ShermanCG, Swords

I stumbled upon this fantastic set of swords done by Isaiah Sherman. I really appreciate the progressive change in the designs. The textures are sweet, too. Looking forward to seeing more from this guy. Check out the link to his page, there are wireframes, textures and concept sketches for this set.

ShermanCG, Swords

Tutorial, Video Game Prop Modeling

I found a simple tutorial over at BlenderCookie. While the model itself isn't the most exciting, he goes over a lot of the fundamental thinking that is involved when modeling props for video games. It's important to remember that optimizing your model for the lowest amount of polygons, while still maintaining the basic shape of your model, should be the most important thing. The video is a bit lengthy but there's a lot of useful techniques, including keystrokes for the UV layout that I wasn't aware of.

Part 01
Part 02

FF9, Bestiary

I've always admired Squaresoft's work in their video games, as well as the world created for Final Fantasy IX (for the most part). Here's a grid of the enemies you encounter throughout the game. The images aren't too big, and I wish there were some wireframes and texture examples out there somewhere, but this is a decent reference.

FF9 Bestiary
edit: I noticed the last link doesn't work anymore. Here's a new one: FF9 Bestiary

Blender 2.5 Basics Crash Course

Tutorial: Rigging, Mechanical

I've started thinking about modeling robotic characters in the future, and how they can't be rigged exactly the same as organic characters. Organic characters need to be able to bend and change shape, but mechanical objects shouldn't (usually). These tutorials show how to rig a mechanical arm, and should suffice with rigging any mechanical character or object. This tutorial was done in Blender 2.5, but the theories should apply to 2.49.

One thing to remember, these tutorials assume each mechanical part is a separate object. If you designed a robotic character, most likely, you'll want all objects to be separate meshes in a single object, and you'd need to weight paint each bone to affect each part in the same way.

Key points:

PART 1
Creat Armature
E = Extrude Tool, extrude new bone from previously selected bone
Shift + S (while end of bone is selected)/Selection to Cursor = to move the endpoint to your previous selected vertices.
Clear Roll = once armature is finished to clear any unnecessary rotations for each bone (17:40)
Add Constraints to lock down certain rotations and location of each bone (24:50)

PART 2
Create IK Constraints

Tutorial/Reference: Texturing Casey Jones

I thought it'd be handy if I documented some of the steps I take when texturing a character. Click on any picture to see a larger version. Keep in mind, there's many steps in between. I often have to try different highlights and reload it to the character to make sure it works. These are the major steps.

Step 1. Color blocking
Here's where I go through and put down solid colors. When you apply it to your character, it's going to look like CRAP. That's because there's no lighting or details.



Step 2. Basic shadows and highlights
Some games utilize lighting, others don't. I like to paint in my lighting directly on the character. And I usually paint as if the light source is from above. I take liberties with that rule, though. If something needs a bit of highlight, I try to go for it. It's amazing how much better the character looks with some subtle gradients hinting at a light source.



Step 3. More shadows and highlights
I continue on with the process of adding more shadows and highlights. These characters are blocky by design, so I don't mind using harsh shadow lines in some places.



Step 4. Details
Here I start trying to lay down a lot of the detail work in order to further develop the character. At this point, I also start thinking about contrast, and I try to push the shadows even further. The character was screencapped before this stage of texture was done, that's why he doesn't have eyes.



Step 5. More Details
At this point, I pulled out my tablet and started painting in some clothing shadows, the kind of stuff I can't easily do with a mouse. Even more details are added.



That's where he stands so far. I have some hair to figure out.

Tutorial: Modeling

This tutorial aims at creating a character of 1800 polys.

Things to remember:
Add Loop tool = ctrl + R
Select Loop = option + cmd(RMB)
Scale selection along normals = option + S



The video is quite long so I've included time markers so you know what begins when.
00:00 - Intro
04:40 - Begin Modeling
07:56 - Leg Modeling
12:37 - Knee Modeling
14:56 - Foot Modeling
22:08 - Chest/Stomach Refining
23:06 - Arms Modeling
29:25 - Hands Modeling
37:37 - Head Modeling
49:10 - Added Details