My Tim Burton Style Character, Ongoing Work from D.Ward Tutorial

Greetings all,

I’m very much a beginner with Blender. I’ve been doing art and have worked in the game world quite a bit. I no longer do game modeling but I found I did miss it.

Blender was a very welcome program for me to find. I’ve worked in Maya and 3ds max but I never felt like I was any good with them…

Blender is very friendly and easy to work with for me. I started with 2.69 so I guess I missed out on a lot of developmental pain and got to use a very polished interface. Thanks blender crew, you are awesome.

As a way to learn the software I’ve been following David Ward and a lot of other postings about how to work with Blender. I must say I love the software and have rediscovered my artist /tech persona. It has been quite fun.

David Ward has a great tutorial on creating a Tim Burton style character. I wanted to post my progress on that project as my sketch book.

Just a quick word of thanks: David Ward , you are awesome! thank you for your clear and concise tutorials, you have made it very easy to learn how to use blender and be good with it.

I am currently up to Tutorial Pt 16…its been a real challenge for me. I’m still learning how to use Blender and I have to stop the modeling and go look up stuff …all the time.


The naked character…sort of based on the Corpse Bride look.



My current status is :

Goal 1: Learn How to use the blender to Model, Lighting, Texture Mapping, Particle Hair and Animate, Goal 2 :Create animation walks and express emotion and a sense of the character, Using the model from this tutorial. Goal 3: Learn to model correctly for good joints and animation. Goal 4: Rebuild the model again and do it better.

I’m currently on Goal one and making good progress. I’ll only be talking about Goal 1 for now.

Goal 1: This phase of the goal is about learning, not perfect modeling or other details. So some problems I’ll pass on and come back to once I’ve gotten used to using the software.

  1. Character model : Done
  2. Clothes Model: Done
  3. Particle Hair: Done
  4. Rig: Done
  5. Shape Keys for Facial Expressions: In progress.

Problems and Worries:

  1. The teeth and gums…they are joined to the body mesh and when I shape key and I somehow mess that mesh up.
    Most likely its when I use the sculpt tool to fine tune my shape keys. Would hiding the teeth and gums prevent that? I don’t know. :frowning:

  2. My Joints on the shirt and hands are awful. I’ll go back to that later and clean them up as well as the shirt arm elbow joint which I failed at making good mesh loops for.

Current BIG Problem that I’d like to solve:
–His Eye Blink in Shape keys–

I would like to use shape keys for his eye blink but I am getting scale distortions in the mesh.

I use rotate for each of the half-sphere eyelids. While using shape keys I see each half sphere rotates and scales down and then stops and the correct position.

I only use rotation for the shape key.

Result: you see the eye lid come through the eyeball as it rotates into a closed position. Very frustrating.

I’ll post more on that problem. I’m sure there is a solution to this, I am just so new that I don’t even know how to ask questions about it.

Sorry if this post has been a bit long. If you have managed to make it this far you are a brave and caring soul.

Any comments or help is welcome. I mean it. Don’t be nice or polite, it won’t help me get better.

peace,

James


One of the facial shape keys I really liked

The mesh



03/21/2014

So much hard work…here are some notes from…my notebook. Yeah, what a concept :slight_smile:

Ok…I turned on ‘Quick Tools’ Wow. Frig’n awesome speed up.

the num pad /, isolate all but selected…nice.

I added a bunch of shape keys and got rid of the half sphere eye blink…it won’t work that way. I 'll come back to it later.

Lots of problems with the mesh. It needs a compete redo for:

the mesh: retoplogise…should be easy if I base it on the existing mesh…I am just so new everything takes forever…argh!

I so far hate using rigify…its cool but its just too advanced for me right now. I think I’ll build my own ring and go with that approach.

I really want to add life into my guy and show off his thoughts and what kind of person he is…so far FAIL, but I’m having fun trying.

Some low res images…these are only my test i spent zero time with lighting and materials…well not quite true but I really just wanted to play with the shape key drivers and posing him with the rig.

A few facial fun pics.




I feel so damn slow at everything. So many shortcuts I want to know…

If I start dreaming about electric blenders is that bad?

Moved from “Sketchbooks” to “Works in Progress” at OP request

dreaming of electric blenders is allright as long as you do not find yourself using them for your hairstyling while sleepwalking and there are no pastry blenders in that dream calling you to jump in pretending to mix up things a bit for the better everything is good.

cool, lively facial expressions and gestures btw.! you could use the shrinkwrap-modifier for eyelids and apply it as shapekeys for the eyelid movement. its pretty easy and the result will be more satisfying than using spheres which are a good start anyway. have you checked the rotation center for the spheres lately?

cheerio

thanks jester elly,

shrinkwrap!? I know of it but I’ve not yet used it. I’ll look it up and explore that…thanks. I did check the rotation centers…many times…wah! :slight_smile: I would set up the 3d Cursor to rotate around.

The shape keys from what I’ve read won’t rotate properly for my eyeblink. Still looking into it. I’m very interested in your shrinkwrap idea.

3/23/2014- Working on facial Shape Keys and Drivers

This has gone a bit slow but I’m getting there. I’m not going to add in everything I’d like to see since it only a test project.

I did an eye socket blink which works pretty well



I am also planning to use a bone controller to create a half sphere eye lid.

I’m still fine tuning my facial rig controls…takes a lot of time since I’m so slow


very cool james

Thanks ryken :slight_smile:

I getting ready to delete the rig and redo it…after I do some mesh fixes. I’m not looking forward to it…but, I need to change my thinking and know that that struggle will make me and the character better people.

I hope… :slight_smile:

Smiles are hard to do well…mine really suck.


I have had a few problems with the mesh and the rig.

The X axis got out of wack and I wanted to rebuild the hands.

I did realign the x axis no problem and I could see mirror working…but it would not add in or let me create the new mesh I needed so I couldn’t use the mirror tool.

I used ‘separate’ and built the new mesh hands as a new model. I then added mirror and subsurf to that new model and redid the hands

Much better my 2nd time. So I feel really good about the hours spent there. 3 hours maybe…more or less.

I don’t know how well this mesh will animate and deform…I really want slim graceful hand here.

I could use some pointers about building mesh for those bending joints better…I’ve not yet been able to find good info on that.


I rebuilt the middle finger and then duplicated it and scaled and did all the mesh things it needed. I now need to apply the mirror mod and then join the hands to the main body mesh and weld the verts.

What this will do to my already wacky rig I don’t know. I plan to delete the rig and start a new one anyway.

I had real problems trying to get the rigify to scale the bones to my model proportions. I have tiny feet for the style and really long legs. It did not work out so well.

I am thinking I would be better off just building my own rig. More work but also more knowledge for me to wrap my small brain around.


Any thoughts about rigs vs rigify?

Thanks Jester Elly, I’ve done a bit a rigging and I did enjoy it. The rigify is a very pro setup. I’ve already learned some great things from it but I felt out of control at the same time.

I’ve been doing nothing but study and I’ve been learning from some great folk and the videos they create.

I just want to know it all…yesterday.

Nathan, the author of rigify, has a Blender DVD on rigging. You can get it as a dvd or a digital download at the Blender store. It’s a great starter on rigging in Blender plus you will gain a lot of insight of how he actually built the rigify rig.

I tend to lean towards using rigify. There is no point in re-inventing the wheel unless the actual goal of your project is to learn rigging.


I decided to break my model down and go back to testing. I redid the hand and deleted all the armatures I had done up to this point. File number 97…those are my save versions to help me go back and fix things.

I feel like I’m just now getting some good results. I found a great video by Johnathan Williams…

What you see above are my bone shapes…I can’t help but want to play with those. I wish I could get them to behave in axis space with more precise control. Anyway I think making my own rig is way more fun than using others. Plus I know exactly how I want them to bend for my slim finger’d hand.

Those fingers is loooong.

The name of the video:

Rigging Easy-to-animate Fingers

http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/05/13/rigging-easy-to-animate-fingers/

Check it out if you have a moment. The auto weighted armature was very good but as you’ll see here not as good as it could have been. But with a few painting passes it was very simple to correct


If you look at my weight painting shown here. You can see what my best guess is to create a good bending joint. Feel free to let me know if you have some better ideas to throw at me. The hand shown has had all the weighting tweaked. To my eye it is bending well for a cartoon hand with long fingers.

The video was very helpful and I’ve now gone over the bone process …er…way too many times


The above hand was posed with just the auto weight…and it was pretty good. I’m glad I went and checked all of them.

Finally a productive session with bones. I never thought it would work out so well for me…I’ve been very frustrated up till now. Today was a smile.

Some of my test posing, I’m looking at the bends…these are the auto-weight settings on the bones. I’ll post more with my tuned up weights.




Wow, this is a lot of hard work! I followed a bit of David Ward’s Tim Burton series a while ago, but didn’t have the motivation to go through with it fully. The fact that you’ve plugged through it is amazing! The facial rig and hand rig are professional and deform well and look like a lot of fun for animators to play with. My critique would be that the eyes look a little bit off. I’m not sure what it is, but I think the eyebrow area might need more of a bulge and the top eyelids might need to be more prominent when his eyes are open. That might solve the eyelid coming through the eyeball when his eyes are closed. Other than that, it looks great!
Are you planning on making an animation with this?

Yes, it’s been a lot of work to get this far. I love David’s videos and I’ve learned so much from them and had a lot of fun while trying to follow his teachings.

I think your right about the eyes needing some tweaks. I will have to confess I kinda liked how the oddness around the eyes looked so far. It looks weird but that might not be bad in the long run.

The eye lids I plan to use


I’ll do some testing there and see how things go. He has no eyebrows at all at the moment and that I think should be added in. Using hooks might give me the eyelid control I want. I have a few other ideas about eyelids that I plan to try out.

I am going back to problem areas as I master the basics and get more familiar with the software. I’ve only used it for a few weeks so everything is new and even the simple stuff is hard. "]

I do plan to animate him and the female version too.


His name is Devon and hers is Sparkle. He’s a steam-punk guy who dabbles with demons.

My far off plans are to learn how to animate with him. Though I must confess that using a stick man figure to start with is most likely how I will start out my testing of that process.

03/25/14, Tuesday Mornings Work- Bone

File: Devon_06_027

I did some tweaks to the hand as I added in the bones. I guess that even with x mirror and topology on you still won’t see a loop get added. If you know otherwise please let me know.

I knew from my hand test that the thumb need a bit more loops and some thickness. I also gave the thumb more length…it seemed a bit too short for the long finger look I’d like to see.


I am Redoing the whole armature and its going better. Every time I construct an armature I learn more. Using the ctrl a for aligning the bones is a real time saver. It will ensure that all the chains bend correctly.

I am using two videos for this , How to Rig an Alien- David Ward, Blender Introduction to Character Rigging-Jonathan Williams, both have good info. http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/01/04/rigging-an-alien/

Both were free but I plan to join that site as the quality of the video tutorials is outstanding and worth the fee.

I like the box bone display the best.


The envelope bone display is also good. I switch my display around quite a bit…perhaps I should make a hot key for them. That would be cool.


Wow! I’m impressed. I actually logged on today to post some character model WIP shots, and saw your forum and thought I’d click on it.

From someone who’s been studying, unsuccessfully, topology for the last week any spare moment I had, your topo is great!

I like the look and the feel of the character. He is very expressive and very Burtonesque.

Keep going! It takes as long as it takes and rarely, at the outset of a brand new project, do we ever estimate correctly the amount of effort we’re going to spend between start and finish.

wow !

Thanks, that means a lot to me.

I totally agree, I can’t count the time nor plan for this learning project. I must confess to using my post as a work log…sorta.

-J

ps, I’ve built hundreds of models…so that sorta came with that. I’ve not built good models but I have had lots of experience with how NOT to do it.

I’ve also watch some good topo vids…that gave me the ‘how’ to do it better. With those vids in my mind I plan to redo the topo…I really see lots of room to improve it. Right now its not really been my focus. I know that when I start to animate the face I get problems with my current mesh.

So I feel much like you do, more work needed. A lot more. :slight_smile:


His collar bone is moving too much in the z direction. I’d like to limit that rot. Not sure how and I thought I might ask.

Any pointers are welcome.

-j