Character design: proof of concept

human · Post by **human** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 6:09 pm

Introducing my latest, and presumably final, candidate for the Walt Whitman character design.

This serves as a proof of concept for 3d character design in iClone 2 using my rotoscoping techniques.

The little test here is just long enough to demonstrate that a flat tooned model can be mapped to track the movement in a video generated by iClone animation of the 3d character.

Here is the iClone model.

Here is the (manually) cel-shaded model.

I'm 52 today. This is my birthday present.

Comments welcome.

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 8:09 pm

Good tracing job human. If you want some comments from my side I shoud add some light to the neck. It will give more volume to this area of the character,

If you don't mind I have done it.

Genete

Touched · Post by **Touched** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 8:15 pm

If you can keep up the level of quality you show in your animated sample there, this should be a very good-looking project. I'm impressed!

And happy birthday to you!

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 8:20 pm

Happy birthday to you also!!. (I forgot it!!

)

human · Post by **human** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 11:21 pm

Forgive me for posting again, but I was playing around with my new model and an existing scene, and I just had to share this experiment.

In case there's any doubt, the images above did not involve any vectors. The pipeline was restricted to pixel operations. The picture below, however, was created in Illustrator.

This is Walt and the famous Brooklyn Ferry mentioned in his poems. You'll recognize the ferry model from a previous posting.

Note that I took Genete's advice to improve the neck, restoring the missing highlight.

I finally realized that since I am using morph technology to apply my cel shaded model into the target frames, I'm no longer bound by the imperfections of the 3D model.

Thus I can restore to him his bull neck, his macho adam's apple, and even the chest hair celebrated in another poem.

Also, check out how I learned to subordinate the inking on the distant ferry. I realized that the ink lines should be thinner and grayer.

artfx · Post by **artfx** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 1:31 am

I am not quite understanding something here. Is this a character that already existed in iClone and you are using your roto technique to apply the motion from iClone to a 2D scene? Or is this a character you created in iClone? (I heard that 3DS Max was required to create characters in iClone, otherwise I might be willing to try it)

How is iClone for speed of making quick videos?

human · Post by **human** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 4:00 am

artfx asked, "... is this a character you created in iClone? (I heard that 3DS Max was required to create characters in iClone"

and: "How is iClone for speed of making quick videos?"

Your info was garbled. Custom characters are created in iClone, just as they are in Poser. Traditionally, however, props and scenery for iClone could only be created in 3D Max. (Doing a radical renovation of a human body, like adding a tail, would require 3D Max).

(Currently, I'm learning how to create my own props within iClone, using elemental 3d primitives. This process is surprisingly quick, powerful, and easy, but the precision and flexibility is severely limited compared to pro 3D applications.)

So. I created this character in iClone, using a dauguerreotype of the poet for the face. The face-creation process is similar, but slightly different, from the face sculpting in Poser. I suspect that both Reallusion and Curious Labs/e-frontier are using a third-party technology called FaceGen.

Poser offers far more power and finesse in dialing the various parameters of the roughed-in face. However, the initial stage of face-fitting using splines in Poser is hopelessly poor for doing a likeness. By comparison, iClone is great at this.

However, neither Poser nor iClone do a good job at creating side views/profiles of the face. (The side view of my 3D character is almost unusable.) I'm not sure, perhaps iClone is worse at this than Poser.

iClone is lightyears ahead of Poser in animation. It comes with some canned animation that would be very convincing if the original acting during mocap had not been campy beyond belief. I'm mystified at this needless sabotage of what could have been so excellent.

To answer your question, export to video is flexible, powerful, accurate, reliable, and fast.

I would add that one of my biggest problems with iClone is that I haven't learned how to use the timeline editor, and I can't figure out whether I'm dense or it just doesn't work properly.