Swatkat (Razor)

Here’s some test renders I made.

It’s getting okay so far but it’s always the same, when I have to rig, everything is messed up. It’s not already the case here since I still need to work on the models but I got problems in previous models and I imagine I’m gonna encounter the same here.

The first problems I have in general concern the loose parts of the models like shoe straps or bottons that couldn’t react well dispite all the changes I made on the weight paints. That’s why I try to avoid loose parts in models that are gonne be rigged but the major problem is that it increases the numbers of verts and a model that could be done easily becomes more complicated to model.

I want to add a zipper to this model but I know that I can’t merge it to the suite and it becomes to a point where I tell to myself that it’s ridiculous.

The bag also, that I’m gonna remodel again by the way, is he obliged to have a bone parented in offset ? I’m pretty sure he’s gonna have weird deformations and is not going to follow well the torso. Same question for the zipper, same question for all items that I want to attach to a model. How do I do that ?

Attachments



A test render of the bag. The sculpt on the tap is a little bit sloppy but I was in a hurry so I have to redo it tomorrow. But for the first time I’m quite pleased with the leather material .


I finished the bad, refined all the materials, especially the suite and did over again all the seams. Some of them are not so clean, I will have to recheck that tomorrow.


Just a close up on the bag.


Now I’m very satisfied on this black leather.

I made a zipper, gloves and a back protection.




I don’t know if anybody can asnwer to that question but since I used Blender I got problems at a moment of a project and it begins very difficult to model because of this “transparent” effect. It’s not due to the botton next to the “vertices” “edges” and “faces” selection bottons, because it was disabled. But even like that I got problems. It’s very annoying and exausting to work like that. How do I turn that off ?




I worked on the hair a bit. I’m quite satisfied though if you have tips to maintain the hair below the clothes, it would be great. In that case I just painted a vertex group that stopped just below where begins the bandana but unfortunately it’s not very precise. It must be the interpolation that causes that. I imagine that I would have to add hear manually without children to make a better jonction.




I still need to texturate the claws and remodel those on the feet eventually. He also needs eyes and a belt buckle. The nose material isn’t very good right now either.

The eyes are done but I’m not still satsfied with the claws material yet. But yeah, I think the time has come to rigify it soon.


This guy has come along nicely. My first reaction though was that his head looks to small in comparison to the rest of the body. I assume he’s a cat by the title of the thread. I don’t see a tail though. The one toe on the outside looks bigger than the inside toe, so the toe slants upwards and out instead of downward and out. Your materials look great though. You should point me in the right direction. Ive tried before and failed miserably within blender Ive only used 3DS for materials. I’m more of a game artist and don’t really use blender for that. The material could use a little wear and tear. When I was learning to texture, one of the the things taught is not everything is clean. Maybe some scratches on the helmet. I wish I could answer your questions on rigging but I’m not a TD. Overall I think he’s a cool character that could use a little bit more polish.

Edit: Ok, I had to do a google search on Swatkats. I remember this cartoon. I think you can definitely push the proportions to be more cartoonish. Hope that helps.

Waow “mwgrafx”, that’s so great thank you. I looked for a lot of references but I didn’t see this one, it’s very useful. I will recheck all those proportions to give him a more cartoonish look. I think I will have to select all the clothes and body, join them, resize and dejoin. I maybe encounter some hair problems and I will have to redo them again maybe.

I totally forgot the tail :slight_smile: thanks to remind me and you’re totally right about the toe. Hopefuly you were there. How have I missed it all this time ??

Great you remember Swtakats. It wasn’t so popular in my country since I think it was aired in english on Cartoon Network but that was the only channell where you could see them. The stories were okay but the drawings were what I loved most. It still had that american touch. And the music… if you loved heavy metal and suturated guitars, that was for you.

What do you mean by " You should point me on the right direction… " Do you mean by that that you’d like advices on how to texturise in Blender ?

I use Cycles to begin with… but I imagine that in theory, all the materials in all software work the same. The makor problem I encounter sometimes is with the Gloss shader. It’s not what I can call a specular either. It’s… weird and if you don’t use the facing or/and fresnel node you can have weird results.

This one may interst you to understand better Cycles.

Thanks for your comments on the material. I passed a lot of time on Cycles to understand it a little bit better. The blue fabric I tried to mimic is not bad but it’s not the blue fabric I had in mind precisely. It’s kind of but not totally.
I see a lot of people that can do leather and fabrics without any problems but for my part I find that the fabrics are very hard to do. You don’t have a lot of tuts on them and the majority of the time they don’t convince me.

But yeah that CHocofur will definitively help you.

I made the changes you suggest and it’s better. The head was definitively too small even if I didn’t want the too cartoonish original Swatkat design. I made scratches for the helmet too. and a tail.




The hair looks weird because the fact that it’s a PNG with a transparent background but the hair is much more thiner than it looks right now on BA.

Just a shot with the hair


I’m tempted to “rig” it now but the sleeve problem. The right sleeve is better than the right one. I’d like te replace one by the other without affecting too much my UV unwrapping. I think that’s impossible.

Attachments


I don’t know if anything has been done to enhance Rigify, I doubt it but man… that’s the first time I don’t need to fix anything on the mesh concerning the rig deformation. I know that my attempts to have a better topology are paying but I think there’s also something else. Sometimes before, a right foot bone could have influence on a left one and I had to clean a bit. For this model, everything was at his place. I made som tests render to check the deformation with extreme poses and it works fine. One could just refine a bit the shapes, make them a bit smoother but at that stage I think that there’s nothing much more to do with the weight paints. The only that could make it better I think would be blend shapes and muscles deformations.

AT LEAST I get a topology that deforms well after two years of Blender. I’m very very very happy.

That doens not mean it will be always the case but at least I nailed it once and I have a good reference base now.


The deformations are great! I’d love to see the wires that led to the good results. I know it takes a long time; your two years was worth it!

I catched a trick. Instead of joining for exemple the buttons of the glove to the glove (just simple Ctrl J) and rig the whole glove doesn’t work. Well it works but the automatic weights don’t have any influence. Or you paint by hands and take the risk to paint on other parts of your mesh that you don’t want to, just parent the button to the object you want, and make an “automatic weight” on the button alone. It follows pretty well.

For the “exterior” items that are attached, I don’t have the answer for the moment. I’m gonna try it right now.

So for the moment I just have to clean the weight paints of the clothes better. The most difficult is the red strap. It could follow well but it’s in the arm intersection that it’s compicated. The weight paint must stop between the torso and the arm when closed and attached to the torso when the arm is wide open.

There’s a trick I think with the mesh deform modifier. Someone said that it can contain the body inside the clothes. How do you do that ?? Are you obliged to build a cage around the model and applied the mesh deform modifier on the body and the clothes ??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXmgwRq0Zrc GO DIRECTLY TO [03:00]

Here’s just a render test shot even if everything isn’t rigged yet and cleaned. That’s just too awesome to have a character that reacts well and doesn’t take forever to render (besides the hair). Yeah, I got a new TOY !! :smiley:



@ HelloHiHola

I almost forgot.


And just a last render test for the fun. I promise it’s the last until I clean the weight paints and try to rig the bags


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Good Job SOL_33, That’s a cool pose.

I think that could be a final render. Tell me what you think.