3D Anime / Manga Art Hobby

[GunZet]

Sweet stuff man. I find using sketches and then using the poly modeling technique gives me the best control/results over stuff. Although I box model for certain technical things.
Your models are p. good, although I'd suggest trying some different materials. Everything looks a bit too metallic for skin and hair.

[animerick]

Yeah I agree. There are advanced techniques for skin which I tried but could not find anything I liked, and modules you can buy separately but don't have the money. I should probable ask someone at a C4D site if they want to volunteer to make me some stuff, like maybe real hair and cool texture. I'm lazy about finishing because it is the design that I like, not so much the tedium of finish detail, but fact is it's what get's you recognized and truly wows people. A lot of my work is just pencils or half completed stuff, because I get bored and short span of interest... but I really love it and still am jazzed about my sketches. My greatest dream though would be to make a really cool anime, yeah I know, fat chance, and I'm a white guy, so it just won't compare to real Japanese, but if I get that android body and live a few million years I might be able to pull it off.

You know what I like? I like that all the movie judges, the film festivals, the newspapers and sites for movies, don't include or even know about many of the great anime out there, and just because of the medium never consider the true greatness of it. I like it because, it is truly greater than all of them, yeah, even our great Hollywood movies, yeah greater I say, definitively, and this without the hype or even mainstream popularity among adults in the Western world, mostly America (rest of the colonies a little smarter in that regard, but we Americans tend to be a little uppidy about our evil movie empire). It keeps too many stupid people from screaming over it. Yeah, anime takes a little more brains, and class, and heart, so I'm not too worried the masses will catch on anytime soon. It gives anime a certain exclusivity, shielded from the stupidity of trend or over commercialization. Ha ha, no I've said my two cents no one will ever read or understand if they did... he rambles into the night...

[GunZet]

I don't know what material you're using for your characters. But if you could mess with it and get rid of all that specular then I think it'd look fine. Or maybe it's the way you're rendering. Try doing a clay render. But I feel you on the whole half-finished thing. Which is why I never texture my models. I unwrap the UV's but I never texture them. I just like the design, and as long as that's good. I'm fine with just a gray clay-render.

And on the anime thing. There's horrible anime, and there's great anime. Same thing goes with Western stuff. Guess it all depends on your taste.

[Rio]

LVUER: Yeah I know what you mean about money, it is a lot, even that reduced price, but there are strategies you might consider to get the real deal. Mainly, buy an older version on eBay, I just saw Cinema 4D 8.0 for Mac for $200, which useless by itself, but, you can then upgrade to a current version for PC for quite a bit less. I recently bought Photoshop CS, a full retail version for $200, and is actually good enough for me, but after registering it I could get CS5 latest edition for about the same and save $200 or more.

Again I do not recommend education version for multiple reasons, and no, you cannot use it for commercial purposes, and not be committing a crime, and it is not worth it. Furthermore, you cannot sell it later nearly as easily. You see all these education versions for sale on ebay and such, from fools and dealers who have not figured out education versions suck, and you might as well have invested in the real deal. On that same note I also do not recommend using stolen software, like they have on eBay from China for a small fraction of the cost, (and tell yourself, hey, I didn't know) they look real, but are pirated, it is theft, and not worth it. Also beware buying used from people, who say they are an original owner, but they bought a pirated version and want to dump it on you, or any dealer who says they are a distributor who burns their own discs by license. They are all crooks and won't enjoy success in the long run. For I say, if you are honest, and your ways pleasing to God, and you ask, you might be surprised at how a way opens up for you.

I don't now about buying used software. For all you know, they could've exhausted all the keys on that edition and you're stuck having paid for, although a legit copy, something that you can't even install. I've also had bad experience from some sellers on eBay, and yes, it was someone selling a bad copy of a software - you can't really tell nowadays. I used to rely on the seller review but that didn't do me any good. Anyways... caveat emptor (buyer beware) if you're going to buy used.

[animerick]

Rio, I ditto that. Be sure to have a list of questions for the buyer, and don't buy if they do not answer. Also if you buy through Paypal you can open a case against a fraudulent seller and their account will be suspended and often they will refund you. That said I agree always best buy new from reputable dealer, best in store to be sure because the Chinese even have these really good looking fake hologram stickers to authenticate like Adobe stuff, but it is easy to tell if the price too low to be true.

[animerick]

3D Anime Forum

Here is what I am working on now. It is a new hair for my figure. This has proved a challenge, like it's hard dude! Okay I don't have one of those hair making programs because as I said I just have the base program for Cinema 4D, but you can make resin doll type hair, which has its own appeal.

Here is the original hair



Here are some progress shots of the new







For this new hair I wanted to make something that looked a bit more, well girly, because I just threw the original together because I could not find a better quick solution. I wanted to make something a little more anime like, hence the front bang things, but then I found this ad pic in the mail of this chick working out, so I thought I would use it as a reference. Using a reference for whole or part really lends to a better result. You can always add your own sci-fi twist to it, but it has to look like something!



Here you see the process of extruding polygons to make the hair shapes. What I found carving out of a larger shape works best, rather than trying to cover the head with a bunch of individual pieces. It’s like you get lost a bit when you do that, or I do.

[GunZet]

That's a nice way of doing hair. I usually see people work with splines, or the hair and fur modifier in Max. But this is also a p. cool way.
Does the edge flow stay nice?

[KakashiTheSharingan]

Hey, I wanna learn this! What software to use?

[animerick]

Cinema 4D. Read back this thread I talk about it more. I may do an in depth how-to cause it's really cool and more people may want to do it who might be intimidated by the expensive tools and schools, the secrets of which can cost 20 grand and up! The 3D is really cool, and impresses people like nothing else, but that is because there is big technical challenge to overcome. Two years into it and I'm just getting warmed up, but I'm a slow poke! But, if someone just explained in plain English lots of stuff I had to search all over the place for I could have saved big time. Maybe I put together fast track lesson page at my site, (futuristicwave dot com), and put a link here. But, it's a big task. I can start just post a few tidbits.



Here are some recent renders I did for my portfolio, which impressed this scout for Apple retails store art teachers, which would be cool if I got it, but there is lots of competition. What's cool about 3D is that you can keep adding and refining. Like this figure, one of my goals was to make a gymnast because they are so cool, but also with this figure I can make her a fashion model, or a space heroine, a dancer now that I have her rigged.



You can see above I added a bump texture and some different colors. Below I used what is called a procedural texture, which does not use a bitmap but just makes certain vector bumps and color over the surface.



With this one, I did the pose using a photo reference of a gymnast. This pose is so cool! See what's cool about women's gymnastics is that apart from other dancing type things this stuff is really hard to do, which is why they get such glory at the Olympics, but also it is really cute and cool looking, showing power, beauty, grace, and cool things that only girls can do, like bend their back all the way like that. Boys don't try it! I was surprised that the 3D skin and bones really do a pretty good job, but not perfect, at making bends in the body. Some point tweaking was necessary here, but if I could afford the advanced package available there are tools that handle such automatically, which would really be cool.

[GunZet]

How long do these take you?