blender
Run XD
Base dragging Avi off on another epic adventure (or just to go find the missing-because-not-yet-made D).
Doing the turnaround directly before that with two characters was entertaining.
This work by bek (ryivhnn) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
3D Coat/Blender notes: Getting ptex textures from 3d Coat to Blender
tl;dr: bake the damn things.
After painting, from the paint room go to Textures > Texture Baking Tool
Fill in the stuff on the dialogue box as appropriate (I have no idea how correct my settings are, I tend to take a best guess with anything I don’t know :P)
Export the model as a .dae, import into Blender. It seems to import as many Ptex materials as layers you used in the 3d Coat’s paint room. I used two layers for the vaporeon model (one for colour, one for displacement). Set the materials up to use nodes and add their files (which will be named to go with each layer, e.g. anything with PtexPlane0 in the name in my case corresponds to PtexMtl0 in the material list).
Avi showing off its feathers
Avi showing off its feathers to an admiring Base. Turned off the covert layers so the viewport animation would play in real time (going to have to just toggle visibility when there’s lots of characters) and left them off so it would render a bit quicker. Going to do a couple of refinement passes and decide whether I’m going to interact with them this time round or just have them fly off.
Works in progress
Because I’m failing at making proper progblogs due to having to slog through a massive backlog (which now has a severe dent in it, unfortunately I think I also made a dent in myself XD).
Retopology of a chimaera in 3d Coat which I will rig in Blender and then draw over
Ingress character wallpaper being worked on in Krita
Wacom Cintiq Companion Hybrid/13HD and associated app settings on Ubuntu Studio 16.04LTS
Downloading all the things
Add the repository for Gnome Pie Menu:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:simonschneegans/testing
sudo apt-get update
Download helper utilities:
sudo apt-get install easystroke wmctrl xdotool gnome-pie
Download apps:
3d Coat is a proprietary product. Ubuntu Studio ships with a version of Blender and Krita but they lag at least a version behind. The shipped versions may well do the job (and be easier to upgrade) unless you specifically need something in a newer version or just like being on the latest version of everything. I stashed all of these in /usr/local as that’s on its own partition on the ssd. My home directory is on a 2Tb not-ssd. I don’t know if that’s “right and proper” for Linux but everything works, I know where it is and it theoretically shouldn’t get hosed if Ubuntu explodes and requires a complete reinstall so I don’t care.
The hang of it
Eventually got the hang of the Rigify-Pitchipoy rig that ships with Blender. I’ll use this one instead of mine XD
(I made mine with the intention to use it for animating but it was mostly to learn how to rig in Blender because I like having an idea of how to do everything, I am however not a rigger)
Please excuse the odd deformations, it’s a low poly model and I didn’t fix up the (pretty good) autoskinning as the intention was to test the rig. These folded arms are much better than my last folded arms and much easier!
Sigh
How I feel about a number of things at the moment, including finally working out how to usea couple of the controllers that were puzzling me..
Part of the rig test I’m currently doing. Now that I’ve worked out how it works (setup is a bit of a chore especially the umpteenth time) Rigify-Pitchipoy is awesome XD I have zero regrets fighting with the rig I had before as I did want to learn how to rig (and now know how to do a basic one) but can’t say I’m good at it. Will definitely be using this one for characters. Can really get stuck into characters and sets now I think as the rig was the last major blocker.
Bulbasaur digital sculpt
After a nice evening out with friends I fnished 2015 and started 2016 working on art. Everything is being progressed and this makes me happy.
Finished a dynatopo sculpt of pixietrix’s Bulbasaur. Probably would have taken somewhere between 2 and 4 hours to do if I hadn’t stuffed up the back legs, reverted and ended up a lot further back than expected (because apparently I hadn’t saved where I thought I had).
Pokemon SI: Before the Race
Me giving Flashwing a pep talk before the race, or something. The bird and I are actual size.
I am actually going to get this done before/by the deadline though it will be missing a few things I wanted to include. I’m going to be reasonably happy with the effort considering I had to make a few things up on the fly (and learned a bit in the process) and had lost a large chunk of time to work on it due to needing to pull some overtime on a paid gig.
Particle feathers
Particle feathers look a hell of a lot better than polygon feathers but take about a million years to render. This frame took 50mins. This would be why people use polygon feathers with texture maps.
…at this stage I may bite the excessive render times for the nicer appearance.
This work by bek (ryivhnn) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License