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Isometric games : 3d character animation test

In the past week I produced a simple animation to test with an isometric style game. My goal is replace my static characters in Metalwarriors with those that includes animations.

Modeling your first Anime Robot in 3d, part 4/4

4. Posing your 3d model and final rendering

4.1
First of all save all settings.
Press Enter to create a new keyframe; on the keyframes panel leave zero on keyframe number, then select "All Items" as "For:" values; in this way we saved on frame 0 a keyframe for all object included in you scene.

You can use this frame zero to back to the default settings, if you want to restart with posing your 3d robot.

To arrange a pose for our 3d robot, we'll use a new frame: because our goal is creating a static rendering (not an animation...), no matter what frame we'll use to set the pose for our robot: for this purpose, we'll use frame 10th.

We have to copy all the settings from frame zero to frame #10: select frame zero (use timeline to do this) and press Enter, a panel opens: in "Create key at" field insert 10, and select "All Items" in "For" field. We just created a new keyframe at frame #10 for all object included in the scene.

Now we can move at frame #10 and start with moveing our robot.
Don't forget to save sometimes your project...

4.2
To select each object we'll use Schematic View prepared previously; to move each object we'll use only their rotation properties H, P, B (heading, pitch e bank).

Select the waist, and rotate it (just some degree!) forward (use its PITCH property); now select the chest and rotate it backward (still using P property)... this to simulate "Stomach in, chest out" pose...;-) rotation values for the chest must be some degree greater than value used to rotate the waist.

Modeling your first Anime Robot in 3d, part 3/4

In this third part, we will setup the scene for the final rendering.

Modeling your first Anime Robot in 3d, part 2/4

On Modeler, click the icon on the top-right of the screen, next to the layer selector, then click on "Send object to Layout".

In this way Lightwave Layout will be automatically open and your model loaded.

2. Lightwave 3d Layout: hierarchy setup and the Schematic Panel.

2.1.
In this section of the tutorial we set the objects hierarchy so each part of our Robot will be connected to another; at the end of this process we'll rotate each object to set in pose our Robot in 3d.
First of all, we have to complete with loading of all object we need, adding a background object. You can load it directly from one of these two links:

Into Layout, select Load Object (Ctrl+o) and select the object now loaded.
In fig. 15 you can see a layout screenshot with all objects: our robot and the background.

Add a Null Object (Ctrl+n) and name it as "null_Robot".

Modeling your first Anime Robot in 3d, part 1/4

1. Lightwave 3d Modeler: a simplified robot 3d modeling

Please remember this is a basic tutorial for low experienced users.
This tutorial is based on Newtek Lightwave 3d, but if many concepts end techniques can be used also on many other 3d software, as 3D Studio Max, Maya, XSI, modo, cinema 4d, etc.

As our first step, we model a simple humanoid figure in 3d: it will be our first anime robot and our "guide" to model new and more complex models.

Each limb will be created as simply boxes, and each limb/box will be placed in a different layer: in a next tutorial, we discuss how to replace these simple forms with other, more complex.

After modeled this "dummy" robot, we import the entire 3d model into Lightwave Layout, setting hieranchy chains.

After this, we add a ground to place our robot, then we set lights and Global Illumination properties, Camera and so on to obtain a rendering in radiosity.

The final image will be similar to that you can see on the left: a simple 3d model similar to Commander (Convoy), taken from Transformers series.

Before starting: don't fonrget to save your project periodically...

Download Blueprints (may 2006)

I picked up some drawings and blueprints you can use as a background as aid of your 3D modeling tasks.

Links to some of my friends websites (2005)

These are some links to my friend and good websites: lightwave 3d, Flashlite, flash, tutorials, games for web and mobile phones.

7 books to start learning 3d from scratch

In this article we are going to all those books that refer to 3d, starting from 3d modeling and rendering, but also that introduce to digital animation in general, texturing, compositing, and so on I studied all these books many years ago (all these books are dates not more recently than 2003), but I think that they're ok to approach to 3d, compositing and visual effects. Try to find a more recent version of these books.

Download 3d models for games and graphics

3D Models After a lot of requests finally I can show this page where you can download some Super Robots 3D models.

List of 3D animation movies available on DVD in 2002

I have prepared a list of all 3d animation movies out so far: the list probably is incomplete, please let me know if anything is missing.