Creating The Dante model. (Creating and correcting Morph tagets).

initial head model

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another fantastic edition of Animations on HypefroActive. It's nice been here again especially when you get feedbacks from other africans doing good, "animation wise". I'm not allowed to share their works here and that's probably because i have not asked for their permission to do so but in all, it's good to see that we are growing in the CGI industry. Today's episode kicks off from where the last one left off. I'm on a new animation Project that i call the "dante" project and so far i am still in the modelling stages. Some days ago, i posted a facial appearance of a finished untextured head model of the character and right now i'm following up with creating the morph targets. Well i'm not much of a modeller and modelling does bore me alot but when an artist is creating this things to be animated, then you have to give it your all because precise facial expressions can contribute in making a difference in that animation. To this end i have learnt that it's not how many morphs you are able to create in a day that matters or will matter but how precise they look and how you use them.

corrected head model

Anyways prior to creating the morph targets, i made some changes to the face for ease of change in the animation. Here is a pix of what it looked like when i first created it and right below it, is what it looks like right now. The change is minor and could be disregarded without causing any damage, lag or problems but i choose to because i want my base model looking like the new one rather than the much too serious old model. The change is in the brows in case you've not noticed. i just dragged the vertices of the brows by the top nose bridge up to lighten up the character and i think it would be easier to animate from there.

So how did i go about it? Since every other head model revolves or emanates from the main head model, i went after that. Already i'd modeled about six morphs or there about and that seemed a bit of a problem. And if i have to go through each one individually plus trying to see if the edge loops positions match, the end result would be disastrous to the world of animation and that alone is enough to discredit all your hard work especially, if the animation at the end is expected to be crappy, this one mistake could make it look even crappier.

Ok, i didn't do that, instead, i corrected the main head model first and positioned it in the   zero(0,0,0) planes of my UI(user interface).

morph targets

Next i picked each model one after the other and aligned them to the main model.

Then ALT + X   the main model to put it in the backface cull mode and freeze it. To make life easier for you, go to it's object property mode and turn off the "show frozen in gray" botton.

Next freeze the main model. Now switch the UI (user interface) to wire frame mode.

Pick the vertices of the morph you want to edit and place them where it's original in the main model are. Aaaand you are done.

If placed correctly, movements on the edited vertices will not be noticeable and it would appear like they never left their position at all. Ok that's how i fixed that and now i am progressing to testing the morph targets to see if it's what i want and probably create more morphs if necessary. immediately after that, the body comes next, then i'll do some mild texturing, rigging and finally animating.

Also, in creating morph targets, you could go about it by taking pictures of your different facial expressions, looking for references online or using the mirror. It's fun when you use the mirror because it's somehow interactive and you get to make your own kind of crazy faces. Downside is if you are creating this morphs in the open such that people can see you then, they might probably think you are going nuts so you might consider an enclosure or secluding yourself somehow. And for the record, i use 3dsmax. A lot of you already knew that. Also, the technique i used above will apply only if you are correcting one model of same kind at a time. If you are re-modeling more than one model of same kind in 3dsmax, you could consider adding an "edit poly" from the list of modifiers into your already-in-place "editable poly" in the stack.

 A little secret is that this "Dante" character is HypefroActive's mascot and you'll be seeing a lot of it often as simple casual characters, as action characters even as the ones in mortal kombat, justice league and marvel type characters. I did promise to do a fight scene last some time last year but didn't. I'm sorry about that but will see about that this year and soon. There are a lot of things that would be happening this year and action packed animation is one of them. We have to put Africa on the map, so stay with me.

Alright mates, that's all i have for today. Until i come your way again sometime next week, it's good bye, stay blessed and keep animating.

The making of Dante. Modelling tips.

final model of the head.

Hello HypefroActive fans and welcome to another wonderful edition of Animations on HypefroActive. So i kick off the day with my newest animation job and i'm in the modelling stage. I didnt  find this funny at all, owing to the fact that i've not touched 3dsmax for close to a year now and jumping right back in, i hear the tools in the program say "oh no you dont". Well, i'm here and i've got to do what i"ve got to do. So let's go.

Ordinarily, i find it difficult to use references to model and even when i find one, i still dont keep to it. And even when i went back for some drawing lessons and thinking "ok this time i will constrain myself to this drawn out reference", well no i still didnt respect that. Somehow anyways and after a lot of hours of modelling, i came up with these. It really is an improvement of a lot of the things i've modeled so yaaaaaay, i'm happy with it, thank you very much.

refining the head

However while modelling, i found out that if i'd stayed with the model i would have been faster and it would probably have turned out a lot easier for me especially with the reference looking at you in the face and you dont have to make speculations on where what should stay. The con however is that you are confined to a particular model and you are too serious doing what it is you are doing because it looks like a job instead of something you should be enjoying.

head almost done

The biggest lesson here is that, after modelling the head and because i used the symmetry modifier to achieve this, i should have collapsed the symmetry modifier into the edit poly modifier making the head model one whole object. If you are on this path modelling for animations and you do not collapse all you have in that stack into its basic modelling modifier, in this case the 'edit poly", then you would have problems when the time comes to add the morpher. The morph would work properly as expected but will seem to malfunction when you move vertices that are existing on the axis of symmetry to either side of the horizontal or x-plane and i'm sure that's not what you want unless ofcourse it's planned that way. So this little advice goes out to the newbies because i know that the pros know about this evil trick.

Alright, that's all i have for now and remember there is no gain if there is no pain. Animation requires sacrifice and it wont come cheap but that dont mean you should give up. So until i see you again, keep animating.

My 2D drawings

Hello People and welcome to another edition of HypefroActive Animations. It's been ons and offs for me and i rarely keep to schedule like i used to, eerrr i'm sorry about that and i hope to improve drastically on that "in a positive way". Yeah, so to everyone that's visited this blog for something new but finds thesame boring status quo "nothing new to read blog", i am deeply sorry once again. So we're through with the bad part and the good part is that Animations on this blog has improved a great deal too. As a matter of fact, i'm onto something new but i wont be doing anything over a minute like before. But you are guaranteed of better animations and improved animating techniques here on HypefroActive.

Starting off this version 2.0 type Animating skills, is a flash back of my drawing prowess. I've learnt plenty during my time off and in that while, i took off some time to summon my drawing creativity. Though 2d is not pre-requisite into learning 3d animations or animating. But a good or at least fair knowledge of it is an added advantage so don't get scared. Ok, so here are some cartoon drawings i re-duplicated in ink. I'm an ink person and i did about two or three versions of them for you to see.

So, that's that about my drawing skillz. Coming up next is my recent 3d character animation i'm creating from scratch and i'm still in the modelling stage. Tried working with references again, but couldnt so i'm alone one again like the wolf exploring animation and hoping to churn outsomething good. Until i the next edition, i'll see you guys when i see you.