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Hudston's Workshop

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  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Death animation done. Now that I've got the bare minimum for the ground form I'm going to do the basic flying animations before going back and adding all the fancy optional stuff.
    zfUYZoh.gif

    Just tested it in game. I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to see something I made running around in a game. :)

    EDIT: Just notice that the right elbow pops out as he falls, it's a quick fix though.
  • Spudnik
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    Spudnik polycounter lvl 11
    For the death animation, it looks a bit like he's just lying down. I'd suggest you have him jump up a bit, turn and land on his back with the legs twitching so it's 100% clear what's happening. ^^
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    For the death animation, it looks a bit like he's just lying down. I'd suggest you have him jump up a bit, turn and land on his back with the legs twitching so it's 100% clear what's happening. ^^

    I don't really want to do the flipping over and curling up death animation, it's a bit cliche for spiders in video games and I want this guy to be less spidery than cute! I might exaggerate this animation a bit more, perhaps have his head twist a little more unnaturally when he lands or something.
  • Insaneophobia
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    Insaneophobia polycounter lvl 5
    Try to make his face lie down or something so you can't see his eyes. They're too full of life, so it's quite hard to see that he's dead when his eyes are open like that.
  • reverendK
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    reverendK polycounter lvl 7
    Its not really a cliche so much as just how spiders tend to look when they die. Especially with his giant open eyes its going to be difficult to make him look dead the way you have it now
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Its not really a cliche so much as just how spiders tend to look when they die. Especially with his giant open eyes its going to be difficult to make him look dead the way you have it now

    Yeah, I don't disagree. They do it because their legs work like hydraulics and the pressure goes out of them when they die. I just want a cuter animation for this guy.

    I've made some changes to it which I'm quite fond of. He looks a bit more limp now. I'll post another gif later on, I'm working on the flying poses now.

    Loving the feedback though, guys. It's been really helpful! :)
  • Old the Kid
    Oh wow! You've made some awesome progress!

    On the topic of cute death animation: What about as he dies, the front two arm-ish legs come up and cover his eyes, like he's cowering on death? Not sure, but I love the direction so far!
  • AndrewHelenek
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    AndrewHelenek polycounter lvl 6
    Why has it been so much more difficult to animate 30 frames than it was to animate the walk cycle and the idle combined?!

    Here's the spawn animation:
    F8MFlCW.gif

    Ok, wow, you've made a lot of progress!

    That spawn animation is great, you can probably get away with adding 10-20 more frames to have a more impactful landing and recovery. Right now the landing is solid but the recovery is a bit quick for a fall that high.
    Death animation done. Now that I've got the bare minimum for the ground form I'm going to do the basic flying animations before going back and adding all the fancy optional stuff.
    zfUYZoh.gif

    Just tested it in game. I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to see something I made running around in a game. :)

    EDIT: Just notice that the right elbow pops out as he falls, it's a quick fix though.

    It's such a good feeling to see your creatures brought to life! It's even better when you join a game and see someone else play with it! That day will come soon enough!

    I have a bit of criticism about the death animation. And I wouldn't consider that completed, although it is a good base. The timing is the main thing that sticks out, it is very sluggish. It almost looks like he is in lower gravity. Death animations aren't easy, in fact, I'd go as far to consider them one of the more difficult animations. The single most important thing to keep in mind when animating a death animation is does this look like he has no life to him? As he is right now, I don't really get that.

    However, this is my main problem with the death animation, the "flipping over twitching" animation that is cliche, is cliche for a reason. And in my opinion you should reconsider your reasoning. I also feel that animation, while more difficult to get right, is much more interesting and conveys death much better than what you currently have. If you wanted to continue in the direction you're going, what you should have him do is have his legs kick out from underneath him and have him hit the ground hard like a splat.

    It's coming along nicely, and I'm very interested in seeing the flying animations.

    Good Work Hudston! :thumbup:
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Sadly not, the workshop page says that spawn animations can only be a maximum of 30 frames and this is precisely 30 frames long!
  • AndrewHelenek
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    AndrewHelenek polycounter lvl 6
    Sadly not, the workshop page says that spawn animations can only be a maximum of 30 frames and this is precisely 30 frames long!

    They must have changed that, Cluckles was ~50 frames. :(
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Yeah, it's something to do with the animation being interrupted if the courier is given a command immediately. It's a shame because you're right, the recovery could really use a few more frames.
  • Oroboros
    Loving the progress :) Feel like you might have a winner here Hudston. You should figure out some way to exaggerate the death though if possible. Even if he doesn't flip over, perhaps falling on his side or something along those lines might sell it better.
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Here's a gif of the more exaggerated death animation. I'll probably still come back to it but I think it's an improvement.
    Q6Xi1FA.gif

    And some progress on the flying idle animation. It still really needs work. I may just take this as a learning exercise and try again. :poly117:
    gPpFZQz.gif

    EDIT: Following some feedback from Helenek I've sped both of these animations up significantly so don't mind the slow paced gifs, I've already fixed 'em!
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    More work on the spider today. With luck I'll finish this with enough time to scrape my medusa set together for the contest!

    Here's his flying run:
    Sa81mKu.gif

    And his flying death (I know his leg clips through his wing in the .gif, I spotted it while uploading this post. It's fixed now.):
    yWW5NBl.gif

    With these two, I now have the minimum requirements to submit this guy. All I need to do now is add all the bells and whistles and we're done!

    Also, my workshop is fixed! Steam support didn't tell me that they'd fixed it, but it works now so I'm not going to complain!

    EDIT: Doing some more testing in game and I'm starting to think that he's slightly too big. He's the perfect size in his ground form but the perspective makes him look enormous when he's flying. Does anyone know how I'd go about re-scaling him without messing up my animations? (I know I'd have to tweak the flying death so that he falls the correct distance and such)
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    I'm within spitting distance of finishing, working on the promos as we speak, but I've got one last hurdle that I need your help with: I suck at names.

    Does anyone have any suggestions?
  • AndrewHelenek
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    AndrewHelenek polycounter lvl 6
    Some names that come to mind;

    Itsy, the Bitsy Spider
    Lil' Pete (ala Peter Parker)

    Also scaling the courier after you already finished the animations is a painful process, I'll have to walk you through it one night, prepare yourself.
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Some names that come to mind;

    Itsy, the Bitsy Spider
    Lil' Pete (ala Peter Parker)

    Also scaling the courier after you already finished the animations is a painful process, I'll have to walk you through it one night, prepare yourself.

    I've done some experimenting with it already, haven't quite figured it out yet but from what I've gleaned so far it seems like it'll be a total pain in the backside. I think he's ok though, he's perhaps slightly too big but not massively so, so I'll probably leave him as is. Just another thing to avoid in future, I think.
  • AndrewHelenek
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    AndrewHelenek polycounter lvl 6
    I've done some experimenting with it already, haven't quite figured it out yet but from what I've gleaned so far it seems like it'll be a total pain in the backside. I think he's ok though, he's perhaps slightly too big but not massively so, so I'll probably leave him as is. Just another thing to avoid in future, I think.

    To put it simply, you need to import the files with the importer, take those files and decompile them, edit the .qc and change the scale to whatever you need it to be, then take the .qc and recompile the files, then decompile it again and the new .smds you get will be properly scaled, upload those into the ingame importer and submit.

    It's long, painful, and annoying, but it works! :thumbup:
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Sounds wonderful. If I need to I'll do it but here's hoping it wont be necessary. I haven't even begun to look at things like decompiling, I'm more of a "push buttons until it looks pretty" kind of artist.

    My only issue would be the flying death animation, if I scale that down he wont fall far enough.
  • Goldo_O
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    Goldo_O greentooth
    Really love the work you've done on this courier Hudston! These animations are very well done! Will you do some _rare ones to brake the loops?
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    The rare idle animations are already done! I've got some rare run animations too but the importer refuses to use them for some reason so I'm not sure if those are going to work as I can't test them.

    I'm working on the preview stuff for the workshop now so you'll be able to see all the animations and such soon. Ideally I'd like to have it up tomorrow. As fun as this is, I've got some "real" work that needs my attention this weekend and I'm sure that "I was making a spider" isn't going to work as an excuse!

    Much love for all the kind comments and the feedback, I truly appreciate it!
  • Vextrakt
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    Vextrakt polycounter lvl 6
    These animations look great man. I like the death ones a lot :) Small nitpick in the second flying animation. I think the backpack might be moving too far on each drop instead of being in sync with the spider. I suppose that might be intentional though to exaggerate the animations for in-game?
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    He's done! Allow me to introduce you to Itsy!
    268x268.resizedimage
  • Goldo_O
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    Goldo_O greentooth
    So cute! haha, those eyes!!!
  • BrontoThunder
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    BrontoThunder polycounter lvl 13
    Congrats on finishing! Well done :)
  • Vextrakt
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    Vextrakt polycounter lvl 6
    Oh wow cuteness overload. Love the name and the presentation :)
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Itsy seems to be doing quite well, which is encouraging. So much thanks everyone!

    Next! *boots up ZBrush*
  • Insaneophobia
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    Insaneophobia polycounter lvl 5
    Itsy seems to be doing quite well, which is encouraging. So much thanks everyone!

    Next! *boots up ZBrush*

    What are you going to make next? :D
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    What are you going to make next? :D

    I want to try and finish my Medusa set before the end of this months contest so I reckon I'll be working on that for now. I think I'll be doing some items and/or sets for awhile before I do something big like another courier. I've got a couple of ideas though!
  • Insaneophobia
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    Insaneophobia polycounter lvl 5
    I want to try and finish my Medusa set before the end of this months contest so I reckon I'll be working on that for now. I think I'll be doing some items and/or sets for awhile before I do something big like another courier. I've got a couple of ideas though!

    Awesome^^ Hope you'll finish it :P
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Some progress on the medusa set. Just a block-in, really, I'm going around in circles with it a bit so I figured I'd post what I've got so far. I'm pretty set on the breastplate and the neck armour/shirt thingy but I think the headpiece needs work, I'm completely stumped about what to do with the bracers and I still need to add the quiver but it's something.

    I'm trying to keep the lower body details close to the body so I can do most of the details in the normals. The tri limit on the tail (read: the entire lower body from the torso down) is going to be an issue. Apparantly the LOD1 of her entire tail has the same tri limit as the bloody head piece.
    nOx3W97.png
    SBCbcgi.png

    I'll keep noodling with it. I really want to get this done for the contest but I may not be able to in the time I have. Turns out I need to do some real work sometimes if I want to buy food. :poly116:
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Itsy got in! I couldn't be happier! This was something of a long term goal for me, for it to happen so soon is just incredible. Thank all of you who gave me feedback and encouragement, you're all awesome!

    I'm not going to let it go to my head, though, there's always more stuff to make! I've been forging ahead with my Medusa set and making some progress with the high poly. There's no chance that I'll finish it in time for the competition at this point but nothing's stopping me from doing it for it's own sake. I'd rather take my time and get it right anyway.

    Feedback is welcome as always:
    10Dl7oc.png
    Woc03HU.png

    Does anyone have any tips or a video tutorial that would help with sculpting super smooth, curved surfaces like on the skirt? I've never been able to get them quite as smooth as I'd like and I waste ages with polish/flatten/smooth brushes trying to get the lumps out!

    EDIT: In other news, Itsy is up in the store now. Valve fixed the size issue for me, which is wonderful as it was the one quarrel that I had but didn't know how to fix easily. All my happy! :)
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Thought I'd try out this streaming malarky for a couple of hours. Feel free to stop by and say hi!
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    So it turns out that streaming is really good for my productivity. I'll definitely be doing more of that!

    I think I'm done with the armour now, all that's left to do of the high poly is to detail her tail. Lots and lots of scales, yaaaaay. I'll add arrows to her quiver in the low poly I think.

    Let me know what you think as always:
    pTtZV6W.png
  • Spudnik
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    Spudnik polycounter lvl 11
    Looking great, I like the simplified bracers!
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    More streaming. Hoping to finish detailing the tail today, might work on the bow a bit too. Come and say hi!
  • Andyk125
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    Andyk125 polycounter lvl 4
    Great looking armor, I think this will turn out great!
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    I finished the low poly and the bakes last night while watching Anuxi's stream and avoiding work. Once I'm done with that I'll start streaming again while I do the textures and/or the bow.
    7B13yDo.png

    Really want to get this finished soon, I have no intention of missing this months deadline again and Nature's Prophet needs some more shiny things!
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Still working furiously on Medusa. Streaming has been really interesting, it's helping me to concentrate but it's something I'll have to get used to. I never thought I'd experience performance anxiety while making art!

    Making DOTA 2 items has had such an impact on me that I've gone and bought myself a PC. I need to be able to test my work on the fly without having to reboot into my windows install and mac streaming software is awful so now's the time to make the change. Making the switch will probably get in the way of my entry for this months contest so I'll probably make a single item just so that I don't miss the deadline for the third time.

    All of this isn't terribly interesting, but the main purpose of this post is to share this with you:
    EyGTkRz.jpg

    I had her printed out to celebrate her getting in the game and she's now got pride of place on my desk! :)
  • BrontoThunder
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    BrontoThunder polycounter lvl 13
    Hahaaa! That's brilliant!
  • Noth
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    Noth polycounter lvl 14
    Haha, Hudson that's funny. I've recorded myself painting textures a few times and experienced the same thing. It like someones watching over your shoulder. Goes away after a bit when you get in the groove and definitely helps with focus until you find out how to use the pause button.

    Great work here, and congrats on Itsy.
  • Dev4stator
    Still working furiously on Medusa. Streaming has been really interesting, it's helping me to concentrate but it's something I'll have to get used to. I never thought I'd experience performance anxiety while making art!

    Making DOTA 2 items has had such an impact on me that I've gone and bought myself a PC. I need to be able to test my work on the fly without having to reboot into my windows install and mac streaming software is awful so now's the time to make the change. Making the switch will probably get in the way of my entry for this months contest so I'll probably make a single item just so that I don't miss the deadline for the third time.

    All of this isn't terribly interesting, but the main purpose of this post is to share this with you:
    EyGTkRz.jpg

    I had her printed out to celebrate her getting in the game and she's now got pride of place on my desk! :)

    How did you printed her out? can you let me know?
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    I just uploaded the model and texture here and chose the size/material. It's fairly reasonably priced too, provided you don't make it too big.
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    3s0r9e.jpg

    I've been floundering around with the colours on this damn set for almost a week now and I'm getting a bit tired of looking at it! :poly118:

    Could you guys take a look at it with fresh eyes and maybe give me some suggestions?
    3cXR4L2.png
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    I've made some progress today, I'm still not 100% satisfied, but I get the feeling that a lot of the issues I have with it will be vastly improved with some polish, detailing and metalness shaders and the like. No bow yet, I'll be doing that tomorrow methinks.

    Thoughts are very much encouraged, I really want to get this done soon so that I can work on some of my other ideas!
    ilW6gIb.png
  • Sharc
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    Sharc polycounter lvl 7
    Maybe make the light gold bits on the armor slightly brighter to increase the contrast a smidge? Otherwise It's looking pretty good.
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Long time no see! I've been away for awhile and I'm ready to get back into the swing of things.

    I didn't get a chance to finish my Medusa set before I left, which meant that I spent a couple of weeks thinking about it too much. I thought of so many things I didn't like and so many things I could do better now that I've learned a lot. Because I'm a perfectionist I've decided to go back and re imagine it.

    I'll finish this eventually, I swear...

    (The headpiece isn't finished and the arms need something else, but I'm getting there!)
    jEUmhF7.jpg

    My microphone isn't working right so I've ordered a new one, I'll be streaming again once that arrives!

    I've missed you all! :)
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Some more progress on Medusa Mk II. The sculpt is mostly finished aside from the tail and some damage/fine detail.

    Getting a bit sick of looking at her at this point, but I've started so I'll finish!
    br16rLY.png
  • Chaemirix
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    Chaemirix polycounter lvl 10
    That looks pretty fantastic. My only concerns is the cloth on her shoulder will look really awkward considering how often she has her arms extended as a bow user.
  • Hudston
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    Hudston polycounter lvl 10
    Yeah, I thought that. I've left them separate so I can just remove them if it doesn't work. Thanks for the feedback! :)
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