Cartoon Dog

I have just started a cartoon dog. I will be following a tutorial on YouTube while I do this. I have discovered that I still need to do tutorials. I tried to do a project on my own and I realized that I need to do more tutorials before I can do anything on my own.

CC will be appreciated.


Wire Frame


You have a nice start on this dog. He definitely has a cartoon type feel. I always appreciate anyone who attempts any kind of character modeling. It’s truly challenging, but rewarding when it finally starts coming together.

You need to come up with a name for this little doggie :slight_smile: I’ll look forward to watching your progress.

harleynut97 Thank you I appreciate your input.

You need to come up with a name for this little doggie :slight_smile: I’ll look forward to watching your progress.

I decided to call the dog Patches. I am still working on the texturing for the dog still have tweaking the colors and softening edges

Was wondering why I am getting harsh lines. I noticed they are from the marked seam. So I am putting more color on them. Is there another way to do it? I


It’s a great start, if you put fur on him the seams won’t be as obvious, and you can spackle it some. I don’t really see any bad ones though.

Show a screenshot of the edit mode mesh with seems marked, and also a shot of the uv unwrap.

The dog is solid all around, the only little thing I might change is the nose/snout it comes to a very sharp ridge in the middle. I might flatten that out, and maybe increase the back of the jaw, bulge it out some.

Patches for president!

Photox thanks for your input. Here are the image that you asked about


I have smoothed out the nose and I jutted out the chin a little.

CC are most appreciated

Ok, the seams and uvs look good. Did you paint it in photoshop? You may get better results painting it in blender and then touching it up in photoshop. Are you planning to put fur (hair) on it, if you are I doubt you will be able to tell.

Areyou going to use Cycles toon or BI?

Woof!

Super cool, but, to me, his butt area looks a little puffy.

Update


Ok, the seams and uvs look good. Did you paint it in photoshop? You may get better results painting it in blender and then touching it up in photoshop. Are you planning to put fur (hair) on it, if you are I doubt you will be able to tell.

Great I was a bit concerned with the seams showing. However I did have to redo some of the texture. Yes i did this in Blender.
As you can tell I have put fur on him. However, by looking at the nose the fur looks strange. I am not sure how to fix this issue.

After I was done with the texture paint I went into Cycles for the his eyes which I already had used for me teddy bear.
This is a test render which has samples at preview of 100 so I will need to go more which I will do later. It a little dark so I will put another light as well

his butt area looks a little puffy.

Modron I will look into that and see about making an adjustment maybe. After I quit for the night I though about what said and I will go ahead to change that a little bit tomorrow. Thanks

I am hoping that I will animate him and put him with another character that i am working on. I had some trouble with my last attempt and this will be with two characters instead of one. So hopefully I will get it going this time.

Nice!

Shorten the fur some, and mix some gloss into it. And then comb it some. And add a key light, plane with emission material, shining on that dog. We can’t see him. I can give you some good tips on fur. Nice progress.

Thanks for the help Photox

I have reduced the but on the dog as well like Modron suggested. Looks much better. I have shortened the hair a little from .1 to .080 now. I have added the gloss to both the fur and eyes.

I can give you some good tips on fur. Nice progress.
Please do give some tips on the fur.

Question the image on the upper left corner is a regular render and the hair on top of nose looks like crap so how do I
go about changing that. I went back to particle edit to cut it but it is still there. The red arrow is pointed to it.
I have also added a key light and a fill light.



Question the image on the upper left corner is a regular render and the hair on top of nose looks like crap so how do I
go about changing that

I had noticed those strange lines near the nose on post #8, I wonder if an additional loop cut might help… also try removing doubles and recalculating doubles possibly.

Patches is starting to look good, keep at it.

It’s starting to look really cool.

  1. You added a glossy node but you never mixed it in with the diffuse. Also do not connect the color from the image into the glossy. Glossy is white. The roughness for hair should be closer .1, and the mix factor somehwere between .03 - .15
    Simple fur:

I’m pretty sure you did the same thing with the eyes.

Lower the size (shrink down) and lower the emssion strength of both lights. Make sure it’s very clear which direction the light is coming from.

Get the materials and lights right and then move on the hair styling. You will want to enabled children on the hairs, interpolated, and in the random parameter increase it slightly ~.01 - .1

Nice project, keep it up. I have another idea for fur. You can try to use musgrave texture and bake best material. With musgrave you can get better control:

Attachments




harleynut97

I had noticed those strange lines near the nose on post #8, I wonder if an additional loop cut might help… also try removing doubles and recalculating doubles possibly.

I did try that and I don’t have any doubles and I also added another loop cut which made it worse so I thought about going into my vertex group and having that loop highlighted I removed it which worked.

Thanks for the compliment

Photox Thanks for the reminder for the mix shader I laughed at myself about it and I added that to the fur and eyes.

M2o I did try that but it really didn’t turn out with the same colors. Not sure why but I will experiment with it.

You will want to enabled children on the hairs, interpolated, and in the random parameter increase it slightly ~.01 - .1

I did all of this but the random where do I find that and when ever I go to edit the particles always on my and I have to redo it. So is there another way that I can edit the fur without loosing what I have done?

The key light and fill light are reduced in size and the key light has 3.500 and the fill 2.500.

Light setup


Another Render


One other thing I would like to have the dog with a better background

How would I go about doing that. In the World settings I have the Hamarikyu Bridge that I got from sIBL so I would like to put him walking along that image But I am not sure how to do it. Can anyone help.

Patches looks great.

It’s a good question. using an environment lighting image is more important when you are going for realism, and especially when you have really glossy materials, or glass. Patches feels more like a pixar/semi toon style and you might to experiement with changing from env texture to a simple rgb color. It will reduce the range of colors in the render, but that’s probably what you want here. Also do some tests with a toon shader for the fur and skin. The toon shader has a dropdown for diffuse and glossy and you mix them much like regular diffuse and glossy. Play around with the values, and see what you like. The toon shaders will also converge much faster with less noise, which will make renders faster and avoid issues of noise patterns when you render video.

  1. Add some gloss to that nose, doggies have very wet noses.

  2. Add an object or two with a somehwat know scale. A little dog bowl, a toy bone, a baseball, it will help you and the viewer get a sense of scale and depth.

  3. Background can be done a million ways. I don’t think you really want the hdri backdround. This should have some type of toon style back ground. There’s an add on called ‘import image as planes’ its a time saver, and lets you pick and image and it’s unwrapped and put on a plane with a diffuse shader. Just google ‘cartoon background’ and pick a couple for tests. Later on you can use them as a template in photoshop to make your own. go to user prefs, add ons, type ‘image’ into the search box, check the checkbox next to the add on and click save. Then file->import->images as planes and go to where you saved the cartoon background. you may to rotate and scale the image plane.

I would reduce the fill light even more, but that’s just me.

Keep doing what you’re doing, it looks really good. Woof!

Hi, Spanishrose, I like where this is going!

If you follow this good advice of Photox you can also try to replace the diffuse shader of this background plane by an emission shader. Keep the image texture connected to the color input of that emission shader and set its strength to a low value of 1. This will have some effects on your scene lighting, but it will make the background more brilliant also. And I think that could enhance the toon appearance of the scene.

Yes you can certainly use an emission shader, or a mix of diffuse and emission for the background image. Sometimes people do that when they have modeled text, sort of like subtitles. It forces the color of the rendered object to be almost exactly what you choose.

Here is an update:

Add some gloss to that nose, doggies have very wet noses.

  1. Add an object or two with a somehwat know scale. A little dog bowl, a toy bone, a baseball, it will help you and the viewer get a sense of scale and depth.

I have added the glossy look to this using the toon shader.

I don’t have time to do a cartoon background in photoshop so I only did the sky only and then went to blend swap I downloaded the grass and picket fence also the bone

Sorry I was having trouble with the url links so I had to do another post.

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also try to replace the diffuse shader of this background plane by an emission shader
I will try that as I am still working on the background I will be adding and tweaking the different settings.

Here is the update.


I am also trying different camera angles. I sure hope this has a cartoon feel to it. I will also be adding one or two low poly trees to this. Looks a bit empty of life.

Please give me feedback I do appreciate it.