Character: Jinks

[Dark Bob]

http://www.jupiter-project.com/Donald/jinkscon.jpg

http://www.jupiter-project.com/Donald/jinks.jpg

-long winded story
Meet Jinks, the biggest badest cartoon badass in the land of Toon. Then one day The Emperor of Darkness invades the Land of Toon and its good citizens are systematically being slaughtered. The King of the good toons doesn’t know what to do. Then a plan is hatched! Jinks is brought up from the jail (He still swears he doesn’t know how the sewer main got opened up onto main street during the Clean Town Parade.)

They tell him they will wipe his criminal record clean and give him lots and lots of piles of gold if he destroys the Emperor of Darkness. Jinks, loving freedom and piles of gold agrees. But to his dismay his bag-o'-tricks has been stolen. Now Jinks must set out to find his Weapons of Annoyance and Stop the Emperor.
-end long winded story

I recently got my hands on a third person engine that is easy to make little games with. I am hoping to get together enough story and art work to tempt a programmer friend of mine to alter the engine. I am going for a Crash Bandicoot/Sonic Adventure 2 kind of feel. All very tongue in Cheek.

From concept to model he took me 4 hours. I like him I was just wondering what other people who are not me think.

[nathan 3d]

a trash can gets 9 replys and this gets none? God this forums blows :P

I like the concept. Its a sweet character and the model looks clean. It almost seems like too many polys for some reason. I would gues it was around 1000 but 1500+ for the amount of detail seems like alot. But mabey I am just off today.

I would like to see him with smoothing groups. Also, what engine are you using? Me and two friends have started a game but we are not 100% sure what engine we want to use.

Nice job so far. Post other characters too :)

[Dark Bob]

I wasn't too concerned with poly usage while building him, I will go bach through and tighten it up some. I imagine I can get him down to 1400 or so.

After I get it to were I want I will do the normal smoothing and what not. Then I will be moving on to basic bad guys so I can get a demo up and going.

as far as the engine (http://t3dgm.thegamecreators.com/) goes.

I have talked to a few people who say that it's easy to alter, the problem with the screen shots on their page is the crappy art work in the games. I hope mine will turn out better.

I will try to post an update of some sort soon.

[nathan 3d]

cool, I have one more question...

Are you doing the character animation? I am doing all the sound, 3d, 2d, and basicly everything that requires a computer exept the programming. That means animation too. But I have never animated characters before. Do you know of good tutorials? I have searched the ned for a week now. 3dbuzz, 3dtotal, the 3d studio, with no luck. or if you could do a sm tutorial?? All I need are the very basics. How to set up bones (I know some from the tutorials) and most importantly, how to connect the bones to my characters. If I knew that I could teach myself the rest.

Thanks for the link

[Dark Bob]

I learned my animation from a book. Sadly it's out of print so I will remember to take lots of screen grabs as I go.

As far as binding your model to your rig...I use Maya 5 and I am guessing you use 3DS Max since you refered to smoothing groups earlier. So I don't think I can help you there.
Unless you are just wanting to see the rig I built for him?

I am painting Jinks' texture right now, this is the part that slows me down. I wish I had a Tablet...or a printer...blah! anyway, I'll be back with updates soon.

[Emperor]

Can't u use soft smooth in maya...select a group of polys n smooth them and so on. Same thing as smoothing groups..almost :). Looks great. But to me it aint that many polys concidering how many segments his shapes have. I think he looks quite nice and a nice default pose for easy enveloping. Very nice job d00d. Can't wait to see him textured. he concept rocks as well. This is summin I could see in a game like Kingdom Hearts :D!

[Dark Bob]

Yeah softening the normals in Maya is like the smoothing groups in Max. I may have to put him on hold for a few days, a freelance project just came in, good for me. I have his rig done and need to do some minor ajustments to the weights.

Emperor you flatter me with the Kingdom Hearts coment. That is one of the games I hold in high regard. Also long time no see, how's it going?

Well back to texture painting.

[Emperor]

Just got the game myself and tis stunning :D! I'm all cought up working. Makin a living and lucky I'm doing 3d. Not the kind I'm really wanting to do but VR is cool too. Rather do games then sims tho. Hope to strike some freelancing jobs soon. In the end the most fun stuff you do is the stuff you do for your own pleasure and pratice :D!

[Dark Bob]

Glad to hear your doing well man.

I don't really have much time to work on Jinks at the moment...But decided to take a screen grab and show it.

The rig works for the most part, there are a few small weight problems, and he deforms well. The face is the only part I have really painted on. The shorts were just for some color.

Anyway enjoy.
http://www.jupiter-project.com/Donald/jinks2.jpg