Adele - animated high pol female model
Community Forums/Showcase/Adele - animated high pol female model
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| I threw some animation onto an old model I had lying around (it's the first pic in the "interactive" section of my 3DArteest site) and exported to b3d file format as an experiment/sample with blended vertex weights. I also included some simple code to view the animated model. Even without blended vertex weight support in Blitz3D it doesn't look too bad (main problem areas which are fixed by the vertex weights are buckling/folding of polygons on her stomach, shoulders, and hips.) Download here: www.3darteest.com/Adele.zip Oh, and when running the code hold down the space bar to watch the animation. |
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| that's very nice! can't really comment on detail and such cause i'm not a 3d art person, so i woulnd't know where to start, but you are certainly very talented! |
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| What is the point of this post (no offense... read on) Are you showing off your model, or are you showing Mark why you want vertex weights (I agree they would help a lot) My actual comments. The model is nice and the texture needs work :) The idle animation isn't too bad, although it is rather unnatural. No-one stands and breaths like that despite what video games tell you. The run animation is robotic and un-realistic. The main problem is the leg swinging forward, if you ran like that the foot would hit the ground as it swings under the body (from the back). The foot should be higher to give some ground clearance. The rigging could be better as well. I have been playing with rigging recently and have been using more exagerated poses with better deformation of the mesh I'm using. For example on the top of the leg if you add an extra row of verts to the leg bone you will get the leg going inside the hips but the shape will hold better and it will hide the crease. The same goes for the upper arm. Add more verts at the shoulder and it will look more natural. You use max don't you? How did you get the model into blitz? I assume it was through unwrap3d? Oh well... lets hope Mark sees this and adds blended vertex weights into blitz. Its not like no-one has asked :D |
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| Joe, thanks, will have a look tonight. |
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| Hm, I thought I mentioned a possible snag but apparently I did not. I'm not sure I actually exported the blended vertex weights correctly; I have reason to believe they aren't normalized (ie. weights on a vertex add up to 1) which would screw things up. You probably shouldn't go ahead and try to get this working as is. This was just a quick and dirty export test I thought looked kinda cool and I figured people would like to see it. The ultimate purpose is to show Mark what blended vertex weights are good for, but for now I'm just doing a little show-and-tell. I wanted to have something uploaded before I move (my computer will be in boxes by tomorrow afternoon.) As you note the animation is very rough (eg. the robotic look is largely because I've not done any slow-in/slow-out to the movements) and the texture is non-existent (I setup UV coordinates but threw on flat colors for now; if you want to try painting her let me know and I'll send you the UV template.) Not too shabby for a day of work (other than the mesh) but that's all this is, a day of work. Oh, and this was animated in CharacterFX. I haven't used 3D Studio Max in almost a year now. Right now I'm really looking forward to purchasing Maya. |
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| I slowed it down and put it in wireframe. Without vertex weights the shoulders still look perfect. There are a few vertex in the hips that are problematic but from the looks they could be fixed if parented to thigh rather than hip. For the extra code and processing time required for weighted vertex I think better evidence of it's benefits is still necesary. |
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| I'm with skid on this. Definitely not yet convinced weights are necessary. |
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| [sarcasm] Yeah, and 16-bit color is enough for everybody. You really don't see the banding if you squint your eyes. [/sarcasm] |
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| you really need high poly models or a detailed face to really show how important weights are. But then if your not a modeller/animator/rigger you won't see how needed they are. |
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| agree with sinu on this... it's like having puppets versus having real people to work with. --Mike |
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| Amazing that people argue against vertex weights. This is the main reason I haven't bought blitz3d yet. For the extra code and processing time required for weighted vertex I think better evidence of it's benefits is still necesary. How about the extra work-hours needed by the modeller to make a model deform somewhat decent with rigid vertex binding? Even then, extreme postures like a high kick usually look hideous, especially with a hi-poly model. |
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| -Actually you don't need high-poly models to see the need for weighted verts.You can feel the same need for low-poly characters also :) -and agree with Erik Thon on the extra work-hours that are needed to make a decent looking character without weights. -And looking at the model-animation isn't it quite obvious that there is a problem on the shoulders and on the hips. Isn't it this exactly the reason why weighted-verts were made? To make joints bent smooth...? |
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| This topic is not arguable as the need for weights severly 'out-weight' the need to not have them. :) |
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| Basically if you have low poly character (say ~1000 polygons) and you don't do "spinning flying kicks" you MIGHT get away with non-weighted vertices. But any good, normal Triple-A game that uses 2000-3000 polygons REALLY needs them; the density of the mesh is greater and then you really need to blend those seams (hips, knees, elbows) or you get "bend straw" effect, ie ugly sharp kink where the bones meet. Part of the problem is that so few use these Triple-A class characters with Blitz, so it's bit deceiving to think that they are not needed - lack of weights also *forces* ppl to use those low-poly models because high-poly models are close to impossible to get working right as it is. You can test this easily with two cylinders (one low-poly and one high-poly), and with just two bones (lower half and top half)... high-poly cylinder will "shear" nastily when you twist/rotate the upper bone... with weights this tearing effect would be much smoother. But yes, I agree Sabata, it's bit frustrating and pointless try to convince the code-heads that we really do need this feature... why can't they just respect our professional opinion that comes from the years of experience? I won't try to tell Mark how he should do his compilers; I trust that he knows better although some things might seem to me silly and not needed. |
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| It just seems a similar situation to fixing Blitz bugs ie posting code / objects that accurately demonstrates the problem greatly increases the likelihood of the matter being addressed. |
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| You can do spinning flying kicks with RIGID SKIN BIND, the problem is when you want to make breath a character, or move its hair, or stuff like that. |
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| Please see TeraBit's post |
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| Why would high performance 3d engines and modelling applications provide the support for these things if they werent a noteworthy feature? I don't think we mere coders should be the judges on the visual properties of a model :), so just add the freakin things! ;) [/rant] |
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| we need weights, you can get extremely accurate deformation with weights, particularly if the model is above 1400 polys, you really need it then. but having said that you can make a reasonable job of it even without vertex weighting, by careful assignment of verts. but we shouldn't have to make a case for something that is pretty much commomn place in game engines these days |
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| "put it in wireframe. Without vertex weights the shoulders still look perfect" Huh? Looking at the shoulder in wireframe makes it very clear why blended vertex weights would help. Don't bother holding space for the run animation, just examine the shoulders in the standing pose. Notice how the shoulders peak sharply (as opposed to rounding over naturally) and the polygons on the sides are stretched out (as opposed to the nice uniform vertex density on the rest of the model.) BTW in the standing pose the arms/shoulders are the only part which are moved from the pose she was modeled and rigged in. I modeled her arms out so for the standing pose I rotated her arm bones down. Since everything else is pretty much unmoved from the modeled/rigged pose there is no stretching or buckling of polygons anywhere else in the standing pose. |
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