HOME | DD

aVersionOfReality In reply to Burnoutsindrome [2017-06-17 06:18:25 +0000 UTC]

If you like MakeHuman, be sure to check out ManuelLab. It's a new body creation by the same guy who did the models for MakeHuman, but it runs in Blender and is more flexible.

www.manuelbastioni.com/

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

aVersionOfReality In reply to kojoB [2015-08-09 05:50:45 +0000 UTC]

Thanks. I'm very familiar with RWBY, and am a big fan. I am interested in animating in this style, but its tricky, as its heavy on render time. Great as it is, RWBY is lacking visually primarily due to not having any sort of lighting (except for cast shadows in some areas.) This is because its rendered in real time (I think in Mayas viewport render? I don't remember off the top of my head.) Essentially, its got about playstation 2 level rendering, and assets that aren't much better. But the creators valued real time rendering, and they saved a lot of time on setting up lighting and materials.

In contrast, most uses of 3D in, say, current Anime are using a proper renderer, but still not modern ones. They have lighting, but they don't have the hallmark of modern renderers, which is Global Illumination (which is essentially calculated light bounces) or proper emitters. I am using Cycles, which has real emitters and global illumination. That's why we can see things like colored light being cast onto the character, and light bouncing off the floor and onto her boots. There's a whole lot of subtle stuff going on. Her hair is even technically using a mix of toon and Glass materials, although at a low factor, but this gives it some more nuance.

The downside of global illumination is that render times are huge. You can bring them down by using GPU rendering and stacking graphics cards, but this gets expensive. The render time for this image (at 1920x1080) is ~30 minutes on my current setup, which is a GeForce 580 and 770 working together. For an animation, at 30 fps, that means 15 hours of rendering per second of animation, or 900 hours a minute. For a standard length 25 minute episode, that's going to be nearly 3 years to render. In comparison, using a non-globally illuminated render engine, you don't need GPUs, and you'll render a classic 2 or 3 tone anime style in a few seconds a frame. But since you will need to do tons of test rendering to actually develop an animation of any length, things will take much longer.

Now, I think that will a lot of work optimizing, I could get this current style down to ~5 minutes per frame. This is much more manageable. Then with a proper GPU render cluster with several machines each running several cards, it could achieve workable render times. But this means throwing $5,000+ into hardware to render, or buying time on render farms, which are expensive. That's why only big studios like Pixar and Disney are using global illumination in serious length projects. I think we will start to see styles like this in smaller studios, but its going to take some time.

Anyhow, sorry this turned into a wall of text. I have actually been helping a group thats working on a RWBY fan project with their render setup, although its not using Cycles. You can check it out here, although I'm not sure if they're keeping this page up to date: www.facebook.com/RWBYOverTheSe…

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

kojoB In reply to aVersionOfReality [2015-08-11 19:55:20 +0000 UTC]

Thank for the explanation, I'm just getting into cycles myself and I appreciate the amount of thought you've put into animating in this style. I was introduced to RWBY by a classmate and the atmosphere is what won me over however, in the art-style was interesting and showed soo much potential. It didn't look 3D, and I kept thinking .. about the Zelda WindWaker and about classic 2d animations I loved.

I want to create something a beautiful but I know I don't have a powerful computer to render, so ive been focusing on creating stylized low poly assets. 

When I saw your work  it was like seeing and knowing that my dream creation was real and out there and it was attainable, in fact someone had already created it.

I'll be honest man, I taught you were crazy to make a tutorial, its too unique, but I appreciate it, whatever I learn, if I find a way to make it work, you have my gratitude.

If I am ever worth anything, it will be worth something too.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

aVersionOfReality In reply to kojoB [2015-08-11 21:26:53 +0000 UTC]

Thanks a lot I made a tutorial because I needed to let the information out there to see what others come up with in this style. I consider this only the foundation of the full style I want to achieve. Not so much in the rendering, but in the modeling. These days I'm mostly working on workflows for creating hair, as well as learning to better model facial features.

Even if you have a weak computer, you should still be able to do similar things in Blender Internal.

Feel free to message me if you need any help (facebook is the best way to get a hold of me quickly: www.facebook.com/aversionofrea… )

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

aVersionOfReality In reply to kojoB [2015-08-06 05:24:16 +0000 UTC]

Thank you! Let me know what you like about it.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0