Pikachu

in this post i will be talking about how i created the unique pikachu, just above this text is the character pikachu that i will be basing it on. i have chosen to do research on both 2d and 3d characters to get a better understanding on how the character looks, also i wanted to choose the best emotion for pikachu so i picked the top common facial expressions and used them for my project.

to start any project off you need to start with the basics so i had to start with a null object which is a blank basic object which could be a prism, circle or rectangle etc. in this case i am using a sphere, in the bottom right corner it gives you options on how to customise your sphere changing the shape and its attributes. one key technique i use is by changing how many faces you can have on the shape making it easier in some ways to edit for instance if you wanted a shape with only four editable faces on one side of the shape you can change it in attributes therefore making it easier for you to edit. in this case because of pikachu's basic shape all i had to do was use the the default sphere due it granting me all the faces i need.

to access these key features all you have to click on is the  object box just like the one you see above, you will see just below everything object properties and this will give you how many segments you wanted which would change the amount of faces i would have on the sphere or you could change the object type by clicking simply the 'type' link which will give you a list of names that will change the object so you don't have to change the segments. 

now to start editing any object you have to make sure its 'editable' in this case its located in the top left corner, you have to make sure the object is selected first that will highlight all the tools on the left hand side. the one you want to click will be the image with two circles facing each other. once clicked it will show up grey this means that your object is now editable. making an object editable grants you access to stretching the image, cutting certain layers on the image and pulling the segments individually etc. if you need to curve the image its much easier to use the magnet tool, you can access the magnet tool by clicking the structure tab at the top of the screen this will show you a menu of tools to choose from or you could use the shortcut key 'M-I'

once you've clicked the magnet tool it will come up on your screen looking like this, the centre of the tool will focus on points of your null object. for instance each face or segment has four points surrounding it in each corner so the magnet tool will focus one what corner yo want to drag out. in my case i need to create cheeks for my character, so i need to focus on two places on my sphere.

to make my image smooth i used a hyper nerb to smooth my object out, you can locate the hyper nerbs by clicking the third box straight above my image it also looks like a cube with wire surrounding it. by clicking the box it then sends it to your column on the right, to make your image smooth all i had to do was drag my sphere into the hypernurb which makes my image rounded and smooth. 

the next thing i did when i had created my basic shape of the head was create the material that i want on my image, to get this image i collect an image off google of pikachu's face and graphically redesigned his face to match my character. i used photoshop as my software and to do this i cut my background out and filled in his face with the same colour as pikachus face which was a dirty yellow. i had to save it as a jpeg and then all i had to do was drag my material onto my object.

when i first dragged my materials onto my object it came up like this, it tried to over stretch my material by covering my whole object back and front which would have been okay if the image was blank but my image wasn't blank it had decals on it which was pikachus face, i had to decide which was my best option in trying to change the position of my material.  

after trying all the different settings out on the list i came across 'flat' which would help me in changing my materials position properly, you have to keep in my mind also that if you don't want the image to be copied and reproduced all over your object then you have to click off the tiling effect located just below the list of projections. if you did apply he tiles to your image it would copy your image over and over again filling your object with pictures of the same object. another technique to bear in mind when clicking the projection 'flat' is that just below the projection there is a tab called 'side' this tool places the image on the side you desire. you can choose from front, back an both. in my case all i wanted was the front of my object to show pikachus face so i chose to front.

In these images above it shows what my image will look like after choosing all the settings on my attributes, now before i can manually move my material i can only move my object as a whole so i needed to move my material so it will be in position and and match the actual pikachu. to manually move the image you have to click the button on the bottom left corner, it looks like a checkered board with and arrow pointing upwards and right. this will allow you to only move your material instead of the image as a whole. with my material it was trial and error trying to find out how to fit my pikachu face onto my image, for example i first started with pikachus face it was quite large and when i placed to onto my object it didn't quite fit due to the rest of the image having to be coloured in yellow too so i had to make the face smaller and the background lager, this was so the back of the head on pikachu was covered and the face didn't look distorted.

To create my ears i used the same techniques as the ones above, except i used rounded cylinders instead of spheres , and just created a simple material in photoshop and adding it to my cinema 4d. after the material was placed i found it more easy to get a concept of how round his face was so i went back to the magnet tool and rounded off certain edges and brought out parts to emphasise his cheeks.

to create these extras i used the same techniques as i used in creating the head, however in this case i used a different material but the same colour, i used the same program (photoshop) in doing so i already had the colour i needed to create a base for my tail, my ear and my feet. because of pikachu's simplicity when creating these objects it was fairly straight forward. i used one null object to create the tail which was the rectangle object. i flattened the rectangle and pulled the y axis of the rectangle to move it up and then copied and pasted the object so the width of the object would stay the same. when moving the object i always dragged the rectangle by using the arrows and never manually moving it. this way my shape would stay aligned with each other and not look obscure side by side making the objects look connected. after my tail had the basic shape of pikachu's tail i just dragged the material i created onto my tail painting the whole thing yellow. for pikachu's feet i created a sphere object and used the magnet tool to shrink it down to size, one key technique i used was by selecting the centre of the sphere and bringing the y axis towards the top then selecting the only the bottom segments of the sphere then dragging them towards the top. this technique grants you the capability of rounding the bottom half off and creating a circular based foot. for the ear i used the technique called "set selection" this is when you want to create different colours or set different materials onto one object. i fist began with a sphere then stretched it to create the shape that i desire, then i used set selection to create the top half being black then the bottom half being a dirty yellow.

last but not least i had to create a body for my character, this was the most time consuming bit due to trying to match the length of the actual pikachu himself. trying to keep his head in proportion to his body was the hardest bit because i didn't want his head looking too large and overgrown for his body so it took me more time to match his characteristics. when creating this body i used a square then magnetised it down then hyprnerved it keeping the image rounded and circular. after i had created the body i dragged the material over to it and then placed it in with my head.

this was my final piece finally created, i enjoyed this character due to it being him being in my favourite cartoon as a kid. i am pleased mostly with how his face has turned out, because i used the original face from the character i believe it has helped me capture the realism of pikachu. 

Mushroom character

to start my toad off i simply added the sphere to my cinema 4d by using the primitive shapes in the top right corner, toads actual face in any series is quite simplistic in its 3d form causing the base of his face to be completely spherical.

Using photoshop to create my material i simply placed the jpg onto my cinema 4d then i simply placed the material onto my sphere which  covered the whole of my sphere, but first i had to change the setting of my sphere and had to set it to flat, which therefore covered the whole of my sphere, then i had to select what side i wanted my material to be seen on, so i selected 'both'. just underneath i there is boxes that can be sleeted and ticked off but in this case i didn't have to select them due to i didn't want my material to be tiled or mixed.

the second part to toads head was quite simply again due to the second part of head being spherical as well as the first. i followed the same steps by using the sphere but i had to place the sphere correctly into position.  

I had found the correct material online using google as my main search engine, thought the making of  my the cinema 4d project i had used 'google' to find all my materials.

When i had first placed the head onto the other head it was a little too big so i simply selected the resize tool on the top left of the screen and had resized it down proportionally so it matched the original toad. 

Creating the body wasn't the hardest part of the toad, it was creating the material to fit his body, at first i tried to create one using photoshop but trying to find and fit one correctly to the scale on my toad was improbable, i had learnt a new technique called "select selection" this is where you can select certain faces of any object and place specific materials on them without affecting the rest of the body, once sleeted the faces will light up, you can locate this tool by overing your mouse on the "selection" tool at the top of the screen then clicking "set selection" once the button is clicked it will highlight and you will see next to where you name your object another icon will appear this will be your selected part of the object, you can rename the set selection to make it easier so you don't forget which is which, once i had completed naming the parts of the body i simply clicked the named part and dragged the material i desired onto the body.

I needed my body to look realistic and more comparable to the actual toad in the original game, i did this by minimising the cinema 4d to half of my page then selecting google and using the other half to show me a picture of toad, so my screen was half cinema 4d and half a picture of toad. I also had to get my colours right so this was quite a good technique because the comparison between the two colours where quite easy to locate once i had something to compare both too.

Here is an image of the finished body, once rendered the quality of the colours will look smooth, sharp and not pixilated.

After completing the head and my body all i had left was the feet on my character, i had created two spheres then deleted the bottom half of my heres then used the face filler tool to create the platform for the base of my show, then i simply dragged both objects into a nurb making them smooth so ind the render the stretch marks on the shoe wouldn't show up. 

here is my final character completed and rendered, i am really pleased with the way this character has turned out and am quite happy with how comparable these characters are, once rendered the characters are sharp and look realistic, toad was my fist character i had created and i used the techniques used here as a learning curve for my other characters, the techniques used in creating toad were simplistic and basic but are really helpful when i started created to create the other characters.

Mario model

in this post i will be showing you step by step all the things i had done to complete my final character, Mario. Mario was by far the hardest character to create out of the whole of my characters because of his complexity and bone structures of his face, Mario is the only human look alike out of the bunch so trying to make it look as realistic as possible was quite hard however in the end i was quite pleased with the outcome. I will be starting with how i had created the head for Mario.

to start off i used a a basic primitive shape which was the sphere, at first it was quite trick due to the complexity of his face and all the curves, to gain the curves and to make it more rounded i dragged the sphere into the curb which made the shapes sides more rounded, i applied the magnet tool and tried to drag each side but found that if one side was perfect it would be symmetrical on the other side, so i decided to work on one half of the face then slice the shape in half then use the symmetry tool yo create a mirror affect which would therefore make my face completely symmetrical. 

Just above this text  you will see that the object is completely symmetrical, it took me over forty minutes to completely capture marios face, the symmetrical tool works like a mirror effect once you move one side of his face the other half moves as well. you can start to see the basic shape of Mario's face. 

Next i started on his moustache, this wasn't that difficult as i drew it out using a spline then added it to a b spline that made it 3d, i used the mirror tool again as it make it look neat and more professional. after adding the moustache to my character i then realised that due to Marios had all i would need to add was his sides burns as it already covers the top of his head anyway, created the side burns i used the same technique as the moustache and just added them around his head. ti make sure that the colour tone was correct and matched both moustache and head hair i added the colours to them both at the same time saving any confusion later on. i then had to make his face now because of the mirror tool I've already used on mario his face will look disproportionate if i didn't edit the material beforehand. so i edited the image on photoshop then created it as a jpeg but only saving the eyes and the eyebrows and the skin tone. the advantage of only needing two things from a material is that it gives you much more room to edit with when moving it around on the object, if i had to create a material with a mouth i would have to correctly align the face up properly and it would be harder. 

Next came the body, i decided to have the body and ligaments from Mario to be detached so it would be easier to see certain parts of his body rather than see his arms and knees. his body started with a small sphere then i used the magnet tool to resize the shape without it being out of shape. I managed to get the colours correctly by using the set select option, this is the technique used when you get specific faces and group them together separately so when you come to using materials you can separately use different colours without it disturbing the upper parts of the body.

Next came the hat, I started the hat off by using two primitive shapes and connecting them together, I did this by selecting two squares then dragging each face out to make the shapes just like the image on my right hand side, however marios hat isn't square its rounded so i grouped both shapes then dragged them both into the curb tool at the top which round both shapes off.

Health for my Characters (Texturising)

To start any project off you need to understand all the tools within cinema 4d, i am starting this blog off with the basics.  tho blog will solely be about the tool 'text' and how to use it within cinema 4d i also will be showing i used it in my project "super smash bros". to start off you need to select the second box in the top right corner (just above the text ^) and hover over text and click it with the left button on mouse.

It will appear like the image above, you can change what it says and how big the text is later on. this will give you a blank template of what you can change, but for now it will just stay the same. i firstly changed what the text said and by doing this it had gave me a better perspective on what size i would want to adjust it to.

I had changed my health bar to a random number such as a hundred and forty seven percent, this number was totally random and no recurring theme with any of my characters. to locate the text changer you can simply look to the bottom right of the page and it will automatically select the text so its changing the text is simple and accessible.  you can also change the font style and if you needed the text being placed in a specific place you can change the coordinates of the text using the y,x and z axis to specially place your text in an area.

I decided not to change the font style due to my theme being basic and the theme being plane so i have chosen to use the default font. here is a picture of what my text looked like after it had been created, i had aligned it specifically in the middle so i could show off the basic shape of what it would look like after being created.

In this picture i am selected the third box on this list, in this box it has the tools of the hyper nerve, extrude, lathe, lathe nurbs, sweep nerbs and the bezzier tool all unique in their own way, in other posts i will be talking about them individually but in this post i will be relying on the tool 'extrude nurds' it will give my text shape and will make it editable.

This is just an example of what any text you choose could look like, the extruded text will have a 3d effect on the number which will make the text more editable and more usable for rendering, you can resize, colourise and flattern the text making it the key technique but simplistic technique in any 3d project.

The materials in any object are located bottom left of the page, if you think of a material as a paint you can gather more of an understanding of what the material actually does, such as a tub of paint it is there to cover an object. A material can be anything, you can make a material out of a simple jpeg blue background for instance and drag the material across to your object placing it onto whatever you desire. in my case i have a pikachu material due to my numbers having to match my characters colours.

Here is my final practice piece with the colour added, this is what a random number would look like if someone had just created a default template, the text is basic in this image and i could of used certain fonts but for practice i used the default font.

These are my actual texts for characters, these are colour coordinated due to their colours matching my characters individually, these numbers play a key part  in my making my game look realistic and more game original, i chose to have my Pikachu character in the middle this was to make sure the colours don't blend in with the background, the two prone colours that stand out had to be off my island and portrayed over my background to make the colours tans out and not to clash. i am really happy with what i have learnt and even though this technique is simple it is a very good and effective tool to be used in any project.