How about this 3D Jedi? =)

I know he's not exactly wearing Jedi robes, but I just had to do an effects test. Got the lightsaber prop from renderosity. Only took me a few hours to setup, render, and rotoscope. I'm quite pleased with the results.

[ CG Jedi ]
905kb Sornsen 3 Quicktime

 

looks good to me

 

Very cool! Only major problem is that the blue light runs up his body before the lightsaber activates.

 

Besides the fact that the saber illumination starts before it's ignited and the hilt goes through his leg at the beginning, that looks sweet.




-Brandon

 

Look! someone from N'sync is in a fanfilm!

 

He could cut glass with those nipples! Besides that, it's pretty good.


And like that...he's gone.

 

It looks like a good start.

One thing thats a dead give away is the fact that theres no facial animation going on at all. The eyes are one of the most important parts to an animated character. They help convey the sense of life and can really add alot to the animation if used properly. Also the left arm looks a bit stiff like it wasn't animated. Even curling the fingers to a more relaxed pose would help.

Other than that you may want to work on your keyframing in general because it doesn't flow yet. You can still tell were you set the keyframes.

Good start though, good luck with it

 

I would use a PS or AE lightsaber. That doesn't look right.

Did you model that?

 

If you did that with 3ds Max, then I could teach you how to make quite a realistic glow with the program itself. Otherwise, I generally use Photoshop.

Here's a screenshot of a Max-produced lightsaber glow:
[image=http://cryptite.f2o.org/fanfilmimages/Effects/maxsaber.jpg]

 

There's a major weight map issue at the elbow, the way the arm folds just isn't natural at all. Pay special attention to the muscle flow. If you modeled it yourself, make sure to keep the polygon organization in that same flow, to make the weight maps a lot more natural.

-Chris

 

Definitely do something about those huge nipples, I wouldnt mind so much if it was a female character though.

 

Thanks all for your replies.

The lightsaber prop didn't actually have a glow applied to it, so to get the blue cast on his body I made two spotlights and moved them up his body. My keyframe that extends the blade somehow started later than I thought, which is why you can see the light running up before the saber turns on. This is pretty noticable, but I'm not too worried - I meant this as more of an FX test than anything.

I did notice his hand going through his leg, too - it drives me crazy. I just wanted to see what you thought first, before re-rendering (over an hour).

His clothes are actually textures for the body, it's not a seperate geometry. You can also see the shirt go down as it reaches his belly button. I need to find a seperate robe prop that I can conform to his body.

One thing thats a dead give away is the fact that theres no facial animation going on at all. The eyes are one of the most important parts to an animated character. They help convey the sense of life and can really add alot to the animation if used properly. Also the left arm looks a bit stiff like it wasn't animated. Even curling the fingers to a more relaxed pose would help.

Other than that you may want to work on your keyframing in general because it doesn't flow yet. You can still tell were you set the keyframes.

As I said, I only meant this as a quick FX test. I threw in a few side-side keyframes in the hips to make it a tad more realisitc, but I didn't intend for anyone else to see this. If I intended to make it look like a finished shot, I would have look at the facial animation more, and probably chosen better lighting.

I didn't notice his left arm being stiff until after the shot was rendered. Same as I just said, I would have paid more attention to that had I prepared to make this shot look decent.


The lightsaber glow is actually Ryan's photoshop method. My idea was to turn the already glowing stick prop into a simple purple rod. That way I could use PS's "Select>Color Range" feature and choose a color (purple) that is not anywhere else in this scene. That would save me a good half hour of tedious rotoscoping. Well I couldn't turn it into a simple rod for various reasons, so I left it as a glow. I assumed that when I made Ryan's glow in Photoshop, it would go over the rendered glow. Apparently it mixed, making a red-blue-white-ish looking blade.

Ideally, I would re-render the shot without the rod now, and paste in my now-rotoscoped saber blade. I just don't want to wait another hour to re-render it at this point.

The elbow:
Yeah, I noticed that, too. Kind of weird. I didn't model him (I'm using Poser, which doesn't have its own modeler), so I couldn't change the model if my life depended on it. I'll try bending his elbow less and bring out his shoulder a bit, to see if that will help.

Thanks, again guys. I'll re-animate this guy sometime soon.

 

Nice.

For CG sabers, here's a tip for ya, assuming you are on MAX:

Create a completely white reflection map, and apply this to the saber. It will make your rod completely white in your normal render (which is fine)

But when you render, turn on "render elements" and render "reflections" separatly.

Then, on one single render pass, you get two files:

a) your normal main render
b) your "reflections", which is in this case, only the saber!!

Apply your "saber fx" to the "lone-saber" file, screen it onto your "normal render" and rejoice

If you are already using reflection maps (likely), do the same but put it in the "refraction" map slot and render "refractions" sepearatly instead, you'll get same result. (This is what I did for the CG saber in Intermezzo Dualis)

/Z

 

Cool. Thanks, Zap.

Actually I'm using a program called "Poser", which doesn't have its own modeler, and it can only handle basic reflections (you can apply a relfection map to an image, but that's it - you can't refletc off objects in a scene).

I do want to get 3ds Max sometime, though, so I'll hang on to that tutorial. Thanks.

 

Actually, I thought the newest Poser had a modeler. Oh well. When I watched it I knew right away that was poser, I used to use like number 3 or 4 I forget. Anyways, it looked pretty good, you should have keyed the spot light a little longer.

 

Okay, I've spent the last four hours or so fixing all of these errors. His face isn't quite is complex as I was hoping, and I wasn't sure what expression to make him have as he looks up, other than a 'gritting your teeth' look. Anyway, here he is - new and improved.

[ CG Jedi 2 ]
989kb Sornsen 3 Quicktime

 

thats some really cool stuff man... cg is awsome. you could make some really awsome movie using this stuff.

 

My first comment was going to be that the saber glow was to boxy and should be feather off a bit because you could see the hard edges. You fixed that, but now the core itself doesnt look solid enough. The edges look like a soggy cake or something. The elbow joint looks a bit unnatural - it pinches together a bit like folding plastic or something.

Other than that, amazing work. Ten million times better than anything I could ever do.

 

You do know that you can download a robe at Renderosity
You would have to sign up (if you haven't already), and just check out the free stuff page. Type in "Robe" and do a search. Simple, and it looks jedi-like too!

 

I'd turn off add mode on that saber and kill the lensflare as well. Well, atleast the polygon spread on it.

 

I'm already a member at Renderosity, and I did find that Jedi Robe. I didn't actually apply it, yet.

The lightsaber/lens flare in CG 2 was done afterwards in After Effects. The core may be a bit too blurred, but overall the effect seems to work.

Thanks for the positive feedback.

 

this looks really cool, again... i was sure i had responded earlier... o well... great work

 

Good work. Nice glow, but i think you went overboard on the nipples, you made him a horny jedi...not good.

 

As I said, the shirt is simply a texture over his skin - it's not a sperate object. In CG Jedi 2, I used a morph to flatten the nipples.