is dark skinned and from the jungles of dark africa.... A possesed voodoo sort of a version. Hehehe :) Nice to see you here too.

Full IK Setup.
 

Ok at last the full IK setup, total bones is 65, Ik is both on the arms from the collar bone to the wrist. Ik is also on the legs, from the top of the thigh till the ankle, covering the ball of the foot. Dont want to show the character, cause need to adjust some of the weight maps,,, heheh got distortion and all so here is the rigging,, guess i need to spend time to tweak it.;)

Dude that's awesome:)
Did you learn IK by yourself or by a tute?

awsome :D

IK Tutorial
 

Self Learned IK,,,, :)

Well here is the lowdown on how i did it,,,, Say the Left leg..

You need a Hip bone to start,
then comes the thigh bone
then comes the knee cap bone
then comes the shin bone... You can add 2 here if you are going for a realistic look,,, but i added 1.
then comes the foot, ball bone.
then comes the foot toe bone.

In between the foot ball and the shin, parented to the shin you will need a small bone to do IK on. Usually call it LFoot_IKBone.

Now first you need to reset the rotation on all the bones,

After that make sure you have the parenting is correct.

Add a null positioned at exactly at the same location as the IK Bone. You can do this faster by removing parent in place and then parenting to the shin bone, and then turn on parent in place and then unparenting the bone.

Now select the hip bone and under its motion options, Unaffected by IK or Desendents.

For the Thigh, IK on Heading and Pitch stiffness 10. I dont quite like limits but its your choice i guess.

The knee cap is overlooked

The shin has IK on the heading.

The IK Bone,, select the null as the goal object, and turn on Full Time IK, Keep Goal Within Reach and i played around with the values and think that 25-75 works fine for me,,, this depends on your character and the size of him,,,, I loaded a smaller version i accidently had and the values had to be changed to look smoother.

After this step you will see a blue line from the hip to the IK Bone. Now all you have to do is move the null and the Leg bones move accordingly.

Tips* Bend the bones in the leg, before performing the IK stuff,,, I did it on a normal position and the calculations for IK went crazy. And make sure you reset the rotations, and record the rest position after. If not then prepare for joints popping out,,, Actually funny when that happened. As for the arms, heading and pitch controlling is for both bones.

Ok thats all for IK,,, Hope you enjoyed a short tutorial by a newbie for newbies....:D

Great little tut kumar!
did you weight you character?

Weight Mapping, and Endomorphs
 

Well Digi i Weightmapped the character and then after bending the joints, went back to adjust the weightmaps, Just open the character in modeller and layout at the same time and in a prebend state, adjust away in modeller and switch back to layout to see the results. I used endomorphs to tweak the fine problems in distortion, Also tried the smart skin tutorial from newteks website, but have some problem with IK and expressions,,, maybe i will figure that out,,, or maybe i dont need it...:confused: Here is the screen shot of the endomorphs and the deformations adjusted. The main problem area i spent a few hours adjusting was the hip and thigh area. What you see is only weight maps, no MD or other stuff, the loincloth is also on the same layer as the character, although when i adjust in modeller i hid different parts of the character to make things easier.

looks great!!

he looks like he's skiing lol ;) ;)

Hehe, ;) By the way,,, how does the sliders thing work what is it usually used for..??? Keep getting,, you need to select error.

hey Kumar great work, you have been busy, anyway, sliders are ok I dont use them that much, you add them in your object properties window, once thats done you can add channels and endomorphs if you have, but if you have a busy scene they do tend to get in the way.

Dae

First Move Unarmed
 

Thanks dae, hmm i think i will stick to the normal ones... :) Ok guess i havent updated things in 2 days or so,, Hmm want to know what i was doing... Well fighting around trying to get animation going... Sorry if this looks bad,,, its my absolute first time doing animation.... Well with IK things are easier... If not then imagine rotating bones over and over. Ok This is a kick move. I know that i should be doing walking or other stuff,,, truth is i am sort of embarressed to show it... Once i get my framing and speed tuned to his movement and get a smoother walk then i will show you guys something. By the way,, can we like do different moves,, like walk, jog, run, jump and then use them in our scene like click to add.. Think its Motion Mixer,,, Any ideas Guys???

The video is in divx. ;)

Dude the animation is real good, smooth as well, keep up the great work!

Thanks man,

But I dont think so, still need to improve, well my plans is to animate a library of scenes and use the motion mixer to do the animation. Still need to do some more texturing as well.

Walk Cycle
 

Well here is the walk cycle i was talking about,, still improving on this. Hmm, i know that there is a jerk in the Left Leg,,,, will get to that. Till then

Walk Cycle Improved
 

Hopefully this is a improved version... Hmm, think that the make preview is a great little tool for lenghtly animations :)

Nice animating there, yea the second one is better but it still has that jerk to it in the left leg,
Dude is it possible for you to render a vid where the camera is to the side of the barbarian, Just want to see something :)