How do you make those crazy characters like JoeQuick?
SasquatchIsCool
Posts: 251
I was wondering if anyone has any idea how to make these morphed out characters. I mean below is awesome and yet is still Genesis 8 figure.
Does anyone know how these types of take a character and morphing it into something so different is done?
I mean I can do morph targets but this seems a little beyond that.
Post edited by Chohole on
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I know how!
My guess would be a little zbrush, and a shitton of imagination lol
Step 1: Be Joe :D
Step 2: If your art is for create illustration, for readers, a video or an animation etc.) forget to become Joe, it will save time.
Best laugh in a while :D
Come on folks. I was being serious. I can model but very curious the process in how to take that model and have it compatable with Genesis 8 figures. I would even like to at least know how to search for it. I was looking for "projecting topology" "projecting one mesh to another" I just don't know exactly know what to search for.
So I was hoping to find guidance.
Can you tell me at least where to search? Or what you call it? I know the texturing and modeling part but the projection...or do you just morph it like crazy in Zbrush?
There are custom characters, and then there are (blank-for-genesis#).
1. Make sure you have a modeling app that you are confrotable with. Joe does extreme changes to the SHAPE of the mesh. But morphs like Joe's do not add or subtract vertexes.
2. The primary problem with extreme shape changes is that the rigging/weightmapping/jointcontrolmorphs of genesis-whatever are now out of position.
3. So, after creating, loading, and applying the extreme morph, much time needs to be spent on adjusting the rigging to shape, adjusting weightmaps, and perhaps replacing a few JCMs.
* I have dabbled. I like puppets and claymation visuals. Sometimes, in these styles human hands only have three fingers and a thumb.
You can see some steps starting at this post and continuing for a few more comments. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4047206/#Comment_4047206
In the early years I did just morph it like crazy in zbrush and then mask and polish and smooth like crazy to try to make the finished product appear less lumpy.
I was very proud of my genesis mouse and ducky at first, but they've got a kinda mishapen quality when compared to my later work.
Eventually I learned about projection, which is important with characters that involve lots of simple smooth shapes. You still have to yank the mesh around a lot first, but you can then project it to the blockout mesh. It gets you past your character looking like a child's playdoh creation a lot quicker.
The difference in outcomes is probably most clearly seen in the difference between my Genesis and Genesis 3 Duckies.
It doesn't look like I held onto the blockout for the teddybear, but I've still got the one from the Toon Axolotl that'll be released someday.
ERC Freeze! That is included in my link, but worth greater emphasis! ERC Freeze!
While I've never gone as extreme as JoeQuick (God bless him and his ingenuity), I can give you some pointers I've learned over the past year making my own characters:
1.) You can start by modifying certain parameters of the Daz figure before you start sculping on it. E.g. if you're building a cartoonish "bully" big dude type character with short legs and a big torso and arms. Change the joint paremeters and scale so the legs are shorter, the torso and arms long and the shoulders wide in Daz before you export the obj out to Zbrush. It's less work in Zbrush and you have a more accurate "armature" to build off of.
2.) Zev0's Shape Rigger Plus is your friend. Just buy it, it will save you so much trouble when you import the shape from Zbrush back in.
3.) When you rig the jcm's, don't have anything other than your character's new shape dialed in. No, "hmm it would be nice if I added 30% of this existing character to it..." Otherwise that additional character's jcm's will affect your jcm's you make. So instead of rigging the jcm's for the new character's shape and movement against a base g8 figure, it will be your character's jcm against the base figure and the 30% of that additional character you dialed in and its jcm's. Also your character's shape and design should be done and pretty much set in stone before you start making jcm's, otherwise go back and making changes to the shape could effect your existing jcm's.
4.) If you looked at step 3 and thought "What the heck is a jcm?" then study up on JCM's and how to make them
You'll need them for your character, even moreso if the character shape is extremely different from the base g8 figure.
Very interesting thread, with the links to the other interested threads, like Diomede's.
For me such skills belongs to sci-fi and out of this world category, but good to know, that somebody else than JoeQuick
can understand and maybe even could create such a complex characters.
Wow! Thank you everybody. This gives me a good base to start from. :) Amazing ya'll.