ZBrushCentral

Stop Motion Makoblin

Hey now, So I’d like to share some progress on one of my unfinished projects. I’m not sure how far I’m going to take this but I think I"m ok with sharing some early tests. I’m trying to study 2D sprite animation games as well as stop motion to produce animation in Zbrush

Animation-Test-3.gif

This character is my take on the Bokoblin(not makoblin! oops) design from Breath of the Wild. My process is to create the Sculpt as I normally would for a game production but make sure that I retain very low subdivision levels on all my subtools. Then I use Transpose master to create the poses. I tried to start with the most obvious frames, like the big hit and the windup. Then I just kind of broke down the in between poses from there. I find it helps to put all my final poses into one tool and use the move brush to push the poses. It takes me about an evening to create one animation frame. So maybe like 2 or 3 hours per. Only once did I make a frame that was completely wrong and had to redo it. I create the .gif in photoshop and did a little smudging to get the effect of motion blur. I try to do most of the smearing of frames in Zbrush though.

Would love to hear your thoughts, maybe there’s a way I can refine the process. I’m goign to keep going though. I might make one or two more in betweens then I think I’d like to make a side scroller looking platform for him to smash on.

Thanks for checkin it out!

Cheers,

Alex.

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Animation-Test-3.gif

An Update here, I’ve added another breakdown frame after the hit. I wanted the club to feel like it’s really being planted on the ground after the hit, accentuating the weight of the club. I’m still messing around with motion blur, and swooshing effects in photoshop.
Animation-Test-4.gif

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Animation-Test-4.gif

Just thought I’d also share the raw animation frames out of zbrush, without blurring in ps.

Animation-Test-4,-RAW.gif

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Animation-Test-4,-RAW.gif

Hey again, some more progress. Refining the poses and playing with timing. After I copied the frames from zbrush I messed around in Photoshop and discover that I need another frame at the point of impact to emphasize everything.
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This is insanely cool. I have nothing of value to add other than admiration and my praise!

Looks good.
How are you finding Zbrush compared to other animation software?

In this iteration, I refined the design of the shape that the club takes when it’s smeared, added an exaggerated hit frame, and cleaned up a bit of foot placement although I think I still have a bit of clean up work to do on the far leg.

A benefit of animating in Zbrush is that you are able to keep an undo stack for every frame of animation. In most 3D packages Undo is a global thing so edits to frames get lost pretty quickly. So in Z you get a lot of control over each individual pose. Of course the lack of in-betweens would make this a pretty difficult process for achieving 30 fps when compared to traditional 3d packages.

I’ll continue to polish this up. I’m considering adding another pose before he settles back into the idle as well.

Thanks for visiting!
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