Lessons in character design

Lessons in character design

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By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

Here we go again: another year, another significant improvement of my character design, using several techniques for customizing an iClone avatar.

The new body is based upon the G3 Nude avatar. I painted most of the clothing directly on the skin.

The cuffs on the shirt and pants are the Rolled-Up Sleeves from the G3 CloneCloth kit.

The Lower body mesh was resculpted using ZBrush; I improved the abdomen and thighs. The lower pants legs are accessories created from iClone primitives.

The forearms are based upon Superhero Gloves, resculpted in ZBrush.

The beard, hair, and shirt collar were created in Organica.

I extensively experimented with ZBrush to customize the head. I succeeded, technically, but failed, artistically. The previous head, customized using iClone native's tools, was far superior to anything I could reshape in ZBrush, so I reused it.

The moral of that story is: I believe you can create ANY human likeness inside iClone, as long as you supplement the head with accessories. You don't need any fancy tool such as ZBrush, Max, Maya, Mudbox, or Hexagon.

The only thing to add is that the color wheel is your friend. I rebalanced the color scheme to include more cool colors to complement the warm.

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

Exciting discovery: Inkscape has a "2.5-D" bitmap filter called "Diffuse Light."

It automatically adds a convincing lighting and shading to cutout flat characters such as mine.

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

Whoo hoo: you can make the effect even more impressive by adding a drop shadow.

I have this dream to export my character animations as transparent PNG sequences and figure out how to batch-process them in Inkscape...

... too bad I'm a lousy programmer....

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

Thanks, swoop.

I have some good news for using this effect on animation.

The Diffuse Light filter is apparently a web standard filter; you can get the same effect inside Firefox!

I am pretty confident I can program Firefox to load a PNG sequence into an SVG file containing the filter and call Fireshot to write out each image.

BigGrin

By bluemidget666 - 14 Years Ago

This is some very impressive stuff ... love the look Smile

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

Even if you're not tooning like me, someday you may need to relight certain aspects of your animation.

If you're serious enough to export those props (or characters) as an image sequence of 32-bit PNGs for further processing, you can either turn to After Effects (expensive) or Inkscape (free).

If you choose Inkscape, refer to my handy cheatsheat to adjust the simulated lighting.

You can also quickly and easily accomplish the same things in Firefox or Opera by search-and-replacing the parameter values in the SVG code. Note that Opera is always ahead of Firefox in SVG support, and currently, you can create more complex effects in Opera. Filters can shut down SVG rendering entirely in Firefox.

By animagic - 14 Years Ago

PW, I searched a little bit for batch processing with Inkscape as to make it easier to transform/manipulate large numbers of images. I found the following tool, InkscapeBatch, that may be of interest.

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

zuijlen (6/20/2010)

I looked for something like this and couldn't find anything. Bless you! Tongue

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

Several people have asked me about tooning iClone, so I wrote the tutorial above.

The only thing new to add is that my latest character designs include lots of color gradients, and I have found it worthwhile to create my avatar textures in Adobe Illustrator.

The reason I am writing now is to ask: is anybody actually using my methods?

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

Here are the two leading men in their two costume changes. Check out the new color-gradient look using Adobe Illustrator for textures. Note that it's a big PNG, 3000x1500 pixels.

http://generalpicture.com/fwvibrance.png

By Dreamcube017 - 14 Years Ago

I'm still fumbling around with cell shaded looking characters. I think the problems I keep running into are manually drawing some of the shadows because I think I keep getting them wrong.

I'll keep trying though and thanks for the tip.

EDIT: Hey I like those. Nice work PW.

I just remembered that I could use Scupltris to paint on the character mesh because I just got 3DX4 YAY!!!! So this should make things a LITTLE easier since I can NOW PAINT on the mesh. AND sculpt on it... MAN this makes me so happy.

The problem was always that I had to guess at painting on the UV map and that slowed thigns down because I had to go back and forth and back and forth and guess and it just got upsetting, but now I think I'll give it another shot.

Thanks for the help.

By rontarrant - 14 Years Ago

Paumanok West (7/23/2010)

I'm really interested in how you got that flat look. Are these images rendered in iClone?

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

Yes, 100%.

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

I purchased the Flowing Skirt V2 pack but I haven't gotten very good results with attempts to customize cloth from it. I have also investigated the superhero cape, but it gives very poor results.

I actually get better results from the Flowing Hair ponytail that comes supplied with the Trinity avatar, after using opacity to zero out the extra locks of hair. The following demo shows Walt's cloak and AuraLee's hoop skirt animated using copies of the ponytail. Not really a scene from my film, but it's suggestive.

PS If anyone wants the opacity map to try building their own flowing clothing, let me know.

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

sw00000p (11/26/2010)

Ever notice the Hands going throught the Coat and Dress? I know its a Test. Good Job.

Yep. I would like to just go with footage like this and make a demo reel, but I'm going to have to slow down and really work to get it right.

I think it will require rendering the movie more than once and compositing versions without the clothing. Lots of work! Crying

By Capemedia - 14 Years Ago

Paumaonk very impressive stuff Smile

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

Here's your welcoming party: "let us prey, Amen."

Left to right: Finnigan, Cardinal Ratsinger, Rev. Red Phillips, lovely and talented Chastity Phillips (daughter, NOT wife!).

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

I finally turned the home page of my website into a showcase for my character designs at

generalpicture.com

You might be interested to see how to host a limitless number of turnarounds right next to each other using CSS float.

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

This is the new state of the art in cel shading for iClone 4: good toon shadows at last. Still no ink outlines, but I still feel I can live without them.

The streamlined body is based upon Mr Pose/Mr Slim (muscles by ZBrush!).

Currently I am using two render passes, as shown in the attached picture. The motion is performed twice. The first avatar is textured with a grey reflective material that picks up sharp shadows, as well as a sharp specular line, from the IBL. The second avatar is textured with pure matte colors.

The animations are composited in Premiere.

By Paumanok West - 14 Years Ago

Watch the video in HD at Youtube if you want a ghost of a chance of video quality. Sad

By Illustrator Cathy - 14 Years Ago

That's some darn nice looking work! Thanks for the share!

Cathy Hehe

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

I just lost two days exploring some extreme character exaggerations, inspired by a design someone developed using Mudbox. I tried to duplicate that look in the lower-poly iClone environment, but when the character moves, it looks like a sack of potatoes.

One of the reasons our iClone films "stink" of machinima is because the character silhouettes are blocky and graceless as the character moves away from front-view and profile-view. Part of the reason is that most clothing in iClone 4 is not dynamic, and the musculature definitely isn't. This is another way to dig yourself into the dreaded Uncanny Valley--a way that we haven't talked about previously.

I'm going back now to my good streamlined results with the Mr. Slim foundation, described above. This gets me closer to the clean look of 2D animation than anything has so far.

By W.VEEKE - 13 Years Ago

Maybe you sent me this character and i will try to let it move as a normal iclone character

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

W.VEEKE (1/7/2011)

Maybe you sent me this character and i will try to let it move as a normal iclone character

Hi Wil, thanks for your kind offer. The problem isn't with rigging, animation, or even the origins of the character. (The basis character for the experiment is a valid iClone character.)

The problem is a visual mismatch between the pure colors of my renders and the character shapes of a mid-polygon environment. Streamlined color and texture seems to demand very streamlined shapes.

However, what I am saying is that most iClone characters emit some machinima stink on a regular basis. It will be interesting to see whether Reallusion can stylize a new generation of characters to compensate for this. In my opinion, the Mr Pose characters are not the solution, but I think they point the way towards a solution.

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

planetstardragon recently said he was curious about what I was up, so I thought I would post this concept art. It's not a finished work, but I've imagined this scene for years without actually drawing it. Once I started on it, it has been considerably more difficult than I expected to get even this close to the intended effect.

The slain poet's spirit surfaces in a seance table as the sitters gape in awe. He swells to fill the room, breaks a skylight, and disperses into the night.

Note that I hope to show you lots of other new concept art/matte paintings based upon my current techniques for tooning photographs.

By planetstardragon - 13 Years Ago

amazing work Pau, the toon coloring work is much harder than it looks, and i can't believe he died!!! ( now you have me all into the story too!! lol )

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

This is an animation test of some ghost FX. Obviously, this isn't integrated into the actual scene with the seance table; that would require some tricky compositing.

I wanted to tease everybody by saying this is the naughtiest video ever shown from iClone, because the avatar is no longer a eunuch. Wink

So, how does this FX work for you? Will the audience buy this?

I've already been advised that I should reblock the motion so you can see the face through more of the sequence.

Thanks so much to Wil Veeke for selling the swimming motion (and other good ones) in his Toon Girls pack.

Walt Whitman's Spirit - Animation Test from Mitch Gould on Vimeo.

By planetstardragon - 13 Years Ago

great effect but it does make the face look like he's wearing a mask. and no, im not going to say the genitals look great, so lets not go there lol Tongue

just saying!

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

I'd just like to repeat that, believe it or not, the body is modified from Mr Slim in the Mr Pose pack. w00t

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

Here is an animation test for the seance.

By planetstardragon - 13 Years Ago

the right sound effects would make that clip come to life!! nice work, thanks for sharing the progress. Your toon shading is really looking good!

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

planetstardragon (2/14/2011)

the right sound effects would make that clip come to life!! nice work, thanks for sharing the progress. Your toon shading is really looking good!

Thx PSD. So this is a very very flat look, no shadows. The characters aren't integrated into the scene's light environment. The thing this "look" has going for it is a kind of graphic clarity, like some forms of anime, I suppose.

On the other hand, to integrate them into the scene, I have alternately considered re-rendering this with the characters with a dramatic/sinister blue light from below (the level of the table FX).

Image-based lighting (IBL) is the only solution for crisp (sharp-edged) toon shadows in iClone 4. This would all entail more work. I would have to composite the FX in a separate step, which is irksome. Also we would lose the HDR artifact that currently smears the characters into columns of light.

Any comments about whether I ought to invest the effort to try this?

By planetstardragon - 13 Years Ago

when I get that blur / glare effect, that smudges the picture, i usually try to calm it with a combination of the "bloom scale" the "Glare Scale" and sometimes reduce the IBL and raise the brightness of the lighting. It all ends up with the same look, but a different approach. when I want more control, I usually set the scale to 1 , so i can bring out more of the bloom.

One approach you can possibly try is to film it once without any blooming effects, then import that video and try to get the glare effect on the video as opposed to the meshed characters.

another approach would be to film it once without an effect, film it a second time with an effect .....then make the first video slightly transparent and place the effected video behind that ....perhaps you can even make one of the videos with the blue ibl effect you want, and the next with the bloom effect you want ...then layer them. - there really are a ton of combinations you can use to achieve the end result you want.

I sometimes do that trick with music, I'll record one drum with a lot of bass, then record another drum with just a reverb and remove all the bass, as apposed to affecting the re verb with a bassy drum. then I layer them ....so the bassy kick, has a nice bright and light reverb over it. its the audio way of compositing. The concept would pretty much be the same with the video I'm guessing.

I personally like playing with all the combinations, because even though I wont use them all, I will take note of what each combination does so in the future it's less guess work when i want a certain look / sound.

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

Actually, PSD, I was not complaining about the light smears on the characters--I thought it brought more to the effect than it takes away.

This clip shows rotoscoping of fluttering drapery and lightning fx. I must say that I am disappointed by the video quality, but it's not my fault. I suspect that iClone 4 does not have a professional-grade color engine, and this leads to loss of color and color banding. I am going to put in a feature request for much-needed improvements. I would hate to be forced to use After Effects to do compositing!

Fred Vaughan Awakened by the Storm from Mitch Gould on Vimeo.

By planetstardragon - 13 Years Ago

Pau, have you tried printing to uncompressed AVI first, then using an editor to do the conversion / compression ? I know that look and it doesn't look like the iclone uncompressed AVI quality, it looks more like the other formats that Iclone renders which never look the same. I always do the conversions in other software because of this.

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

planetstardragon (2/16/2011)

Thanks, dragon. For the sake of fairness to iClone, I started looking into your advice and I think it's premature to blame only the iClone renderer. I agree that I am getting some degradation from the output codec.

I am also getting a problem from the translucent violet gradient in the iClone Image Overlay. Gradients are very delicate, and very eager to break into ugly banding. I haven't ruled out that iClone is too clumsy with this aspect of it. I wish the iClone crew would adopt the following ideal goal: "No color errors, ever, as a result of using standard iClone features."

I also risk serious degradation every time I use a rotoscoping filter in Photoshop--because Photoshop suppresses most of the codecs on my system and only gives me a tiny selection, most of which are very lossy.

I think I am going to have to become a fanatic about video hygiene, and use big uncompressed files throughout a long pipeline. Pinch

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

Paumanok West (2/16/2011)I also risk serious degradation every time I use a rotoscoping filter in Photoshop--because Photoshop suppresses most of the codecs on my system and only gives me a tiny selection, most of which are very lossy.

EDIT: Sorry, I tried to share a solution here in case anyone else encounters this issue, but I have found that I still can't get Photoshop to recognize the Lagarith codec.

EDIT2: In the faint hope of being of some use to someone, I believe found a way to preserve gradient quality in iClone. The problem may well be related to the way iClone ruins texture files when you Launch them for editing, a serious problem I have reported before in the context of character texturing. Here are two steps to preserve smooth color gradients:

1. Subject the gradient to a very substantial blur before importing it into iClone. This really helps keep things smooth.

2. Import the gradient file (or any other texture file for that matter) in a lossless format such as PNG rather than iClone's standard superlossy JPEG. Avoid accessing the texture with an iClone Launch; instead try to access the original texture file when editing.

I also want to repeat my feature request for a nondestructive texture Launch in iClone.

By animagic - 13 Years Ago

I've had problems inside the application with banding on walls that were a uniform color. It looked like some interference occurred between the lights and the wall. In this case there was no actual texture (diffuse map). I was able to mediate the problem by adding a "noisy" texture; sand if I recall. Of course in your case that would do away with the flat shading you are after.

As to rendering, I use png sequences exclusively. Unfortunately, to share work you have to rely on YouTube or Vimeo, which may lead to further degradation.

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

I've having a lot of trouble creating a "look" for the characters lit by lightning as they sit on the roof. It's a very extreme lighting condition. I get close to an answer and it seems to vanish like a mirage.

I think the reason it's so complicated is because I *also* want the characters lit by a streetlamp located below the roof.

Here is a result from the streetlamp concept. You can see that it's taking me far away from the toon look into something more realistic.

In any event, at least please give me some credit for achieving "a storytelling pose." That in itself is an accomplishment...

Here's the same concept with an evocative background.

By The Mythical Dragon - 13 Years Ago

Nice. I like the second one best, with the lightning. It looks pretty cool.

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

OK, folks, my previous still image, above, is very appealing to me, but it was the result of intricate hand retouching and is therefore obviously not sustainable for animation. Besides, it's closer to the generic 3D look of a modern animated film, and not consistent with my goals of turning out a 2D style. Do you find the following clip reminds you of how the scene would be styled in Japanese anime?

So now, let's apply our lighting to the characters inside of iClone, but we are going to need a dirty trick. I want to use dramatic uplighting from gaslamps below the level of the roof. The only way to get this in iClone 4 is to bake the lighting directly into the model textures.

The scene is very important: it firmly situates the characters in Victorian Manhattan in a storm. So they need to be on the roof, and the skyline needs to be visible. I might add that the foreground fire is a kettle of coals for warmth.

We've got a lot of stylized FX here to put you in the mood: rain, fog, smoke, and leaves. The hard thing now will be achieving continuity from one scene to the next.

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

A while back, I promised to show some of the concept art I developed for backgrounds. You can see many pictures at my new Behance portfoilo. The problem is, these scenes are great for a memory montage following the assassination, but I don't have some difficult key backgrounds yet.

By Teviniii - 13 Years Ago

@PW

I really like those background images.

By stuckon3d - 13 Years Ago

yeah Mitch , nice backgrounds, are you using some kind of photo filter or are those actually your paintings. Either way, they look great.

Cheers,

Stuckon3d

By animagic - 13 Years Ago

That's a very beautiful collection. I like the painterly quality of some of the images.

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

Thanks folks. I have always been very honest with you about the fact that I am far more determined/obsessed than talented, *and* I have always given credit where it is due to my Box Full Angels, which does the heavy lifting.

Chief Archangel is iClone, of course. But second in command is Photoshop, which plays host to some incredible filters. I am happy to share my secrets with you, in case you want to benefit from them.

Photoshop CS5 accepts a plugin from Adobe called Pixelbender, a kind of programming environment (I guess) for writing filters. Pixelbender, in turn, ships with a filter called Oil Paint that accounts for part of this special look.

After developing the paint look shown here, I more recently discovered a smoothing setting that allows me to wipe most of the machinima stink out of my characters--but I'm not yet sure if this is feasible for animations as well as stills.

The other filter set you must know about is Topaz Simplify. It's just as incredible as Oil Paint but has a wider range of art effects.

You can even use Simplify and Pixelbender together, to double the stylization.

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

I am very pleased to report that I discovered a very simple but impressive alternative to photoblogs for running a portfolio/gallery: Supersized.

Want to see what it can do for *you*? You can check out a slide show of my backgrounds at full browser size!

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

After a few years, I have finally come back to work on the principal set. A lot has changed radically. iClone 4 is infinitely better than iC3, and today's cpus and gpus are so much more powerful. And I have learned a thing or two.

Also, this: if you are building any of your own props, even including imports from Sketchup, you absolutely, positively, need one of the great materials libraries from Reallusion. --This ought to be in the manual. Smile

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

concept art - chasing the moth

By bluemidget666 - 13 Years Ago

I love the syle you have made Pau.....

By animagic - 13 Years Ago

Looks very good. I know it has taken a lot of time and effort to develop this look, but you have come a long way with excellent results.

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

I used the iClone "Anime" morph to kick-off a reconstruction of the poet's face as a child.

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

Ha! Younger still!

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

Master Walter Whitman, modeled in iClone. Toon inklines in PhotoShop. Thanks to Adobe PixelBender technology! (Note: Facebook degrades uploaded image quality, which is probably a good thing for content protection.)

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

This version of the storm scene employs lurid green "omenlight." In time-honored Hollywood tradition, it's rather over the top!

By martok2112 - 13 Years Ago

That looked REALLY good, PW. Great use of light and shadow. Definitely looked like a cartoon. Smile

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

Thanks martok ;={>

By the way, if anyone wants to see the video, follow the link to see it in full HD. This is one of those clips that is significantly more impressive in HD.

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

Here's another animation test: possibly sunset, but more likely I'll adapt this for the sunrise scene at the end. The video source was a great high-contrast timelapse of a sunset from Pond5. Note: this was uploaded at 1080p.

Hey kids, never forget: If it's worth doing, it's worth doing OVER THE TOP. ;={>

By Teviniii - 13 Years Ago

I like the electric sunset. With the moving fog, it could also pass for a fire in the sky.

By Paumanok West - 13 Years Ago

New animation test with custom particles in iClone 5. Stylized fog and rain against a stylized forest.

By chakap - 10 Years Ago

Hey I'm looking to hire a 3D modeler to create 2 characters for my project. If anyone is interested please reply to northstarrecordings@yahoo.com