I can do 3D too!

[iBishyT]

Yeah, we use 3DS Max at Uni, so i've been able to learn a couple of useless things (as well as having to do a couple of 3D projects). One of these projects involved creating a short story animation, which I unfortunately have no way to show you right now (but i'll try and show it to you soon).

Anyways, recently I found a website with a whole bunch of Vocaloid characters (such as Hatsune Miku) available for download in 3DS max format.
blog-imgs-29.fc2.com/a/n/o/anomarokarintou/VOCALOID-3DDL-01.htm
Unfortunately all texture and morph/mesh names are in Japanese, and as such appear all garbled or blank, so i've been working on "localising" them, starting with Kaito.
blog-imgs-24.fc2.com/a/n/o/anomarokarintou/DL-KAITO.htm

He's a great mesh, but has very limited facial morphs (he can't even smile). Another thing that annoyed me which you can see in the preview render is that his shaders ("ink n paint") are pretty boring and don't render well, so after I localised everything I made it my personal mission to "improve" him.

First, I simply altered the existing ink n paint shaders to have better outlines and shading, as well as adding shine to the hair.


It turned out really well, but I also had to change the render to Mental Ray and boost up the antialiasing options to get the lines really smooth and have it render at a decent speed.

However, one thing annoyed me immensely about the ink n paint shaders that you will probably notice, is that it never draws the mouth properly, especially when closed (pretty much making it invisible).

I then found a random tutorial on the internet that showed how you can use falloff shaders to achieve much more versatile cel-shading effects, so I tried it out (going for the dating sim cg-anime look like with some of my older Poser renders).


I was well chuffed when I found out I could do this, and spent the whole night playing around with falloffs, as well as mixing falloffs with ink n paint to get great toon effects.

(applied to the face, hair, scarf, and hands)

As well as playing around with shaders, i've also attempted modelling recently. Found a couple of random front and side views of an anime character from some "how to draw anime faces" tutorial (couldn't be bothered to draw my own), and then basically just messed around. Twas kinda annoying as the front and profile pictures don't exactly line up perfectly. =/

I did it by creating each poly individually and then moving the points where needed. The topology is awful (which basically means if I tried to animate it, it would animate horribly), but it at least LOOKS like a face, which i'm really proud of.

After receiving some advice from a modeller friend (stick only with quads, outline the eyes and mouth first before doing anything else, etc), i've decided to try remodelling it again from scratch sometime in the future. Still, for a first try at properly doing a face, i'm surprised by the fact that it actually looks like one.

[Oberstleutnant Insipid]

Ugh, I'm terrible with 3DSMax...

[somebody probably]

That looks pretty awesome - it's a shame it'd be difficult to animate, though. I've only really been able to do simple-ish objects in 3dsmax, I doubt I could do anything as detailed as a face very well without significant effort and learning, at any rate. Nice work there.

[iBishyT]

By the way, if any of the artists here at SV would like to help me as well as potentially have a 3D version of their character, then don't hesitate to submit any front and profile head shots that I can use for practice.

[Sergeant Dull]

That's some cool stuff right there, Bish. Neat =O

[Space]

And so I am surpassed. Easily.

Nice face so far.

Lucky you have 3DSMax though, and can use the extra stuff. I usually get nothing but the model in Blender, and if I'm lucky, the colors.

[iBishyT]

Well Space, there's nothing stopping you from getting 3DS Max for yourself. *wink wink nudge nudge say no more*

Anyways, did something new today. You know how in realtime cel-shaded/anime games, they tend to do outlines like this:


Basically it's the same mesh made slightly bigger, inverted, and then coloured black (at least in this case of Kasane Teto ver2 for MikuMikuDance Ver4 multi-model edition).

Well, i've found out how to do it in Max.

You select your mesh, and press ctrl+V (no, no ctrl+C, that's create new camera), and make a duplicate of the object (for the sake of argument, select "reference"...no idea if this is the best option yet).

Now, add a displace modifier onto the new object. Now, where it asks you which method to use (planar, spherical, etc), tick "object map" (dunno full name). This makes it expand evenly all around the mesh. Give the displacement a positive value (you may want to use a front on wireframe view to determine how thick the line is).

Now, add a flat colour material onto it. If it's anything other than black, you should increase it's self-lighting to 100%.

Now, add an edit mesh modifier (NOT edit poly). Select all the faces, and flip the normals.

Now, with the object still selected, go to the object properties. Turn on back face culling, and turn off "cast shadow" as well as any other rendering effects you don't need (for example, you may not want the outline to appear in reflections, so turn off reflection/refraction).

You should now easily see the cartoon outline right there in the viewport. Do a test render to see if it looks any good.

It should look like this:

(applied to face and mouth)

What's good about this technique as opposed to using ink n paint is that it's a lot more reliable (there are no problems with mouth outlines for example). While this is also true with falloffs, falloffs create outlines INSIDE the mesh as opposed to OUTSIDE. However, i'm pretty sure if you use both you'd be able to make some nifty effects.

Another neat feature is that the "outline" is easy to alter, and you can preview how it looks without even doing a render. To change the thickness of the outline, simply go back to the displacement modifier (ignoring any warnings that may pop up due to the edit mesh modifier being above it...if this annoys you you can always re-arrange them to be the other way around, they work either way) and adjust the amount of displacement to something you're pleased with. Also, if the original mesh had material ID groups, they'll be on the outline mesh as well, so you can use that to change the colour of the outline depending on where it is (for example, in that above render I made the outlines invisible around the eyelashes to stop them from getting thicker than they already are).

[Interrobang Pie]

Woah, those are totally awesome. =O

[The Pletch]

I will refrain from commenting on this, due to my opinion being biased by my hatred of anime.

[Rhinoce Breakdancerus]

I don't really like anime either, but you have to admit, these models are well done.

[dynamicsonic]

Apr 21, 2009 12:52:29 GMT 10 Rhinoce Breakdancerus said:

I don't really like anime either, but you have to admit, these models are amazingly really well done.

That.

[Adramelech]

I can't use 3DSMax like a professional, which is quite bad, seeing how it's become a huge part of my college work . Anime is quite cool as well, altough i've only just got fully into it like a couple of weeks ago lol.

By the way, those pics look quite good