Work in Progress: Well Scene Animation (Part IV)

The hand before bending

So I managed to catch the animation project back up to where it was before I needed to reformat my computer.  So that only puts me about three weeks behind schedule from where I was.  The pictures attached in this post are the progression of making the hand to putting it into the project.  Most of the hand was already saved luckily, so I just needed to make the two long bones which are actually in the arm.  Once that was done, I set each bone in a child-parent relationship to the others so when certain bones are moved, other dependent bones follow.  Once the bone hierarchy was in place, any moving bones pivot point needed to be altered (that is three points in each finger as well as one point for the wrist with that bone being the parent of all the other bones in the hand).  Then I just had to bend the fingers into place and move it so the lantern looks to be held up by the hand.  Then the lantern needed to be scaled down so that it looked the proper size in the screen.  Finally, the hand and lantern were grouped and mirrored on the other side of the well, keeping the thumbs pointing the right direction.

The hand with the lantern not scaled down

So this leaves only a few things left to model in the foreground for this animation project.  I would like three or four stepping stones, a figurehead perched on something coming out of the wall behind the well (the perch would serve as a fountain), a few more of the tangled weeds with one growing up the wall and then some last minute detail work (chips and the like out of the stone so it does not look so perfect).  Once that is done, the easy part is going to be background work, I hope.  As I mentioned, one dead tree and one willow should be enough to keep the mood going and make he background interesting looking without drawing too much attention or taking too much time.  Once all of the modeling is done, texturing should not be that bad on most objects, since most are small or in the background where less detail is required.  Then all moving parts need to be rigged so that the animation can show the movements of the various objects.  If I get real inspired, I will probably look for sound and some HDRI of a forest under a moonlit night.

Hand with scaled lantern

Now, as for the tank game project itself, I have not stopped thinking about it, life has just gotten busy.  I still am thinking of ways to add detail to the base models.  I am thinking about learning another modeling program and doing some of the tanks inside that program.  Not because I do not like what I am using, just so I am more versatile.  This means I will probably do several small tutorials so I get used to the UI.  I do not really need to learn to model again, unless I move into some kind of sculpting programs since those behave differently from what I have experienced, though trying to stay low polygon count would really rule those out.  My goal is still to get the main underground roadways done, a set of tracks for my motor-pool showpiece and then work on some of the more individual roadway pieces.  I believe I already stated I wanted to make a few pipe sets to add some quick detail.  Once those are set up, I can worry about some of the other details scattered around the map as well as what various projectiles and mines are going to look like.

The hands holding the lanterns in the well scene

Now, as for my research this weekend.  I think I did a fairly decent job of getting a large sample size of images from an up-coming online game with expected to support a large number of players at once.  What I have found, and this is by no means a final survey since I only glanced at a sixth if that of the screen-shots, is many of the low polygon tricks I have read actually can work.  Most of the detail comes from the textures with, in some cases a very rough, shape being defined by the model itself.  This makes me feel decent about my work because my modeling skills are about there, but now I need to work on my image editing skills.  My problem is I really never advanced beyond paint with that whole line of programs, so many of the techniques to make various effects are going to take me a while to make since I will need to look each one up as I need it.  Another concept I have seen is making a high polygon model with a low detail texture and with the renderings make a highly detailed texture which can ne applied to a low polygon model.  Well, I think that is more than enough for now, have a good week,
~gunnah