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CAP 3D Modeling Project
- Thread starter QxC4eva
- Start date
Here's Smoguana final renders. Credits to Kyrads for the model sheets (check them out here) and Clawed Nyasu for the model, textures and animation!
Shiny family bonus-
Shiny family bonus-
Credits to
- Model sheet: Clawed Nyasu
- Wireframe: Clawed Nyasu
- UV mapping: Clawed Nyasu
- Textures: Clawed Nyasu
- Rigging: Clawed Nyasu
- Animation: Clawed Nyasu
- Dynamics: QxC4eva
- Renders: QxC4eva
- QC: QxC4eva, Clawed Nyasu, MrDollSteak
- Shoutouts for their helpful feedback! Zephias, BaffleTome, Quanyails, StephXPM
Thanks Doug!
Anyway, Quanyails' magical fire dragon won the art polls and we're about to work on it! If you're interested in helping us please message me! As usual, our latest progress will be recorded in our project spreadsheet.
On a side note I updated the opening post with links for each animated gif. You can now click on a picture to see its final product. :]
Anyway, Quanyails' magical fire dragon won the art polls and we're about to work on it! If you're interested in helping us please message me! As usual, our latest progress will be recorded in our project spreadsheet.
On a side note I updated the opening post with links for each animated gif. You can now click on a picture to see its final product. :]
These things are all magnificent. I love the time and effort that has gone into each and every one. You all have done an incredible job bringing these to life and making them look official even!
Minor note here, the source files for Crucibelle seem to lack the alpha map. I double-checked and it doesn't seem to be present in the download pack.
Minor note here, the source files for Crucibelle seem to lack the alpha map. I double-checked and it doesn't seem to be present in the download pack.
Yeldir thanks for your feedback! The Crucibelle alpha map was an oversight on my part and I'm glad you spotted it. It's been fixed now - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bw8FAxjo2qD_S2dFWlFDdmVTaGs
Feel free to stick around and you're always welcome to contribute here :)
Feel free to stick around and you're always welcome to contribute here :)
Wow! I love these 3D models. A little off-topic, but Is there a way I can commission these artists somewhere? I think their work's definitely really good and I'd love to pay them for their dedication.
You can refer to the spreadsheet for tasks that are vacant and if you're interested taking up one of them, please post here or send me a message. I should mention at this point that there aren't many options left for the regular CAPs, but we still have lots of prevos yet to have models! See the OP for more about the process. If you're not a modeler we would love for you to stick around and share your thoughts on the WIPs we post (we should hopefully have some here soon!)
For commission related inquiries you should contact the artist by PM.
Hey everyone,
I'll be reporting on the progress of CAP 27's model. Nyasu's been working hard on making an excellent model and I thought I'd go through showing the various WIPs and the discussions that various other people in the team have been having about them to give a bit more of an idea about the process!
This is the first WIP that Nyasu shared with us. As you can see it's already pretty close to where it needs to be in terms of the overall body, but some suggestions were made regarding the legs. Firstly it was brought up by Quany that they needed to be a little bit longer and the thighs a bit thicker. Also worth noting isthat the legs are digitigrade and not plantigrade, which may not be immediately clear from the right leg of the artwork, but as you can see from the below reference picture and the model sheet, it is firmly meant to be. It should also be mentioned that the legs are currently attached to the model in this image, but that they will need to be separated to account for a suitable pose on the rig when the frill is added.
The second WIP has come a long way from the first WIP. It integrates more colours for reference, as well as has the edited longer legs, arm sleeves which are a separate object applied on top, and the skirt which is also a second object that needs to be connected. The way that the skirt has been designed here is to be attached at the seam of the back and have limited movement. Subsequently the legs have been separated to adjust for the movement of the skirt as mentioned above, allowing them to be angled more easily. The only major issue with this version that required further discussion was the antennae, which Quanyails has clarified are not actually flat but tubular, though they are spaced the correct distance apart, which may not be immediately clear from the artwork due to the angle of the head.
This WIP shows the way that the skirt has been applied to the body. Nyasu had to give the dress frill segment a slight curve to allow it to transition onto the rest of the model naturally. This is actually a technique that is applied onto Pokemon with billowing shapes such as Gardevoir already. The last thing to add is some additional taper to the tips of the tailcoat to allow for the tail to have a wide range of motion.
I'll be reporting on the progress of CAP 27's model. Nyasu's been working hard on making an excellent model and I thought I'd go through showing the various WIPs and the discussions that various other people in the team have been having about them to give a bit more of an idea about the process!
This is the first WIP that Nyasu shared with us. As you can see it's already pretty close to where it needs to be in terms of the overall body, but some suggestions were made regarding the legs. Firstly it was brought up by Quany that they needed to be a little bit longer and the thighs a bit thicker. Also worth noting isthat the legs are digitigrade and not plantigrade, which may not be immediately clear from the right leg of the artwork, but as you can see from the below reference picture and the model sheet, it is firmly meant to be. It should also be mentioned that the legs are currently attached to the model in this image, but that they will need to be separated to account for a suitable pose on the rig when the frill is added.
The second WIP has come a long way from the first WIP. It integrates more colours for reference, as well as has the edited longer legs, arm sleeves which are a separate object applied on top, and the skirt which is also a second object that needs to be connected. The way that the skirt has been designed here is to be attached at the seam of the back and have limited movement. Subsequently the legs have been separated to adjust for the movement of the skirt as mentioned above, allowing them to be angled more easily. The only major issue with this version that required further discussion was the antennae, which Quanyails has clarified are not actually flat but tubular, though they are spaced the correct distance apart, which may not be immediately clear from the artwork due to the angle of the head.
This WIP shows the way that the skirt has been applied to the body. Nyasu had to give the dress frill segment a slight curve to allow it to transition onto the rest of the model naturally. This is actually a technique that is applied onto Pokemon with billowing shapes such as Gardevoir already. The last thing to add is some additional taper to the tips of the tailcoat to allow for the tail to have a wide range of motion.
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Necturna 3DS Style Renders - Final Product
3DS Dex/Teambuilder Renders
Credits to3DS Dex/Teambuilder Renders
- Model Sheet: QxC4eva
- UV Mapping: QxC4eva
- Textures: Spook, MrDollSteak
- Animation: DJTHED
- Renders: DJTHED
I bet this final product will come as a surprise for a lot of people, like it came out of nowhere lol.
I started working on Necturna just over 4 years ago. A lot about my life has changed since I started working on her, and a lot of those changes started to shift my focus away from CAP for many years, a lot of which was me pursuing my own ambitions and projects. So... apologies for the wait on this!
Very recently, I started getting back into 3DS style renders on the side as soon as importing Gen 8 Pokemon animations directly from the games became viable. It's a project I was planning on doing for a while, and was just waiting on the modding community to parse the animations for Pokemon in SwSh so that I can actually use the source animations.
... Anyway, the main point is, when I was preparing to get those animations, I realized I was still on animation reserve for Necturna, and still haven't gotten around to it yet. And since I had this nice new rendering and compositing system for 3DS style renders made for Blender all prepared, I figured I might as well finally get this done!
I am still pretty pre-occupied nowadays, so I'm not sure if I can really be much of a help in the future. If anyone likes the render results my Blender setup creates, I can at least help with that, just hit me up. But otherwise, this is probably my last major contribution to CAP 3D, at least for a while.
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Oh wow this looks great! So good to see you are involved with the community again. Happy to see you caught up to everything, (what ever it may be), and that you are still working with 3d animations in general.
Hope to see it on the site soon!
Many thanks to MrDollSteak for that writeup of the 3D process! The model has been completed and will be moving on to rigging and texturing:
Here's another status update of the project. I had the pleasure of QC'ing Clawed Nyasu's lovely model - and I say 'pleasure' cause when it comes to Clawed Nyasu models there's never really anything to QC at all ;P After playing with it for a while I realized the snout looked a bit thin from top down so I asked Quanyails for feedback, and it was agreed the head should be wider and rounder as shown here with Quan's sketch (white):
Another thing I noticed that the arms were individual meshes separate from the body rather than attached to it as one mesh. That's a good call on Nyasu's part as it makes weight painting easier in the rigging stage, and also that we're fortunate Astrolotl has arm sleeves to cover up the abrupt of transition between the meshes as a result of them being separate. My only nitpick was the arms shouldn't be hollow where they attach - rather filled with a half sphere to once again make the weight painting easier.
For final touches I decided to bend the dress back slightly until the tailcoat part spreads out as flat plane - flat shapes tend to be easier to rig than curved ones. I also combined Nyasu's 3 UV maps into a single big one just so it's easier for us to pass the files around. I should stress that Nyasu's setup would definitely be closer to how it's done in the official models.
That's it for the QC and the model has been sent to the texture and rigging artists. BaffleTome, the artist put down initially to do the textures, has been caught up with things irl so I reassigned the task to Zephyr2007. Here's the updated task list:
Another thing I noticed that the arms were individual meshes separate from the body rather than attached to it as one mesh. That's a good call on Nyasu's part as it makes weight painting easier in the rigging stage, and also that we're fortunate Astrolotl has arm sleeves to cover up the abrupt of transition between the meshes as a result of them being separate. My only nitpick was the arms shouldn't be hollow where they attach - rather filled with a half sphere to once again make the weight painting easier.
For final touches I decided to bend the dress back slightly until the tailcoat part spreads out as flat plane - flat shapes tend to be easier to rig than curved ones. I also combined Nyasu's 3 UV maps into a single big one just so it's easier for us to pass the files around. I should stress that Nyasu's setup would definitely be closer to how it's done in the official models.
That's it for the QC and the model has been sent to the texture and rigging artists. BaffleTome, the artist put down initially to do the textures, has been caught up with things irl so I reassigned the task to Zephyr2007. Here's the updated task list:
- Ortho sheet: Quanyails - DONE
- Wireframe: Nyasu - DONE
- UV map: Nyasu - DONE
- Textures: Zephyr2007 - WIP [~50% done]
- Rigging: Zephias - WIP [starting tonight]
- Animation: pip or Nyasu (Tomomon for backup) note to self: bug DJTHED too even if I know he'll refuse
Special FX: Tomomon[revisit after playtest]- Renders: Tomomon
Thanks for the tag Tomomon! I've basically finished the textures for the non-shiny version, here's how they look:
(Sorry if it's a bit messier than the ones that you guys are used to, it's my first time :)
And here's how it looks on Tomo's render!:
I think it came out fairly well!
Criticisms and feedback are welcome! Thanks!
And here's how it looks on Tomo's render!:
I think it came out fairly well!
Criticisms and feedback are welcome! Thanks!
Look's great Zephyr, well done! Especially for a first time!
One thing to consider is that I personally think the eye looks a bit big on the render. I don't think that's on you though, more just a general comment about the model, it might be worth adding some more white to compensate to the border to compensate?
Hey Zephyr2007, I think the texture needs more work!
- The eyes are too large.
- There's a lack of symmetry everywhere:
- If you look at the model sheet, you can see that the frills on the head have a lot more lines of symmetry.
- The diamonds on the collarbone and skirt lack symmetry.
- The eyes lack symmetry.
- The yellow part of the skirt lacks symmetry.
- The chevron-diamond pattern where the skirt meets lacks symmetry.
- (When it comes to geometrically perfect 3D models, you shouldn't feel bad about mirroring the UV map!)
- The consistency of the outlines is inconsistent. Some parts are thicker than others, and some parts look wobbly, instead of being sharp like the 3D surface.
- The yellow part of the skirt should be larger.
- The sparkle texture on the tail should probably be a separate texture instead of part of the UV (and it's also asymmetrical).
- The outline around the eye should be darker so the eye stands out more from the head.
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Now that you mention it, I think the back triangles chevron shape is also too small.
Alright, it's been a while since I did one of these. I'm Zephias and I was in charge of rigging this bad boy.
This was simultaneously one of the easiest rigs I've had in the CAP project and yet one of the most detailed in terms of bones, as well as probably the one with the most painful weighting issues.
There's the rig with the mesh on top, and just the rig before the QC stage - at this point rigging this was rather natural and straightforward in my opinion. It had a modicum of facial animation with the ear flaps, but in reality the base of this was just 'make a person, then extrude a tail from the pelvis bone all the way down, and add too noodles up top.
The only couple things that were difficult to get right at this stage were the crest and the cloak - I wanted even distribution so that they could bend in the way cloth would.
Below you will find close-ups on specific parts of the rig - before QC.
These remained mostly the same after QC - the hand knuckles were moved forward a tad for easier range of motion. Everything was mirrored, bound and offset - which then lead to weight binds.
This particular rig had a very specific weight challenge - the cloak and the tail were two different, disconnected polygons overlapping one another. This meant that in particular the torso and pelvis bones, which moved the body, had to deal with severe clipping issues when the body moved too much, as the outside 'cloak' would deform harder than the inside 'body' and cause the body to clip out of the cloak in specific spots. I did my best to fix it, but the range of motion for the spine remained very minor without clipping - QxC then took a crack at it. The end result was something that more than serves our purpose - but I don't think this rig is going to be doing gymnastics any time soon. QxC also made it actually be able to open its mouth - a detail that I had missed in my own rigging.
Below you'll see a couple of my early posing tests pre QC, and a final posing test that QxC did. Keep in mind these are test poses - we kind of twisted the antennae to destruction to make sure everything bent properly - as well as other parts of the body.
It was fun, working on one of these again - thanks for having me ^_^.
This was simultaneously one of the easiest rigs I've had in the CAP project and yet one of the most detailed in terms of bones, as well as probably the one with the most painful weighting issues.
There's the rig with the mesh on top, and just the rig before the QC stage - at this point rigging this was rather natural and straightforward in my opinion. It had a modicum of facial animation with the ear flaps, but in reality the base of this was just 'make a person, then extrude a tail from the pelvis bone all the way down, and add too noodles up top.
The only couple things that were difficult to get right at this stage were the crest and the cloak - I wanted even distribution so that they could bend in the way cloth would.
Below you will find close-ups on specific parts of the rig - before QC.
These remained mostly the same after QC - the hand knuckles were moved forward a tad for easier range of motion. Everything was mirrored, bound and offset - which then lead to weight binds.
This particular rig had a very specific weight challenge - the cloak and the tail were two different, disconnected polygons overlapping one another. This meant that in particular the torso and pelvis bones, which moved the body, had to deal with severe clipping issues when the body moved too much, as the outside 'cloak' would deform harder than the inside 'body' and cause the body to clip out of the cloak in specific spots. I did my best to fix it, but the range of motion for the spine remained very minor without clipping - QxC then took a crack at it. The end result was something that more than serves our purpose - but I don't think this rig is going to be doing gymnastics any time soon. QxC also made it actually be able to open its mouth - a detail that I had missed in my own rigging.
Below you'll see a couple of my early posing tests pre QC, and a final posing test that QxC did. Keep in mind these are test poses - we kind of twisted the antennae to destruction to make sure everything bent properly - as well as other parts of the body.
It was fun, working on one of these again - thanks for having me ^_^.
Hi! So there have been a few major changes to how the texture maps look, both the shiny and normal version. Oh, and i finished the shiny version lol:
And on the render!:
(Ignore the fact that one leg is white, my mess-up lol)
These are pretty much the final versions, unless a new wave of feedback comes up.
And on the render!:
(Ignore the fact that one leg is white, my mess-up lol)
These are pretty much the final versions, unless a new wave of feedback comes up.
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Thanks to Zeph1 and Zeph2 for their lovely work! The texture map has got lots of feedback so my focus will be on the rig. Zephias did a great job with it and it has some pretty nice deformations for the most part. Two main issues that stuck out were the botched weights around the chest area (picture 1) and the jaw bone kinda 'smudging' the head along rather than opening the mouth (picture 2).
The bad deformations in pic 1 were caused by incorrect parenting of some bones, and is further aggravated by the high number of joints in the area. The second pic shows the faulty weighting of the jaw which is influencing the snout and part of the skull; when done right it should be influencing just the bottom half of the mouth. As we were in time pressure I decided to fix them myself. As I was re-weighting the jaw I noticed a mistake that somehow got missed earlier in the wireframe QC:
It turns out that Nyasu accidentally merged together two vertices from the top and bottom half of the mouth. When I try to open the mouth, you can see that vertex 'glueing' the top and bottom parts together. I had to de-rig the head mesh, split that vertex back into two, rebind the mesh and reskin it to fix it. I also ended up tweaking other minor parts of the rig but other than that it was ready for animation. I had this wonky test pose to go along with it too :P
At this point we had just 1 day left to wrap up and Pip was too busy to animate the model. (Bad wording sorry; reworded below)
Pip was busy so Nyasu was to take the animation spot. But as we had only 1 day left after the rig was finished, the new plan was for Nyasu to take over while I also work on my own separate animation as a backup. However, it turns out Nyasu needed some time to import the rig and do some setup etc before they can start, which means the task has kinda shifted fully over to me. I went ahead as fast as I can and out came this monstrosity:
Got loads of critique for it.
Our plan after the CAP is to revisit the animations then do a proper final product. The animation here is a placeholder for the playtest and I'm just glad we got something in on time :P
On a final note, I would like to personally thank Pipotchi for hosting our 3d modeling channel on his discord server. We've been there since CAP 25 and over the course of the two years, a number of people had to be added in as our team grows. We're at about a point where it's starting to clash with Pip's desires for his server so from CAP 28 onward, we'll be looking to have a new channel in the CAP discord.
EDIT: (@ pip below) woops sorry I should reword that xD Original phrase been crossed out
The bad deformations in pic 1 were caused by incorrect parenting of some bones, and is further aggravated by the high number of joints in the area. The second pic shows the faulty weighting of the jaw which is influencing the snout and part of the skull; when done right it should be influencing just the bottom half of the mouth. As we were in time pressure I decided to fix them myself. As I was re-weighting the jaw I noticed a mistake that somehow got missed earlier in the wireframe QC:
It turns out that Nyasu accidentally merged together two vertices from the top and bottom half of the mouth. When I try to open the mouth, you can see that vertex 'glueing' the top and bottom parts together. I had to de-rig the head mesh, split that vertex back into two, rebind the mesh and reskin it to fix it. I also ended up tweaking other minor parts of the rig but other than that it was ready for animation. I had this wonky test pose to go along with it too :P
Pip was busy so Nyasu was to take the animation spot. But as we had only 1 day left after the rig was finished, the new plan was for Nyasu to take over while I also work on my own separate animation as a backup. However, it turns out Nyasu needed some time to import the rig and do some setup etc before they can start, which means the task has kinda shifted fully over to me. I went ahead as fast as I can and out came this monstrosity:
Got loads of critique for it.
- Arms look like they're flapping
- Legs are stretched way too far back to the point it looks off balance
- One antenna is floating higher than the other
- Right antenna is moving more than the left
- Tail is in a weird position
- Tail fin is too stiff
- Tail glitter texture is way too dense
- Too much movement in the extremities - too little in the torso
- Back view's left hand awkwardly tangents the skirt
- Animation is slightly too fast
Our plan after the CAP is to revisit the animations then do a proper final product. The animation here is a placeholder for the playtest and I'm just glad we got something in on time :P
CAP 27 Playtest Renders
Credits- Model Sheet: Quanyails
- Wireframe: Clawed Nyasu
- UV Mapping: Clawed Nyasu
- Textures: Zephyr2007
- Rigging: Zephias, QxC4eva
- Animation: QxC4eva
- Renders: QxC4eva
- QC: QxC4eva, Quanyails, MrDollSteak
- Additional feedback: Pipotchi, Darquezze
On a final note, I would like to personally thank Pipotchi for hosting our 3d modeling channel on his discord server. We've been there since CAP 25 and over the course of the two years, a number of people had to be added in as our team grows. We're at about a point where it's starting to clash with Pip's desires for his server so from CAP 28 onward, we'll be looking to have a new channel in the CAP discord.
EDIT: (@ pip below) woops sorry I should reword that xD Original phrase been crossed out
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For the record I said I would be busy in advance as soon as possible!! ;n;
But the end result looks great. I know u guys had to rush with the deadline moving forward, but the end result is still good and something to be proud of. It gets across the personality of the pokemon and its speedy nature. Everyone in CAP is owing you for your hard work to organise these models getting done, they are (imo) the life of the project and i hope ppl understand u dedicate a huge amount of time to do them for free!
But the end result looks great. I know u guys had to rush with the deadline moving forward, but the end result is still good and something to be proud of. It gets across the personality of the pokemon and its speedy nature. Everyone in CAP is owing you for your hard work to organise these models getting done, they are (imo) the life of the project and i hope ppl understand u dedicate a huge amount of time to do them for free!
Legendary performance Tomo! You've done a really amazing job throughout the whole process organising and taking the reins to get this thing ready.
I think everyone is extremely grateful to have you in the community, as they should be!
No matter how many times it bears repeating, I say that CAP can't thank the modeling team enough for the speed and quality of its contributions. This one was particularly amazing due to the sudden deadline of the Isle of Armor DLC weighing down on us.
I'm looking forward to the follow-up animations you guys will be creating now that the deadline is off your back! :D
I'm looking forward to the follow-up animations you guys will be creating now that the deadline is off your back! :D
