Jump to content
3DCoat Forums

My 3D Coat videos on Vimeo


Recommended Posts

  • Contributor

Hello,

I've been learning 3D Coat, and have been recording myself working on a project. To date I have uploaded 6 videos to Vimeo. I'm doing this to help other beginners, and also to force myself to finish a project! The character I'm creating on the videos is going to be used in a Unity 3D game. The game will take place in an old western ghost town. The main nemesis in the game is the ghost I've modeled and retopologized in parts 1-6. When he is hit with a water balloon (this is going to be a kids game, no blood!), he'll vanish, his hat will drop and the player will find a prize, or clue under it. In upcoming videos I'll paint the ghost and then take him into lightwave for animation. Then to Unity!

While I really doubt that experienced users will get anything out of my videos (other than a chuckle as I stumble through some parts), I hope beginners will find them useful, and interesting. I'm not calling them tutorials, but 'shared learning experience'.

I'm really enjoying creating them, and constructive criticism/tips posted here are appreciated. AND, if you like them, please click the 'Like' button on the video! :D

Part 1 can be found here:

along with the rest of them.

Thanks, and hope you enjoy them!

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

Thanks for sharing,I always pick up a few tips watching everyone's video including yours...

Thanks Digman! I hope you enjoy them. I'm kind of a tutorial junkie myself. :)

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Reputable Contributor

Thanks for sharing,I always pick up a few tips watching everyone's video including yours...

Yeah...I always discover some things/tips that come in handy, and think "I need to make a video showing these things," but I always seem pressed for time and forget to. If everyone who has enough experience to get around in the application, would chip in like you have, it would help the community immensely. I think it's one thing that helps ZBrush...the wealth of tutorials.

I remember Fugazzi making a bunch of tutorials on the Paint Room...and that's pretty much how I learned to get around, as the Video manual doesn't cover the Paint Room as well as it does other areas.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor
I remember Fugazzi making a bunch of tutorials on the Paint Room...and that's pretty much how I learned to get around, as the Video manual doesn't cover the Paint Room as well as it does other areas.

I need to go look for these. I don't remember ever seeing them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

Thanks for the link! I'm enjoying watching them.

Meanwhile I've finished the screen recording of part 7 - UV map the ghosts body and paint it in. I still have to add voice (not too much, don't worry!) and hope to upload it to Vimeo sometime tomorrow or Monday. I've brought the ghost into lightwave for a quick test render. It's about 750 polygons sans eyes and hat. Here's how it's looking so far...

ghostRender.jpg

Thanks to Mary Hines for the sky image.

Anyhow, back to working on it. :)

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

Hey Greg,

I wanted to thank you for taking the time to make these tutorials.... er... shared learning experiences. I appreciate the time you put in and have enjoyed and learned much from them. It is nice to see a workflow from Voxels to Retopo to UV's and Painting for a single project. Nice work.

I am definitely looking forward to the 7th movie.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

Hey Greg,

I wanted to thank you for taking the time to make these tutorials.... er... shared learning experiences. I appreciate the time you put in and have enjoyed and learned much from them. It is nice to see a workflow from Voxels to Retopo to UV's and Painting for a single project. Nice work.

I am definitely looking forward to the 7th movie.

Thanks! I'm enjoying creating them too. Part 7 will be out today or tomorrow I hope. :D

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

Part 7 is up on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/gregwhedon/videos

In this part I create UV maps for the ghost and then into the paint room for color. Then the model, and maps are exported.

The color/texture part is real basic, but enough to get beginners going.

The thumbnail I'm showing on Vimeo is a test render from Lightwave.

Thanks for watching, and I hope you all enjoy!

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

UnityScreenGrab_small.jpg

Part 8 (final video in the series!) is up on Vimeo:

In this video I take the ghost that was created and textured in 3D Coat into Lightwave, add the hat and eyes, create bones and a simple looping animation. So, no 3D Coat in this one, but the assets created in it are all used!

The picture I've attached is a screen grab of the ghost in unity. While I don't show importing the fbx into unity, I do show the ghost inside unity interface at the end of the video.

Hope you all enjoy. It's been fun, but more work (mainly editing my mess-ups) then I'd anticipated!

Gonna start on another series soon. I'm a sucker for punishment I guess. lol

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • Contributor

Thanks for the link! I'm enjoying watching them.

Meanwhile I've finished the screen recording of part 7 - UV map the ghosts body and paint it in. I still have to add voice (not too much, don't worry!) and hope to upload it to Vimeo sometime tomorrow or Monday. I've brought the ghost into lightwave for a quick test render. It's about 750 polygons sans eyes and hat. Here's how it's looking so far...

ghostRender.jpg

Thanks to Mary Hines for the sky image.

Anyhow, back to working on it. smile.gif

Greg

hi, Greg...glad to see you were able to get some use outta the sky pics...am fixin to post some more sky pics very shortly...wanted to ask if it'd be ok to post this pic of yours with my sky pic threads ?...also wanted to let you know I just finished your terrain tutorial and am fixin to go post a thread cause thanks to watching your tutorial, I just finished my first real retopodrinks.gif ...I've watched several tutorials, but yours was the only one that seemed to register for some reasonpardon.gif .

...b sure n lmk if it's ok to post your pics in my sky threads (n will also post a linkback to you with your pic if that's ok, but will need to know which link you'd prefer),,just lmk.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

hi, Greg...glad to see you were able to get some use outta the sky pics...am fixin to post some more sky pics very shortly...wanted to ask if it'd be ok to post this pic of yours with my sky pic threads ?...also wanted to let you know I just finished your terrain tutorial and am fixin to go post a thread cause thanks to watching your tutorial, I just finished my first real retopodrinks.gif ...I've watched several tutorials, but yours was the only one that seemed to register for some reasonpardon.gif .

...b sure n lmk if it's ok to post your pics in my sky threads (n will also post a linkback to you with your pic if that's ok, but will need to know which link you'd prefer),,just lmk.

Hi, Yeah, I love those sky pictures, so post more! And yes, please feel free to use the picture in your thread. :)

I didn't create the terrain tutorial though. My tutorial is about creating the ghost character. I do cover retopo in it though. I've watched the terrain tutorial and think it's great. :)

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

Thanks for the videos. They gave me some ideas and it is always good to see a good way of doing somthing in 3Dcoat.

Cheers :drinks:

Thanks! That's always great to hear. People rarely comment on Vimeo for some reason (I've noticed that on most peoples videos, even videos from some of our 3D 'legends' such as Taron), so I always wonder if anyone is getting anything from them! I learned a lot about 3D Coat while making them too, so nice that it is win-win. :)

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

Greg,

Here is a bird I worked on today after looking through your videos yesterday. Taken from an illustrator line drawing from a friend of mine. Using primitives as the starting point really worked for me. oddly enough the curve tools were not working for me. The sphere tool was not acting right, so I had to use the ellipse primitive. Still somewhat splotchy. Wish i could get the techniques for super smooth surfaces down right.

post-1284-12789063550303_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

Still somewhat splotchy. Wish i could get the techniques for super smooth surfaces down right.

Cute bird Parel!

I think that is the same phenomen that one also likely runs into with Subdivision programs:

To high initial Subdivision - then stuff always looks bumpy.

For creation of smooth surfaces I find the initial Voxel-Subdivison of Primitives often too high.

But one can lower the resolution with the second but right button in the Voxel-Tree.

It creates a low res - clone.

This resolution is only good for laying out the basic shape - one can not add finer detail.

But editing is super fast and what looks smooth in Low-Res should remain smooth in higher Subdivision

as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

Hi, Yeah, I love those sky pictures, so post more! And yes, please feel free to use the picture in your thread. smile.gif

I didn't create the terrain tutorial though. My tutorial is about creating the ghost character. I do cover retopo in it though. I've watched the terrain tutorial and think it's great. smile.gif

Greg

ok..I've been meeting myself coming back here lately, lol...I went back n put Fugazzi's name with the terrain tutorial...I just came flying thru here the other day, clicked on one of the links in this thread, n went to watching it, thought it was one of your vids, but apparently it wasn't.......but now I'm watching your vids, and they are helping as well, so I went ahead n gave you an honorable mentiongood.gif ....oh, and do you have a link you'd want me to put with your ghost pic when I put the pic in my cloud threads? just lmk.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

Greg,

Here is a bird I worked on today after looking through your videos yesterday. Taken from an illustrator line drawing from a friend of mine. Using primitives as the starting point really worked for me. oddly enough the curve tools were not working for me. The sphere tool was not acting right, so I had to use the ellipse primitive. Still somewhat splotchy. Wish i could get the techniques for super smooth surfaces down right.

I really love characters like that, and think that bird looks great, and fun! Good job with the modeling and coloring.

Polyxo's advise is right on target. Start low poly and only increase when needed.

AND, it took me a while to get the hang of the curve tools too. At first I was like "What the #$@@!???" !

Thanks for watching the videos, and posting your work!

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Awesome man, thanks for sharing these with me the other day! They are very good. :) Excellent ghost concept too, I love it. It's got a lot of character. :)

parel, awesome work! Very good stuff. Keep it up. :good:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

I'd love to see it animated too. Forcing myself to finish this retopo. Unfortunately I am not sure what a mesh for a model like this should look like. Retopo around the feathers is pretty tedious, and I dont seem to have a good system down ie- poly numbers along each feather is not consistent and I think that some of the areas are way too dense. Grrrr...not looking forward to taking this into Blender and learning how to rig there :)

Thanks again- might have to start a new thread- maybe after retopo work which is what you covered.

post-1284-12795088603538_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

I'd love to see it animated too. Forcing myself to finish this retopo. Unfortunately I am not sure what a mesh for a model like this should look like. Retopo around the feathers is pretty tedious, and I dont seem to have a good system down ie- poly numbers along each feather is not consistent and I think that some of the areas are way too dense. Grrrr...not looking forward to taking this into Blender and learning how to rig there :)

Thanks again- might have to start a new thread- maybe after retopo work which is what you covered.

It looks like the retopo is coming along really well to me. Please be sure to post it when finished. :)

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Reputable Contributor

What I like to force myself to do, is to initially lay down the least amount of polys as necessary. If you go in and start laying down as many as you WANT, you'll end up piddling with the extra geometry. And don't waste a lot of time manually straightening up your vertices and such. "Relax" will do a lot of that for you, and it's more efficient to just get your mesh in place and then do the tweaks....otherwise, again, you'll find yourself piddling unnecessarily all along the way. Just do it once.

After you get your initial rough form down, then you can start throwing in edgeloops (with the Split Rings tool) where you need the extra detail. Just thought I'd mention that, as it was a lesson I had to learn (got tired of going back over areas I had already tweaked, or sometimes wrestling with geometry I really didn't need). Let the "Subdivide," "Split Rings" and "Relax" tools do their work toward the end of the job, and things will go much smoother for you.

BTW, thanks for the videos, Greg. I got to watch most of them, and sure enough, there is always something to learn, even if we think we know the toolset fairly well. I picked up a few ideas from your workflow in the paint room. Never used the UV/Texture Editor before, but now I see what I was missing. It can make quick work of texturing individual UV islands. This is why I wish more folks here would also post some tutorials, as there are a lot of little tricks that haven't been covered in any tutorials...and everybody comes across different tools and has discovered more efficient ways of working with them.

Don

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

Thanks for the good words Don. I would love to see more people do tutorials too. I'm like a junkie when it comes to watching them, and always learn a little more. And, I know exactly what you're talking about as far as using the least amount of polygons. When I started out, I would create so many I pretty much painted myself into a corner with them. I'm still not what I would consider good by any means, but I have definitely learned that 'less is best'. :)

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

http://www.mediafire.com/?mli24m5bslkdllk - Uploaded a WIP to mediafire. If anyone can take a look and offer suggestions, or download for fun, feel free.

Grr.. feeling clueless. I am not sure how to model areas of high density and low density of polys, and what kind of transition to use. Do different animation softwares treat these differently or is SubD modelling all standard now.

Decided to start again , and try to use a minimal amount of polys. I downloaded meshes from the Big Buck Bunny Blender movie. and that gave me some clues to mesh density- but still feeling clueless.

post-1284-12802860407588_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...