Praying Mantis- 3DS Max WIP-FINISHED 12-11-02

[David Bethel]

Neat thread!

There are various ways to do extrusions for custom objects. This is from a polyline mesh program I wrote some years back for AutoCAD. It can extrude a polygon shape along a 3D polyline path with a tapering diameter. It will also use polyline profiles as well. -David

[Earl]

Hey Steve,

Randy's explaination on bones was great. The only thing I wanted to emphasize was that 'bones' are simply a fancy animation tool that deforms your polygon object. The 'bones' don't show up in the render, and they aren't modeled to resemble human bones. In fact, most of the time bones resemble triangular objects (indicating direction and strength). The relationship between bones is child/parent, where one bone is linked to the next. When you move a bone, all the linked or 'children' bones (down the hierarchy) will move with it. The polygon mesh deforms with the bones movement - attempting to match the bone positions.

Skin, muscles, tissue, fat, etc, those all have nothing to do with animating with bones. Now, if you wanted your model to flex it's 'muscles' when you bent its arm, then you'd have to add detail to your polygon mesh to represent the muscles beneath the skin. But again, that's independent of the control bones you use to animate movement and deformation (though, some programs will simulate muscle 'buldging' using their bones, but that's just a quick way to get a cheap effect).

As far as physics go - there are many plugins and programs that will try to simulate real movement and real reaction to collision. However, that's only truly useful for large complex scenes where the focus isn't on one single object. I would say that the best quality motion is still done by keyframing and using one's own judgement to fine tune the movement to look realistic. That's debatable, though. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

In the image below, the 'bones' are seen in dashed yellow lines, while the model is solid shaded.

[randyrives]

Gary thanks for you kind comments and your additional info. Primitives are the building blocks of 3d modelling.

David - Excellent animation. I think that shows the sweep/extrude method very clearly.

Earl - Thanks for the additional info and the picture. I was in a hurry this morning, trying to post before I had to go into the office and didn't get to go into all the detail I would like. I think you filled in the holes nicely.

I think these post would make a good thread of their own and not taking away from Danny's excellent thread.

Hope this helps Steve and anyone else that might be interested.

[Dan Huff]

I'm starting to get a little cross-eyed looking at this now...


Thanks, Gare, for your suggestions and the BG pic! I'm pretty happy with this one.

Danny Huff

[This message was edited by Danny Huff on December 11, 2002 at 12:54.]

[dalel]

Superb job! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img] [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img] [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img] [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img] [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img]


Why, I’m afraid I can’t explain myself, sir, because I’m not myself, you know...
- Lewis Carroll

[randyrives]

Excellent job. That is one great model and texturing job you got there!!!

The only thing I see is I don't notice a shadow on the rock from the mantis

[Dan Huff]

Thanks guys for the compliments. This project was a GREAT learning experience and I owe my teacher for pushing me to do better.

Randy, I would've liked a little more shadow also but the technique I used for lighting kinda made it difficult. I got it from this tutorial by Miguel Miraldo- http://www.3dluvr.com/content/article/38

The shadow is there but it is really subtle. Since Max 4 doesn't have GI, I simulated a GI environment by placing 3 rings of 8 spotlights each, at very low multiplier value(0.2)and with shadows turned on but specularity off, at 3 different levels, using a very light blue to indicate the sky's gentle illumination, a ways above the subject, as well as right above it in the second ring of lights.

The third ring was below and pointing up to the mantis, colored a greenish gray, to simulate the light reflecting off the grass and rock onto the mantis.

The final light was a light orangish-yellow spot way up, actually well off my screen shot, to simulate a morning or slowly setting sun indicated by the background pic. This was turned up considerably with specularity and shadows on but in order to get a stronger shadow on the rock from the mantis, I would've had to really turn up the sun light to overpower the ambience lights, and the mantis would've no longer matched the scene. Oh well [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]

Well, duh, I guess I could've done it in Photoshop, couldn't I? [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_redface.gif[/img]

Danny Huff

[This message was edited by Danny Huff on December 11, 2002 at 16:18.]

[This message was edited by Danny Huff on December 11, 2002 at 16:19.]

[This message was edited by Danny Huff on December 11, 2002 at 16:24.]

[s.winders]

Good work Danny [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]


So how many shadow lights do you have?.Generally you want your shadows only coming from one direction qualling a bright light source.For the shadows a good way of keying there contrast etc into a composite is take note of the surrounding shadows in your BG image.The darkness of the shadows that the trees are casting means your Mantis would probably havea shadow underneath equalling the same depth or darkness as they both have the same light source.So if both have the same light source then under the Mantis would also be around half as dark or less illuminated as the shadow directly under the Mantis.The reason we are talking half is because of the lights falloff and the fact the Mantis is basically cylindrical [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]


Great work.


Stu.

[jens g.r. benthien]

great job, great model, great textures. A++. Really. It's always amazing for me how you guys fine tune the polygons. Breathtaking.

And here we go with another mantis:

Modeling time: ask nature. Rendering time: 1/125 second. Just a snapshot from ma nature, to give you an idea for another setup.

We can't copy nature, but we might come close some day ;-}

All the best and keep going!

jens

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://www.sacalobra.de

----------//--
If you don't know how to dream you'll never be a designer.
----------//--

[Steve Newport]

Thanks soo much for taking the time to explain! Although it's still a little hard to comprehend what all it involves, I understand how it works! Just need to find myself a way to do it on my own [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img]
The mantis looks great! But I agree, it needs more contrast in the shadows. If you look back on the house there's a slightly yellow evening sun glow with dark shadows. And it appears as if the sun is coming almost directly from the right, a little more towards the camera though. The radiant/reflective/GI light should be reflecting onto a shaded surface, and it looks as thought there's no shading at all.
Altogether awesome photorealistic pic. Great job!

Steve Newport

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