What've you skoped lately?

[BentonGrey]

Haha, I know EXACTLY what you mean.

[SickAlice]

I almost gave up on moving tires for that reason. Like I actually went for a walk in the woods and feed deer just to clear my mind about it. "When it works". Yep.

[detourne_me]

The Spider-Mobile is just fantastic! I love all of the little details in the skins, like the Howard The Duck in the glove compartment, the Muppet Babies Animal head for the shift, and the hula girl. So cool.

[SickAlice]

The hula girl was fun to do because I got to stretch a new method. Exporting a posed model in a static position, something I any other day did not know Blender had a function for nor keyboard shortcut. Same went for everyone riding in it. There was a lot to play with. I also used a texturing method I learned from other games where the designer shrinks the texture assignment until it's very tiny and rests inside a small dot on the texture. That's when something is only a few colors and would take up a lot of space on a texture of course or the game in question is going to be real taxing, this is used in a few online games like ones for phones often. The fire extinguisher is set up the same way. I needed the space for the more visible buggy parts and such so ended up doing it that way. So it was fun to play with that stuff. I have a tray of fruit in another nif that I did the same, any of the fruit is mapped real tiny to a square that is the color it needed to be because there was a lot of fruit to map.

The wax packs, I dunno why that happened lol. Well okay I was doing research on the Spider-mobile and happened across that sticker of Spider-man saying "it drives me up a wall" and thought it was funny given what I was making here does. And it just sort of happened from there. I started researching cards, I used to have a huge collection and these X-Men cards with Jim Lee art on them are a thing that really kicked off my interest in collecting comics. Those and Garbage Pail Kids and Wacky Packages from the ice cream truck when I was little. And that horrible slice of pink concrete called gum that comes with them. Why I made a model of that gum here that you can't ever see much less the stickers and cards? I don't know, that sort of stuff is just a habit of mine in real life and elsewhere. But I do know these card and gum packs are going to show up in a lot of my stuff from this point on. They probably will not visible there either and I won't even mention them but they'll be there (I said looking at KITT and the Turtle Wagon I'm making with a grin).

Thanks for the compliment, I lost a lot of sleep doing this. And the baby animal head. I mentioned it somewhere else but that was the first 3d model I ever made, way back when I was put in classes at a state college to learn computer art. You know then they told us 3d models would never be a big thing? It was like learning binary when I was very little, it was this thing they said essential to understand but it would never take off. It would never replace what was already there nor become a household thing. They said that about computers too when I was in grade school. Here we are though and if I'd known then I probably as well would have made different career choices. Neat to think about all that though. And anyways I had that muppet model for a long time now. I keep more than one back up online of it, fortunately not all of those servers have vanished yet. So I'm pleased when someone says they appreciated it. Oh and I hated doing 3d modelling at the time. I didn't see the point, I was too traditional in sculpting with clay and wood and standard painting and illustration methods I think. I kind of must have been impressed by my teachers there thinking there wasn't a point to it. Now I couldn't part with modelling of course and am always looking at things in rl thinking of how I would sculpt it.

[SickAlice]

Laying the foundation for Captain Caveman. I seem to have a bad seasonal bug so I'm mostly just cleaning up my drive and doing staging stuff like this for planned projects between chores and laying around.

[cmdrkoenig67]

Great work on that Spider-mobile, Sick Alice!

Dana

[SickAlice]

Ty.

[SickAlice]

Building the foundation for a ninja turtles van. It's going well so far, fingers crossed. It'll be a little be a little tricky since I decided to do the interiors and give it working doors, being all four between the side doors, back and canopy.

[cranlox]

SiAl Your project is crazy! Always being so detailed and so professional in the development my respects!

[SickAlice]

Thanks. I just try and care. It's not for me is it so I want to be something anyone might use. I wish I had more time for it, I mean I did when the pandemic started and everything slammed shut, not that I wish for that reason but regardless. Today in fact, well, "adulting". But you know everyone's stuff here is fantastic. Part of what keeps me coming back is the devotion of this community to it's art.

[SickAlice]

More screens of the Turtles Party Wagon 3d model. Still getting lucky (had to start over some parts but bare min.). Zipped through the exterior and an inside wall. Showed with an alternate Playmates toys inspired texture to display the mapping.

[cranlox]

amazing turtlecar

[deanjo2000]

Very cool.

[SickAlice]

Ty. The big trick is making it in steps all the way so I can make/psyche the animations which is those various doors are going to open. I'm also using extrusion on much of it which tends to be a fussy feature when the faces are weird like this. Getting lucky so far to not have to start anything over. At the remapping stage today. Bad form but I tend to start by texturing models "wherever" and then try and jam them all together to save on blank space/file space after. Though I learned to try and avoid that here with "printed" parts, like these parts where I copied and pasted the stickers from the toys. Remapping, especially resizing is a good way to turn those into a big blurry mess. I want to do the blimp as well but I have no idea how to animated it so the craft can detach from the blimp itself? Open to any ideas anyone has. I do know the long way but manually that would be just too much work.

[SickAlice]

The base for my final Ninja Turtle. This time I am making this directly from male basic and from scratch, I made the fingers, toes and head and so forth as opposed to swiping a model from a video game (TMNT) like last time. Making it easier for people to texture of course though it has some new mapping, particularly the feet. I also finally resolved the shell movement issues from the last. By the time this is done anyone will be able to just Skope it into any male basic compatible nif and do whatever they please with it. I had to finish to take measurements for the party wagon.

[Podmark]

 

[SickAlice]

The shell is just a placeholder btw, not the actual shell it will have. And thanks Pod, I still have a bunch of TMNT stuff coming of course. I'm working on April as well while doing these other two things.

[deanjo2000]

Fantastic. It?s looking really good.

[Podmark]

SA I will come out of hiatus if you ever get around to that request I made a while back

[SickAlice]

I was thinking on you on that one. I'm doing some things in part to set up for that turtle along the way.

[Podmark]

When its time I'll probably do the whole set

[SickAlice]

Mike is going to be a workout, the keyframes since I have to do them manually of course. I know how to make the chuck animations now though it's a task unto itself. But for now I'm just working on the bodies for placement and checking measurements on the vehicle, making sure the distance between the seat and the steering column are correct and so on.

[SickAlice]

Well it's coming a long nicely. I haven't had to scrap and redo or fix "much". I'm trying to pause a lot and think the process through as I go.

[deanjo2000]

Lovely work. They look amazing

[Podmark]

Those are looking great! The shells and belts look they came right off the old cartoon.
Legs might be a little thin though.

[SickAlice]

Ty. The idea was to look like the original toon yeah. I'll note the legs but at some point after doing the base work it gets resized, part of that happens there so maybe at that point. I'll also be doing be body part switches so it's going to have the thick IDW arms and legs for example as well diverse heads, shells, costume parts, so on. Basically again so anyone can grab this and make any version of Turtle they can think of. Same body but different nifs and the nifs are resized. Classic Turtles for example have really short calves which makes their thighs bunched up. Finished a bit more detailing today. All on the same model of course. My wrist is getting sore lol.

[Podmark]

I'll also be doing be body part switches so it's going to have the thick IDW arms and legs for example as well diverse heads, shells, costume parts, so on. Basically again so anyone can grab this and make any version of Turtle they can think of. Same body but different nifs and the nifs are resized. Classic Turtles for example have really short calves which makes their thighs bunched up. Finished a bit more detailing today. All on the same model of course. My wrist is getting sore lol.

That sounds great!
The last set look just like the original toys.

[cranlox]

I think that if you put absolutely everything in the same character nif, it will probably be heavy to run in the game and it will generate slow loading, I think the most advisable thing would be to do it by turtle styles with the differences being compatible each other would be easy to import and change things between them. Ultimately, it's just an opinion. I really liked these very evocative versions of the series and the dolls that gave rise to everything.

[SickAlice]

@Podmark: Well all of the versions and that's why I have to do it this way/in this order. Though I've read all the art reference I could find and nearly ever version with the exception of the films is stated to have short, thick calves (the Turtles mostly aren't otherwise proportionate smaller than built humans). So 1987, Playmates, Mirage, IDW (obvs. you need this one for Jennika), 2003, 1990 movie, so on. So I have to do it in an order so I don't mess up one or the other. I also take into account Freedom Force values. Our male-basic is the typical superhero build aka Steve Rogers and then it moves up (Gren's Superman) so scale them against that rather than a real average human being. Also looking at cartoons and movies is deceptive, the sizes tend be variable though I do have the height list for all that too.

Else this is what the leg portions end up looking like, add the thighs are spaced at the crotch for that shell piece the Turtles have between their legs. So you picture I shorten the calves and everything starts to bunch up and thicken from this point. Then adjustments on other portions depending on which version of the Turtles nif I'm working with, a different for every series of course. Lastly adjustments for the difference in the individual characters portions in certain series. And of course these body 3d models will not remain the same. Different sculpted heads, belts, plastrons, so on depending. You can maybe notice in this picture the shin and arm guards are a larger set then the previous, the Playmates also have another. You get the idea. So to get as much accuracy as possible yet I have to make it work in the game as opposed to any weird or notable bending and so on.



@cranlox: I never said I was doing otherwise. Different nifs that are only going to hold the models they need by version, not all of the models in one single nif. Basically exactly what you see in the photo add weapons and their holsters. Yeah I thought about the poly/memory limits along the way already. Naturally I'm working low poly as well to that end. As it is these are under most of Inks polycounts right now to give you an idea. Most of the details is in the textures.

[SickAlice]

While I'm here, I was doing some foundation work on keyframes today after I got home for a little bit. I was thinking a rope swinger for fly (no actual rope model though maybe? leave it up to whoever?) but leave hover as is for jumping/leaping. What do you guys think would look best for Turtles?