3D Anime

[Anttaru]

This is more of an art thread than anything. I've been inspired to make some 3D anime work, I'll show you some or what i have on my hands.

This image is a cell shaded 3D model. Part of the Sayaka works, i found it while researching 3D cell. The model was available for download so i took it and rendered it in it's cell shaded state and this is how it turned out.

Best cell shading i had ever seen, was rendered before my very eyes.

I figured it would be fun to see how this model would look if i modified all the colour and textures. It turned out like this.

I later modeled a room, which is funny cause when taking character snapshots most of the room is not needed. I used reference from the game Odin Sphere to model the room.
Textured it and

It lead to a tech image of a short film i wouldn't mind working on. A Nightmare before Christmas/Vampire type film.

Excuse the terrible glass on the lamp. I was just making a draft.

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Still in the back of my head, i really want to work on some cell animated stuff. Earlier this week at another form i attend that deals with these things, we were checking out this video from a new PS2 release in Japan. (Yes PS2 is still kicking)

The game is based off of the 2D Anime Series "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya"

The higher quality images of the youtube presentation, I've extracted from a Divx video. Just to post how nice the cell shading on this 3D animation really is. I mainly like it for how well animated it is, and the secondary motion the animator gets out of the hair and cloth.

I also watched "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" to see what it's about, and ended up watching all 14 episodes.

If you haven't seen "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" you can check it out in good quality Here.

http://www.stage6.com/user/parallax3d/video/1522517/The-Melancholy-of-Haruhi-Suzumiya_01

It's a really good show. I watched in in sub title first, but the english dub shows is in Chronological order which is the way it should be seen.

 

[Dayner]

its fun to see the S.O.S members in 3D

 

[Anttaru]

Yeah. Can't help but love them all once you see their situation.

I'm pretty much on the verge of scraping my first idea just to work on some cell shaded stuff because of that.

 

[Negorissimo]

I love anime in 3D. You will like the new Appleseed movie in cellshaded 3D like I did. I'm waiting for it on BluRay now. ^^

 

[Ecks]

That Appleseed movie is a couple of years old now. Still an awesome movie, but not exactly new anymore. ^^;

 

[Anttaru]

I've been documenting this work in progress at another form i go to, but I decided to expose them here.

Off and on I've been making a computer generated Yuki Nagato from scratch, My goals are to make my own S.O.S. Brigade, cause the characters really do look like fun to animate. This is my first time ever making anime characters in 3D.

Starting with Yuki Nagato.

I basically took 2 reference images and set them up like so. This way i can kinda trace out the profiles then bend the frame into shape.

Now 2 dimensional animation, they can get away with a lot. I lined up the eyes and chin the best i could and still the forhead exceeds the side view reference. I wasn't too surprised, but what was surprising is how anime artists do note the physical aspects when they can't cheat too much.

One thing about anime characters, they have very large foreheads, so i tried to follow that rule of thumb to the best of my abilities.
At this point i ended up with something that looked like this.

Then this.

Just a note: pretty much everything I'm showing here is how it looks smoothened. For anyone interested in seeing what the mesh looks like at this point here is it.

Without Surface

With Surface

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The form i attend has a good number of artists, so by this point there was some contribution to the making of this model. One artist supplied me with this reference, because she thought the head was too big.

I figured the head was too big as well, so i applied the image to the scene and reformed the shape of the skull along side the continuation of the facial build the best i could.

But there was a slight problem we've come to discover.

Characters like Nagato, have a very large space in between their eyes. instead of 1 fill eye length, We're looking at 1 & 1/2 eye spaces. That alone justifies the super large forhead. Trying to cheat this would result in either a triangular shaped head or it just wouldn't turn out from the side view. I rejected lining up the side profile of the eyes with the given reference as well. Drawing anime by hand in most cases require them to have large foreheads under their hair. So i kept the large for head, and the given reference just wasn't working out.

I went back and made this circle to try to visualize what the artist was working with when he made this image. I should have done this sooner. None the less it worked.

 

[Anttaru]

(Not to exceed the images per post i started a new post to connect to the last one.)

Another member ripped this wig out of a PC game and gave it to me, which helped a lot when it came down to scaling the cranium. I was able to test how the model would look with hair long before i intended. Here is a comparison shot i made for the community for the sake of learning.

Top cranium is too small.

Just a note. The face is slightly different on the model as well due to updating it.

What we're seeing is a better fit to scale with the larger cranium

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The hair used above was a test wing, so i started to draft out a foundation for the real one.

And then I slid them into space to the best of my abilities.

Granted I've come to realize this was a terrible approach to modeling the hair. I eventually took a sphere and cut it, then extruded the surfacing to build a base for it. then continued to follow the guide line i made with those flat faces i made.
I created a texture map and brought it to photoshop, then ripped the face off of one of the reference shots and bent it into the texture map, it turned out like this.

Buy this time i was very unsatisfied with how it was turning out, plus the hair has been troubling me for a good while. I nearly scraped the entire thing to start over but i just kept on picking at it. Making that chin was the best thing i did for it. Funny i had no idea the chin was responsible for the arc along side the face in the 2D references I've been looking at.

I underestimated the level of difficulty when modeling this characters hair. It is damn hard. Eventually I managed to get it to look half decent. It still needed to be ironed out a lot. I also made a mouth which needs to be shrunk even smaller, all details that can be dealt with a a later time.

Incomplete hair that needs a a lot of work.

The only good thing about it at this point was the super large for head was no longer a bother. (I also got some credit from the others for pointing out how these characters don't only have large for heads, but they are super large in diameter.)

Cell shade testing

As I'm writing this, this is as far as I've made it. The hair is still in rough shape and needs more smoothening out.

I made a new texture map for the eyes so i can more accurately depict the eyes. It seems to be turning out well with the cell shading and the assigned outlines. Still needs some tweaking to look better.

This is just a test so excuse the mistakes, like the ears and a piece of the hair not having a black outline.

On the side of the face closer to the camera, that line should not be there. That will be addressed next time.

Same angle different light direction.

What needs to be done for the head:

- Make the mouth smaller
- Fix the hair
- Texture the hair
- shape the ears
- Fine tune the colour (This also includes lighting since it effects the over all feel of the cell shade.

After that the rest is down hill. Then rig it up and have it ready to animate, then I'm moving onto the next character. For now back to the hair, it's still not finished.

 

[Gerry]

(Not to exceed the images per post i started a new post to connect to the last one.)

Another member ripped this wig out of a PC game and gave it to me, which helped a lot when it came down to scaling the cranium. I was able to test how the model would look with hair long before i intended. Here is a comparison shot i made for the community for the sake of learning.

Top cranium is too small.

Just a note. The face is slightly different on the model as well due to updating it.

What we're seeing is a better fit to scale with the larger cranium

.
.
.

The hair used above was a test wing, so i started to draft out a foundation for the real one.

And then I slid them into space to the best of my abilities.

Granted I've come to realize this was a terrible approach to modeling the hair. I eventually took a sphere and cut it, then extruded the surfacing to build a base for it. then continued to follow the guide line i made with those flat faces i made.
I created a texture map and brought it to photoshop, then ripped the face off of one of the reference shots and bent it into the texture map, it turned out like this.

Buy this time i was very unsatisfied with how it was turning out, plus the hair has been troubling me for a good while. I nearly scraped the entire thing to start over but i just kept on picking at it. Making that chin was the best thing i did for it. Funny i had no idea the chin was responsible for the arc along side the face in the 2D references I've been looking at.

I underestimated the level of difficulty when modeling this characters hair. It is damn hard. Eventually I managed to get it to look half decent. It still needed to be ironed out a lot. I also made a mouth which needs to be shrunk even smaller, all details that can be dealt with a a later time.

Incomplete hair that needs a a lot of work.

The only good thing about it at this point was the super large for head was no longer a bother. (I also got some credit from the others for pointing out how these characters don't only have large for heads, but they are super large in diameter.)

Cell shade testing

As I'm writing this, this is as far as I've made it. The hair is still in rough shape and needs more smoothening out.

I made a new texture map for the eyes so i can more accurately depict the eyes. It seems to be turning out well with the cell shading and the assigned outlines. Still needs some tweaking to look better.

This is just a test so excuse the mistakes, like the ears and a piece of the hair not having a black outline.

On the side of the face closer to the camera, that line should not be there. That will be addressed next time.

Same angle different light direction.

What needs to be done for the head:

- Make the mouth smaller
- Fix the hair
- Texture the hair
- shape the ears
- Fine tune the colour (This also includes lighting since it effects the over all feel of the cell shade.

After that the rest is down hill. Then rig it up and have it ready to animate, then I'm moving onto the next character. For now back to the hair, it's still not finished.

Wow...

Thats really good.