cube poeple

[happymat27]

Hello,

I had the idea to make a film scene for the cube people that I posted recently,

click this to see the thread (http://forum.simplymaya.com/showthread.php?threadid=22001) .

I want to keep the same sort of feel to this new picture but there will be some basic detail in the scene. Hopefully I will get this finished, my track record isn't great so far!!

Not much to show yet but I might as well start somewhere!

[mmoore5553]

good start so far ..I cant wait to see the progress on this one ...specially with the cube people ... really mat ..genius with coming up with the cube people

[happymat27]

Yeah I like the cube people too but I can't take credit for their design, only how I colour them in. Douglas Coupland, as far as I know designed them for his new book 'J-Pod'. I just thought that it would be cool to model one and use it in a scene, once again my idea has spiralled out of hand (in my brain) with possibilities, let's hope that I finish it!!

I've made a chair!

[happymat27]

And here's a celing....

[mmoore5553]

wow ..you are a fast one ...modeled that great ..I am looking at a video here at work ..heheh ... looks great .. I am impressed ..are you modeling all in poly or nurbs ?

[happymat27]

Cheers mmoore, I'm not that fast really, the model's just a basic representation of the scenery so I don't have to put that much work into it. As always it's poly modelled, I'm still a bit scared of nurbs!!

Here's a doorway.....

[esion]

How are you getting those nice rounded edges and corners? Is that just bevel? what are the inputs on it?

[happymat27]

Yeah, it's the bevel tool.

I generally use 4 segments, the offset distance is set to 0.2 on this part but it really varies depending on the size of the object that you are bevelling, it's really best to play around with the settings. Click 'Apply' rather than 'Bevel' once you've set the tool that way you just have to hit z and try another setting if you're not happy with the result.

Here's an update after duplicating the chair and doorway a few times....

[mmoore5553]

wow this is really coming together really well ...i like it alot ..just hope you dont get A D D

how long did it take to render ?

[happymat27]

I forgot to mention that I've set up a few lights in that last picture too, here's a render of the scene.

Cheers,

Mat.

[happymat27]

Hey there mmoore,

it took around 7 minutes to render it out at 1024x768 with mentalray, one day I'll get myself a decent machine!!

Take it easy,

Mat.

[happymat27]

I got the characters into position. all I've got to do is paint their texture maps now!! That and add plenty of blood!!

Feedback would be cool,

Mat.

[killamike718]

Thats absolutely amazing Looks really good!!! I want to soo more!

[mmoore5553]

looking really good i wonder where i seen this before ..hmmmmmm hehhehe love the work


wish i had feedback i am just in awe

[esion]

All right mat, you are making me mad that you are pulling this together in like a few hours :)

Did you just model the figures in their shapes? Are they rigged? Do you have solid body collision on the table? or just posed?

[Tnarg]

Originally posted by happymat27
I got the characters into position. all I've got to do is paint their texture maps now!! That and add plenty of blood!!

Feedback would be cool,

Mat.

when I first saw the complete render it screamed ALIEN, when the characters were added that sealed the deal... you're doing the chestburster scene from ALIEN, right? right?

looks cool.

[happymat27]

Thanks folks, nice words.

esion, I'm surprised that it's going together so quickly too. It helps having made the figure previously so I just had to import it a few times. They are rigged, it makes it so much quicker and easier to pose and move them (if you follow the link in my first post there is a picture of the very simple rig). There are no dynamics in the scene, all the characters are just posed.

Tnarg, you're absolutely right! I'm really chuffed that you picked up on it before the figures were put in!!

Cheers,

Mat.

[happymat27]

Hello folks,

Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to make any progress on this for a few days as my desktop has keeled over and died and I don't have Maya on my laptop.

I'll get right back to it when my computers mended.

Take it easy,

Mat.

[mirek03]

very nice work, looks great, rigged??

[bcrichplayer]

this is going to be so cool.
Its often the simple thing that are the best.
How did u render the scene so realisticly? Like the lights and settings and stuff.
I can see this could branch of into star trek/wars type stuff.

[happymat27]

G'day mirek,

to rig a model is basically when you make a skeleton using the joint tool and bind it to the geometry, once bound the geometry will move with the skeleton. The basic skeleton runs on FK (forward kinematic) controls, this is where each joint works seperately, a bit like posing a stop frame animation puppet. It's possible to add IK (inverse kinematic) controls to your rig, these allow you to control the movement os a limb by selecting just one joint, for example if you use an IK handle on a leg you need only move the ankle and the knee and hip will follow accordingly.

bcrichplayer, thanks. Someone already said that it reminds them of lego starwars, we'll see what happens!! I rendered it using mentalray with finalgather, all of the stage geometry has a slightly incandescent white shader on it to give it that whiter than white look. I've also used a few point lights placed inside the room and a large area light outside. I'll try to remember to post a piture of the set up when my desktop is up and running.

Take it easy,

Mat.

[mirek03]

:attn: hey dude, thanks for that, i know a little about animation but its nice when someone can simplify (if thats possible) events such as forward kinetics etc, it gets tiresome with long winded explanations even though best intentions are meant. Slowly i am beginning to come to grips with it. It seemed so easy when one starts, you know the 'bouncing ball and squash, bend, flat tangents, etc' but gets complicated very much as time goes on.

is this how you are rigging the characters. (farout idea, your on a winner as usual)

cheers mate :)

[happymat27]

Thanks mirek,

The cube people have a very simple rig with IK handles on the legs. I might add elbow joints in the future if I decide to animate but at the moment I want to keep to the original design of the figure with fixed elbows.

If you are interested in character rigging there are loads of tutorials out there, as far as literature goes I can highly reccomend 'The Art of Rigging' books from CG Toolkit. They're quite expensive, what isn't in this game, but very clear and concise.

Cheers,

Mat

[mirek03]

yea mate, i have a few tuts, its a bit like maths but I'll get there. It would be good to see these cube people animated though, seems made for it. As far as the books, well, you know what they say, 'no money, no honey' i can't even eat at the moment, I have a can of baked beans and that's it until tomorrow :eek: I'll probably model it tonight to get more out of it :blush:

[happymat27]

Greetings!

Sorry it's been so long but I now have my new computer built :attn: and all of my licenses have been changed over so software works which means that I can continue with this scene, YAY!!

I'll post updates as and when they happen, I'm going to have a crack at this months competition too so progress may be slower than before.

Hope the beans were good Mirek!!

Take it easy,

Mat

[mmoore5553]

woohoo that is great ..cube people uprising i hear wohooo


glad your got your rig back up and running . cant wait to see progress ...

also I would love to know some of the new render times you have compared to old ones if you have a chance ...

[happymat27]

Cheers mmoore,

I just rendered out the last image again so that I could compare their times. The new render time with exactly the same set up, mentalray with final gather, is a little under 2 and a half minutes in comparison with around 7 minutes previously. Not bad.

Take it easy,

Mat

[mirek03]

7 minutes using what? (what sort of performance are we talking here lol) ... and the beans were good, i was bloody starving. Great your back in with this one..

[errethakbe]

i love the cube people!!!! :D

[happymat27]

Cheers folks.

glad you enjoyed your beans mirek :)!

I spent a little time playing with photoshop this afternoon and made the texture for Parker. There's no blood on him yet, I'll do that when I've got the rest of the characters finished.

Take it easy,

Mat.

[happymat27]

Hello again,

This morning I made the maps for Ripley and Brett. I'm finding it pretty difficult to make good representations of the characters when they all have big square heads!!

Cheers for any thoughts,

Mat.

[gster123]

Looking cool man, what about a slightly different body shape for rippley? (just scale in the waist a little maybe) just to give the difference between the male and the female.

I bet it is quite hard to get the different characters in there.

Whats the spec of your new PC?? Cmon share the details (as i'm in the market for one too!)

Cheers

[happymat27]

Cheers gster,

I nipped in the waist a touch and adjusted the UV map accordingly, I think you're right about differentiating between the male and female cube people, thanks.

My new computer is probably a little overkill for what I need at the moment but it should definately see me through university and a little further hopefully. It has an Asus main board with a Quadro FX 540 graphics card, 2Gb RAM, an Opteron 165 processor and a 250Gb hard drive.
Initaially I got a very good price from a shop to build it for me but after looking around I found I could buy the same parts and build it myself for substantially less.

Thoughts would be good, cheers,

Mat.

[mmoore5553]

wow looking really good ..yeah the waist makes a big difference ... i like how this is coming out good job ...

[happymat27]

Thanks mmoore,

I've got dallas textured now. Once again not the greatest likeness but I hope you all get the idea. I'm going to get Kane done next then do a bit of work on the lights.

Cheers,

Mat.

[gster123]

Nice one Matt, that looks really cool, I think the little nip in the waist does bring out the feminine shape and makes her stand out.

Yeah I know what you mean about a new PC, i'm in the market for a laptop, as I really need the protability for my Phd. so I was thinking of one of the AMD 62 x 2's you an get, but i'm not too sure about the actual portabiltiy of it, oh well, lots to think about.

Are you going to have the alien as a cube alien type thing??

[happymat27]

Here's another update,

Kane's done. I've decided to leave Ash and Lambert out of the scene now as I'm too lazy to do their maps!! I quite like the angle that I've got in this render which would leave them out anyway.

To answer your question gster, yes I'm going to put a little cube alien in the chest cavity of Kane. It's the last thing on my to do list. Before that I've got the blood to do and I'm going to play with the lighting.

Cheers,

Mat.

[esion]

HAHA, I love it...

[happymat27]

Hello all,

I've been messing around with the lights, I'm not sure if I like what I've got but it'll do for now!! I also put a little blood in the scene, gonna mess with the lights a little more I think.

Cheers,

Mat.

[mmoore5553]

BRAVO.... very nice. .i like the blood effect ...this project has turned out really well ..cant wait to see finish product

[happymat27]

Cheers mmoore.

This is the last render I'm going to do for this project, I'm not really sure if it's finished but I want to get on and do something fresh. I'll probably come back to the cube people at some point but I feel that, because my computer was broken for so long, I've been working with them for longer than I actually have.

Thanks for your thoughts and enthusiasm while I've been doing this one,

Mat.

[esion]

Nice finish Mat...I understand that sometimes doing the same thing over and over can get boring...

[mirek03]

looks great mate, what was the final render time on this. ;;how did you get the snap to make the textures. (for examlpe, the head.) i still have trouble with that .
:beer:

[happymat27]

The render time was not that long as it's a very simple scene, a couple of minutes tops. There's only a couple of lights, no bump mapping and the geometry is pretty basic.

mirek, I'm afraid that I'm not really too sure about what you mean by getting the snap to make the textures, I've attached the UV and texture map for one of the characters, hopefully it will illustrate enough. If you have any more questions I'd be happy to try to answer them.

Cheers,

Mat.

[Rostoons]

this is really cool, reminds me of those little kubricks film figures. About ripley looking more feminine, without sounding pervy, how about some cubic breasts?

Are you planning on doing a large alien as well, obviously not for this scene, but i'm curious as to how that would come out

[mirek03]

sorry Matt, i knew i was struggling to make sense of myself. what i meant was how did you make those uv maps. can you run past how you did the head map. I mean basic mate, this is a beginners question. Sometimes i can get a map and other times i just get a cube (eg). did you use planar projection first, like that. I know you've helped me with this ages ago, but i was trying to make a mao for the top of my compass, it looked fine on the UV edotor, out of bounds of the top right hand corner of the UV editor, is it as simple as scaling it into that area. because when i took it to photoshop i had a square, not a requtangle as is the plastic top of the compass.

hope this makes sense mate.

put it this way, if you were to map the top of my compass what would you do. it measures 10 by 6.6 cm.

cheeers mate.:headbang:

[happymat27]

Cheers Rostoons, I think that there is plenty of life left in this one, perhaps there's an adult alien in there somewhere. I'm going to put it on the shelf for a bit, maybe I'll use the figures in an animation for my degree who knows?