呆萌的卡通角色制作

介紹

Introduction

大家好!我的名字是雅羅馬爾琴科，我想談?wù)勎业淖髌�，在我的業(yè)余時間，我喜歡畫不同的角色——這對我的繪畫能力有好處。我也經(jīng)常在工作會議上畫草圖——你知道，尤其是那些無聊的時候。這個角色也不例外。

Hi everybody! My name is Yaroslav Primachenko and I'd like to tell about the Making Of my work "Aaaa!" (or maybe I've missed one "a" - there's too many of them in the title, too hard to count!). In my spare time I like drawing different freaky characters - it's good for my karma. I also usually do sketches at the meetings at work - you know, especially the boring ones! This character wasn't an exception.

我那困倦的、飄忽不定的思緒創(chuàng)造了一個奇怪的人，我完全愛上了他(圖01)。這是一個住在地下的人物，戴著一頂胡蘿卜帽，幫他吸引兔子的注意……別問我他抓到兔子后，他會怎么對待這些可憐的家伙!這個角色很酷，我決定用3D制作它，并嘗試制作一個動畫(后來，經(jīng)過一些測試，我決定放棄動畫部分，以支持我目前正在做的另一個項目)。

My sleepy, wandering mind created a strange looking guy with whom I totally fell in love (Fig. 01). It was a character living underground, wearing a carrot hat that helps him to attract the attention of rabbits... and don't ask me what he does with the poor fellows after he catches them! The character was so cool that I decided to create it in 3D and try to make an animation (later, after some tests, I decided to give up the animation part in favor of the other project I'm currently working on).

圖01

草圖和建模

Sketching and Modeling

我做了一個快速的彩色草圖來確定我的想法。我使用Photoshop，在圖片的頂部放上一些隨機的紋理，然后在我確定結(jié)果之前，就移動了這些色彩飽和度的滑塊。這可以是一種快速簡單的彩色圖片著色方式，特別是當你想要了解顏色方案的基本想法時，但是不要花太多時間在這上面(圖02)。

I made a quick color sketch to capture the idea of what he would look like. I used Photoshop with some random texture placed on top of the picture and then just moved the hue-saturation sliders until I liked the result. This can be a quick and easy way to colorize a picture, particularly when you want to get the basic idea of the color scheme, but don't want to spend too much time on it (Fig.02).

圖 02

我從一開始就知道，我不會使用任何現(xiàn)有生物的參考資料——它們對我這個角色的想法不相符——這是最具挑戰(zhàn)性的，也是最鼓舞人心的關(guān)于這個角色的工作。我從概念上知道它是一個地下生物，但我不想讓它變成一個黑灰鼴鼠。盡管這是一個非常邪惡的角色(看牙，或者打領(lǐng)帶，好男人不戴領(lǐng)帶!)我不想讓它看起來很惡心;它需要某種甜蜜和可愛的外表(又名荷馬 辛普森)。

I knew from the very beginning that I wasn't going to use references of any existing creatures - they just didn't match my idea of the character - and that was the most challenging and also the most inspiring thing about working on this character. I knew from the concept that it was an underground creature, but I didn't want to make it some black-grey mole guy. Also even though it's an extremely evil character (look at the teeth, or better at the tie - good guys don't wear ties!) I didn't want it to look totally disgusting; it needed to be somehow kind of sweet and lovely (aka Homer Simpson).

我開始在3ds Max建模，從基本的立方體從大的形態(tài)開始，然后切割，擠壓，在需要的地方，提煉和做所有的部分，當你做一個模型-沒有什么特別的。我沒有畫任何投影或額外的草圖，只是在3ds Max(圖03)中尋找一個角色。如果我今天要做這個角色，我可能會在ZBrush做，但是當我開始這個角色時，我還不知道有這個神奇的工具。

I began modeling in 3ds Max, starting from the basic cube and large forms, then cutting, extruding where needed, refining and doing all the staff that you do when making a model - nothing special. I didn't draw any projections or extra sketches - just searched for a character in 3ds Max (Fig.03). If I was making the character today I would probably do it in ZBrush, but when I started this character I didn't know about this fantastic tool yet.

圖 03

展開和紋理

Unwrapping and Texturing

我打開模型，把它導(dǎo)入到ZBrush，在那里我做了幾乎所有的紋理，并稍微調(diào)整了幾何圖形(圖04)。

I unwrapped the model and imported it into ZBrush, where I made almost all the texturing and also tweaked the geometry a bit (Fig.04).

圖  04

我做了漫反射，反射，和普通的凹凸貼圖，為這個角色，還有一個不透明的胡蘿卜貼圖。凹凸貼圖也被用作一種鏡面貼圖——在3ds Max中只做了一些微調(diào)。我在Photoshop中添加了一些紋理貼圖，使用不同的混合模式使它看起來更有趣。然后我決定為這個角色做一些衣服，除了帽子，靴子和領(lǐng)帶，他已經(jīng)有了，要關(guān)閉任何可能的身體的關(guān)節(jié)，在身體的部分，并且增加一些額外的視覺興趣。我在網(wǎng)上找了合適的參考資料，找到了一件我認為適合他的夾克的照片。

I made diffuse, reflect, and normal bump maps for the character and also an opacity map for the carrot. The bump map was also used as a specular map - with just a few tweaks right in 3ds Max. I added some textures to the diffuse map in Photoshop, using different blending modes to make it look more interesting. Then I decided to make some clothes for the character, in addition to the hat, boots and a tie he already had, to close any possible joints of texture on the body-hands parts and also add some extra visual interest. I searched the internet for appropriate references and found a picture of a jacket I thought would fit him perfectly.

照明

Lighting

燈光很簡單(圖05)。我使用了一個V-Ray的平面光來作為主要的漫射源(1)，標準3ds Max中目標點的漫射，有一些額外的鏡面(2)和兩個目標點(3,4)，將人物從背景中分離出來，并在我想要的地方添加額外的反射。我還使用了HDRI映射來顯示環(huán)境中的反射槽。

The lighting was pretty simple (Fig.05). I used a V-Ray plane light for the main diffuse source (1), standard 3ds Max target spot with diffuse turned off for some extra specular (2) and also two target spots (3,4) to separate the character from the background and add extra reflections where I wanted. I also used an HDRI map for the reflection slot in the environment rollout.

圖05

造型，渲染和后期效果。

Posing, rendering and applying post-effects

我對這個結(jié)果非常滿意，并且已經(jīng)開始考慮做一些最終的渲染，也有不喜歡的地方，那就是我的作品缺乏動力，而且這個角色看起來不像我希望的那樣瘋狂(圖06)。我認為這是由于他所處的沉悶的t型，這與他的性格完全不匹配，我當然希望這個角色能自己說話。我不想做任何的裝備，所以我換回了ZBrush，在聰明的ZBrush工具“轉(zhuǎn)置”(圖07)的幫助下，用他的脾氣對他進行了調(diào)整。在一個FFD修飾語的幫助下，這條領(lǐng)帶，夾克和靴子在Max的身體里被“擺了出來”。

I was pretty happy with the result at this point, and was already thinking about making some final renders, but didn't like the fact that the work suffered from an obvious lack of dynamics and the character didn't look as insane as I sure wanted him to (Fig.06). I thought it was due to the dull T-pose he was in, which didn't match his personality at all, and I sure wanted this character to speak for itself. I didn't want to do any rigging so I switched back to ZBrush and posed the fellow according to his temper with the help of the brilliant ZBrush tool "transpose" (Fig.07). The tie, the jacket and the boots were then "posed" in Max according to the body with the help of a FFD modifier.

圖06

圖 07

然后我開始準備最后渲染的場景。使用標準的3ds Max頭發(fā)和皮毛工具，我在他的頭頂和手臂上增加了一些毛發(fā)(圖08)。

Then I started to prepare the scene for final rendering. Using the standard 3ds Max Hair and Fur tool, I added some hair on the top of his head and arms (Fig.08).

圖08

為了給這個角色增加一些額外的特點，我還讓一個瞳孔變大，這樣眼睛就不對稱了。然后我在幾個不同的圖層渲染了這個場景——鏡子，反射，阿爾法，頭發(fā)等等。我用Photoshop把它們組合在一起。我在背景上添加了一些紋理和色彩漸變，為顏色添加額外的活力。我還在眼睛里畫了一些額外的高光。利用z深度信息，模擬了DOF效應(yīng)。在那之后，我將所有的層合并到一起，得到一個，并復(fù)制它。我選擇了頂部圖層，去掉了它，并在曲線的層次上增加了黑色和白色(大部分是黑色)的圖像，只有最亮的區(qū)域仍然是白色的。我將它設(shè)置為屏幕并模糊了一點——這給了圖像一種夢幻般的效果(圖09)。這種效果很容易實現(xiàn)，易于控制，而且最好的是它可以用于動畫。在高色調(diào)對比的地方效果最好。當然，你可以很容易地在靜態(tài)圖片上添加一些額外的亮點。

To add some extra insanity to the character, I also made one pupil bigger then the other so that the eyes weren't symmetrical. Then I rendered the scene in several separate layers - specular, reflect, alpha, hair and so on. Using Photoshop I combined them all together. I added a few texture and color layers with gradients on the background - to add extra vibrancy to the color. I also drew some extra specular highlights in the eyes. Using Z-depth information, I simulated the DOF effect. After that I merged all the layers together to get only one, and duplicated it. I took the top layer, desaturated it and bumped the curve levels to get the black and white (mostly black) image with only the most lighted areas still white. I set it to screen and blurred a little - this gave the image a dreamy-glow kind of effect (Fig.09). This effect is simple to achieve, easy to control and best of all - it can be used for the animation. It works best in places with high tone contrast. Sure you can easily add some extra glow where you want with a few touches of the brush on a static picture.

圖 09

圖10

結(jié)論

Conclusion

這幾乎就是我的作品(Fig.10)。我花了很多時間在這個角色上，我對結(jié)果很滿意。現(xiàn)在，我可能會設(shè)法使它變得更好，但這僅僅是由于我在創(chuàng)建這項工作時獲得的經(jīng)驗，我已經(jīng)能夠在今天的工作中取得進展。這個過程是一個很好的學(xué)習(xí)過程，當我學(xué)習(xí)有機建模的原理，以及如何更有效地使用ZBrush時，我甚至能夠在處理這個角色的時候完成另一個圖像(圖11)!

That's almost all about the creating of my work "Aaaa!" (Fig.10). I spent a lot of time on this character and I'm happy with the result. Right now I would probably manage to make it better and much more quickly, but it's only due to the experience I obtained during the creating of this work that I've been able to progress to where I am today. The process was a great learning curve and as I was learning the principals of organic modeling, and how to use ZBrush more effectively, I was even able to complete another image while working on this character (Fig.11)!

圖11

所以，這里有一些建議給那些剛剛開始踏上藝術(shù)之旅的人們:在別人的作品中，在攝影中，在古典繪畫中到處尋找靈感。當然，在現(xiàn)實生活中。仔細觀察，努力學(xué)習(xí)和理解吸引注意力的原則，然后——不管你用什么軟件——你都會成功。嘗試不同的方法。不要害怕去嘗試你自己的視覺風(fēng)格。因為它不僅僅是關(guān)于多邊形，工具或者修飾詞，它是關(guān)于表達你的情緒和思想的。畢竟，試著去找樂趣!

So here's some advice to those who have only just started their journey into art: search for inspiration everywhere. In the works of others, in photography, in classical painting and, of course, in real life. Watch carefully, try to learn and understand the principals of attracting attention to your work and then - no matter what software you use - you will be successful. Try different approaches. Don't be afraid to experiment and work out your own recognizable visual style. Because it's not only about polygons, tools or modifiers, it's about expressing your emotions and thoughts. And after all - try to have fun!