On and off, for the past few months, a handful of people have been working on the first 3D modeled CAPmon to honor Game Freak's switch to full 3D for the gen6 games CAP19, Plasmanta, was the first CAP created to compete in the Gen6 metagame and has been our focus for kicking off 3D modeling and rendering as a second branch of dot art/spriting the winning art design for each cap.
As a rough timeline of what we've done so far:
-There was a shortly held competition for creating an original 3D model that was won by koldrage
-I've been on quality control for the model to get it as close to a version that's ready for animating
- Quanyails began working on a rig for our model
We're now opening up all remaining work for discussion and other volunteers to complete Plasmanta. Our goal is to make a .gif of a textured, funtioning Plasmanta in an idle stance, each step of which will be made as public as possible for anyone wishing to contribute. At this point, we have to follow a kind of pipeline in the following order:
Model Quality Control- For this one, we want to say that this is completed and simply talk about what could be done better.
UV layout- We need to create a blank texture page that can be worked on to give Plasmanta its color and it's look. This requires creating a png with a layout of Plasmanta's vertices for a texture artist to work on. I'd like the UVs to be completed and posted on the thread so that anyone can take them and work on a texture.
Rigging- A riggist will create the structure that the mesh/wireframe is animated to. Currently, Quanyails is working on this.
Texture- A texture artist will be expected to work in image-editing software like Photoshop while working in maya to make sure their texture lines up with the model. This process can begin immediately after the UV images are finished.
Animation- My personal favorite, once the rig is completed, I'd encourage everyone to try their hand at making an idle animation for Plasmanta. We can discuss the most appealing or sensible motion for the manta to make and really flesh out his character (while he sits perfectly still, lol) as best as we can.
Compiling- The final step is taking the winning animation and translating it into a .gif with a transparent background. The person tasked with compiling will be expected to render a playblast in 3D software that can be exported into After Effects or a similar program to create the final fron-facing and back-facing .gifs to begin using in Pokemon Showdown.
I'll keep a chore list of who's doing what and the order of what needs to be done. Presently, we have:
Modeling- koldrage (done)
Model QC- Yveltal (done)
UV layout- koldrage (done)
Rigging- Quanyails (done)
Texture- koldrage(done)
Animation- Quanyails(done)
Compiling- Quanyails(done)
For anyone interesting in examining the model thus far, the download link is here (It's a .fbx, so you can import it into Maya, 3DS Max, Blender, etc)
And feel free to talk about anything, or ask any questions you may have! We want this to be a learning experience to get interested forum members involved with 3D modeling and also to help create a process that caters to CAPs needs.
~~~~
Having all that out of the way, the following is my progress:
My task consisted of two things; Cut down the polygons and optimize the model for animation. Koldrage provided us with a beautifully intricate model that was at roughly 12,500 polygons/faces and would have served rather well in animation. So far, I cut the model down to just above 10,000 faces, counting the ones on every ring and claw. All that's left that's urgent is to use rings and claws of a smaller polycount as the current model still uses the ones that koldrage created in ZBrush, which are unnecessarily hi-poly.
Originally, the model had Plasmanta's spiked gills on the bottom of the model along with a mouth. I dummied those out of the model namely because they were extremities that could be drawn on or represented in the texture, and were adding on to the overall polygon count needlessly. I justified this by noticing the outlining and shading on the textures of Pokemon in-game.
Lucario's ears don't actually divot to create the inner ear, if you look at the model. The shadow you see in-between the black portion of the ear and the blue is simply painted on during the texture phase. This does two things, though I'm not sure which is the primary purpose. First, it augments the model nicely so that it has a good cel-shaded, painterly look, and second, it cuts down on polygons!
This made me think, though. Lucario's eyes, along with many other Pokemon, are simply flat surfaces with an animated texture. For another example, here's Skitty's 3D model ripped from the game
[/IMG]
the red lines around the eyes and the mouth are the borders of the images sitting on top of Skitty's face. While not every Pokemon uses a flat image for their eyes, the design choice to do so serves functionally to add a cartoonish blink for some Pokemon and also makes it easier to run through different facial expressions my not having a collection of vertices forming the eye socket to move around for different emotions. I don't anticipate having to make Plasmanta go through a range of emotions, but I can't decide if it's a better idea to make his eyes flat on the face (we don't really need him to blink, do we?) or to leave them as-is with a sphere that's smaller in poly-count for the eyeball, but I wanted to see how people felt.
As a rough timeline of what we've done so far:
-There was a shortly held competition for creating an original 3D model that was won by koldrage
-I've been on quality control for the model to get it as close to a version that's ready for animating
- Quanyails began working on a rig for our model
We're now opening up all remaining work for discussion and other volunteers to complete Plasmanta. Our goal is to make a .gif of a textured, funtioning Plasmanta in an idle stance, each step of which will be made as public as possible for anyone wishing to contribute. At this point, we have to follow a kind of pipeline in the following order:
Model Quality Control- For this one, we want to say that this is completed and simply talk about what could be done better.
UV layout- We need to create a blank texture page that can be worked on to give Plasmanta its color and it's look. This requires creating a png with a layout of Plasmanta's vertices for a texture artist to work on. I'd like the UVs to be completed and posted on the thread so that anyone can take them and work on a texture.
Rigging- A riggist will create the structure that the mesh/wireframe is animated to. Currently, Quanyails is working on this.
Texture- A texture artist will be expected to work in image-editing software like Photoshop while working in maya to make sure their texture lines up with the model. This process can begin immediately after the UV images are finished.
Animation- My personal favorite, once the rig is completed, I'd encourage everyone to try their hand at making an idle animation for Plasmanta. We can discuss the most appealing or sensible motion for the manta to make and really flesh out his character (while he sits perfectly still, lol) as best as we can.
Compiling- The final step is taking the winning animation and translating it into a .gif with a transparent background. The person tasked with compiling will be expected to render a playblast in 3D software that can be exported into After Effects or a similar program to create the final fron-facing and back-facing .gifs to begin using in Pokemon Showdown.
I'll keep a chore list of who's doing what and the order of what needs to be done. Presently, we have:
Modeling- koldrage (done)
Model QC- Yveltal (done)
UV layout- koldrage (done)
Rigging- Quanyails (done)
Texture- koldrage(done)
Animation- Quanyails(done)
Compiling- Quanyails(done)
For anyone interesting in examining the model thus far, the download link is here (It's a .fbx, so you can import it into Maya, 3DS Max, Blender, etc)
And feel free to talk about anything, or ask any questions you may have! We want this to be a learning experience to get interested forum members involved with 3D modeling and also to help create a process that caters to CAPs needs.
~~~~
Having all that out of the way, the following is my progress:
My task consisted of two things; Cut down the polygons and optimize the model for animation. Koldrage provided us with a beautifully intricate model that was at roughly 12,500 polygons/faces and would have served rather well in animation. So far, I cut the model down to just above 10,000 faces, counting the ones on every ring and claw. All that's left that's urgent is to use rings and claws of a smaller polycount as the current model still uses the ones that koldrage created in ZBrush, which are unnecessarily hi-poly.
Originally, the model had Plasmanta's spiked gills on the bottom of the model along with a mouth. I dummied those out of the model namely because they were extremities that could be drawn on or represented in the texture, and were adding on to the overall polygon count needlessly. I justified this by noticing the outlining and shading on the textures of Pokemon in-game.
Lucario's ears don't actually divot to create the inner ear, if you look at the model. The shadow you see in-between the black portion of the ear and the blue is simply painted on during the texture phase. This does two things, though I'm not sure which is the primary purpose. First, it augments the model nicely so that it has a good cel-shaded, painterly look, and second, it cuts down on polygons!
This made me think, though. Lucario's eyes, along with many other Pokemon, are simply flat surfaces with an animated texture. For another example, here's Skitty's 3D model ripped from the game
the red lines around the eyes and the mouth are the borders of the images sitting on top of Skitty's face. While not every Pokemon uses a flat image for their eyes, the design choice to do so serves functionally to add a cartoonish blink for some Pokemon and also makes it easier to run through different facial expressions my not having a collection of vertices forming the eye socket to move around for different emotions. I don't anticipate having to make Plasmanta go through a range of emotions, but I can't decide if it's a better idea to make his eyes flat on the face (we don't really need him to blink, do we?) or to leave them as-is with a sphere that's smaller in poly-count for the eyeball, but I wanted to see how people felt.
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