Here’s another update. I think I might be close to finishing this one. I still have to do a final sculpting pass (facial expressions, silhouette, penetrating geometry, etc.) and then work on the fog. Then I render out the camera animation and that would (hopefully )be that.
You have a really nice style to your work. I love it.
i dont really get this composition? I hardly see or understand what the girl is doing. The surrounding is completly lost now, not sure you want that
High JulSan.
It’s been a while since i’ve seen your Vampire Hunter. It was very stunning and I didn’t know you were still working on.
I got a question concerning the chain that is hooked to her pants.
How do you do to make it follow it well with the rig?? It can’t deform so you can’t use weight paints. Are you obliged to use rigid body constraints? How do you make the hooks follow the pants? DO you attribute a bone to each two hooks parented to the rig ?? Do you attribute a bone to each part of the chain ? Do you have to re animate by hand the chain each time to avoid it to enter in the mesh of the girl ??
I hope you will able to answer. I made a gitl with a chain once and it wasn’t easy to deal with.
Hello again.
@rambout: Thanks for the critique! I’ve received critiques similar to yours from others as well about how it’s difficult to understand what’s going on, so I definitely have to address that. My current ideas on how to fix that problem are to pull out the camera a bit to make it clearer that she’s pulling stuff out of a bag, to lower the lights on the bag and to up the light from the phone to emphasize the stake in her hand. I’m also going to try and reorder the props to avoid clutter.
@SOL_33: The chain is rigged with a splineIK with hooks controlling the influence curve. The controller bones are constrained to the hip joints to have them follow along. Since the chain links are so small and irregularly shaped, the deformations caused by skinning aren’t too noticeable. This is also just a posing rig, so I didn’t have to worry about animation. To be honest, I’m not too familiar with Blender’s rigging and dynamics system yet since it’s not the 3D package I usually work with. What I’ve done in the past with simulated chains in other programs was to have one bone per chain link, set up a spline IK for the bones and then make the influence curve dynamic so that only the curve is being simulated Instead of having a lot of rigid bodies. Blender’s curves can be turned into soft bodies so it might be possible to do that method in Blender, but I personally haven’t tried it yet.
@rambout: Thanks for the critique! I’ve received critiques similar to yours from others as well about how it’s difficult to understand what’s going on, so I definitely have to address that. My current ideas on how to fix that problem are to pull out the camera a bit to make it clearer that she’s pulling stuff out of a bag, to lower the lights on the bag and to up the light from the phone to emphasize the stake in her hand. I’m also going to try and reorder the props to avoid clutter.
Perhaps its better if the scene is more looked at from the side. The viewer would than see more of whats really happening. It took me a while to understand shes having problems with the phone and the headsets.
Thanks for your reply JulSan. Very useful !!
Here’s an update to try and address the clarity issues. I also tried giving her a different facial expression.
The characters, and environment are really good looking but I am kind of not feeling the lighting it too warm for a scene that is supposed to invoke fear and fright I think the blue environment light should be the dominant light and the orange of the lamps should be the compliment
My biggest issue is with the composition it is still really hard to read. I think the camera angle or positioning of the girl and the vampire needs to change so that we can read the girl and the vampire’s lines of action better, the girl’s lines of action are the weakest ones for me her right arm mirrors the vampires too much you need to add some contrast there.
EDIT
Maybe a way to improve the composition would be to think a few moments after this encounter is she going to kill the vampire or is he going to triumph. I would then try and inject some of those story telling elements into this pic…
How does this look?
Jaw hits floor… awesome work!
Sure seems to be an awful lot of shadow-fill light for a scene that begs noir contrasts. Otherwise very well done!
Here’s what is probably the last WIP for this project. I did a test comp with the fog to check if everything works. I worked on this pulled out frame to check the ground fog specifically.
Really good work, the last frame is by far the best composition. Now is easy to read the action.
Maybe you can illuminate a little more the stake to show better that this is the tool that the girl is looking for.
What an amzing project…
I love everything till I’ve started following this thread and your work as a whole
So inpiring artist!
The addition of the fog really helps in many ways, breaking the picture space up and making the amount of fill lighting appear more natural. Perhaps the amount of fog affecting the main character could be dropped down a bit, more in line with that on her backpack, to pull her into the foreground more and create three planes in the space – main character, her adversary and the background. The poses and camera setting are excellent!
Your work is amazing.
Post#75 yay that’s it man composition wise