We're going ahead with "We're Off, We're Gone" as seen in this update.

If you watch it you may notice it involves a large number of Winkies.

But we don't need a thousand Winkies built. What we need is one Winkie with some sort of size and shape variability built in so we can put several of instances of him in the same shot without it looking like clones and without it looking like one model was merely scaled.

Taller, shorter, fatter, skinnier. Thin heads on fat bodies, fat heads on short bodies...

How much? Not too much. If Winkies were blocks we might look at it like this:

Click to view attachment

Even after we set up this winkie in several different ways, he'll be replicated many times as a hair map so we can't have one version be so distinctive that this replication is immediately obvious.

Of course this Winkie will have to be poseable, so the rig will need to still work in all the variations. Maybe the Squetch rig could get us all the variability we need?

But we need a Winkie wrangler to look into it and show it can be done.

thanks!

Lengths of arms, legs, torso, hands and feet can be adjusted using the squetch poses, so that will get you a long way...you could also unhide the underlying squetch nulls in the torso and move them around and the head squetch nulls to adjust the head. Then, a few muscle poses to tweak a few things that might not have played nice when everything was squetched (probably facial characteristics as well) and you should be able to get quite a bit of variation.

I was whatching the Incredabiles with the Animators commetary on and they said this is how they did the news cast scense atthe begging. Besides the main characters the reports/lawyers crowds are all the same model they just latered each slightly and colored hair differently to make them look different. I Know this will work out Great!

There are already 2 Winkies characters: The 2 farmhands (even 3 if we count Woot's mom) I suggest that the "variation" sliders concept be tested on those characters (making sure that they are saved in a different folder first).

I'm aware of those. The skinny one is too distictive to bear much repetition. But he could certainly be used inthe front row of a crowd.

The fat one is safer, but we really need a character with very generic proportions that we can vary just a bit. Varying the face shape, skin color and hair color I think will be the biggest element.

While we're at it, it would be great it we could find a way for this generic Winkie to also serve as the Marching band member who will be duplicated many times. Perhaps he could be built with some optional clothing elements like epaulets on the shoulders.

Here's kind of a proof of concept. Pardon me playing with the idea of one character becoming many.
The idea has long been of interest to me.

As these gals still resemble Woot's Mom quite a bit I'd guess she comes from a large family.

Other than porportions and moving CPs around a little I didn't make too many changes.
Definitely didn't mess around with any bones. (i.e. this model now officially a mess)

Attaching some drag and drop actions that add some varietly, changing decals (sequential images?) and refining Mrs Woot is a pretty good model for the job.
I'd think the Winkie farmers would be up to the task too.

For this test the apron is just hidden but it could also be converted to an action object.

Woot's Mom on the left for comparison.
Just a proof of concept... not meant to be any character in particular.

Following Rodney's experiments, I did some too. about 45 minutes worth of deformation cages with the Skinny Farmhand.

Sorry, I hadn't caught the last posts in this thread. Those tests look quite promising.

I'm still thinking we need a more generically featured Winkie to pull this off, but your tests indicate one would be enough. Or maybe one male and one female.

Has anyone taken on this generic Winkie yet?

I'm presuming "no" since I haven't heard anything, but I thought I'd check before I started trying to recruit someone.

So what does a generic winkie look like?

Very average. A good way to picture him might be as a normally proportioned brother of the Fat Farmhand.

Suburban dad proportions. About five heads high, no pot belly, no bulbous nose, no jowls, no distinctive features... but most of the design direction could come from the appearance of the Fat Farmhand.

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Some things like the boots and hands might be lifted directly. But the goal is keep him low-patch count, he's just a background character


The generic bandmember would be similarly proportioned. The details of their clothes will differ but we could use the same proxy to animate both.

A clever modeler might find a way to make the same full model mesh work for both.

Here are some traditional band uniforms. The one on the left where the top tucks into the pants rather than drapes over might be a likely choice. That would be be more like the winkies clothes. All the ornamentation could be done with decals.

Click to view attachment


What we really need for animating now is a proxy with these average proportions.
-hair should be modeled rather than particle hair
-minimal face controls: mouth open and close, eye blink and eye direction.
-the hand control might be simplified to four fingers grouped as one and the thumb. But if we borrow the fat farmhand hand, it's probably simpler to keep it as it is.
-the proxy and full model will need several groups defined: shoes, pants, shirt, skin, hair. The animators will alter the color of these in the chor to help vary the appearance of the winkies.
-last but not least he will need some special rigging so that the fatness/thinness of the various body parts can be mixed and matched to further vary the numerous instances of the winkie.

Thanks in advance to the brave modeler and rigger and decaler that take on this daunting task!

Well, Martin asked me to make a model sheet so here it is.
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"designing" a generic featureless character is much more difficult than designing a distinctive character. I'm naturally used to draw easily distinguishable characters. Here, I had to carefully remove every distinctive features and make it as plain as possible. It is still not as plain as I would like but that should be good enough. I tried to make the head and face as plain as possible while still keeping with the general cartoon design of the other Winkies. I thought that dressing him with a sweatshirt would add to the plainness. No belt, suspenders or whatever decorations. And on second thought, I think sweattrousers should also be used for the pants.

Here is the result of a few minutes grid-deforming Fat Farmhand. Different hairstyles would immensely help in making him look like different character.
Click to view attachment

This variation as well as the two skinny Farmhand variations are already on SVN in the respective farmhand model folders in case someone would like to work from them. The model files names have a "_Variation1" or "_Variation2" added to them.

The drawings look just right, Yves. Thanks.

When I referenced the Fat Farmhand as a guide to "design", i was mostly just thinking of the clothing style. Except for the poncho he has pretty oridinary clothes. I wouldn't carry the poncho over to the generic Winkie.

It's possible morphing the Fat Farmhand more might get us something with the right proportions, but I think he's too high-patch-count to begin with.

To whoever takes on this modeling task, I'd say don't feel obligated to start with the Fat farmhand. Modeling fresh might be easier.

Hi guys, I'm back. I'll start modeling the generic winkie in the next few days or so based on Yves' drawing.

Hi Zaryin,

Hold that thought, ruscular has stepped up to do it just a few days ago.

If it turns out he doesn't have time, I'll get back to you.

OK. I'll wait to see how it goes .

Well, I just saw this, and I hope you like it?

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?act=a...st&id=29821

I think that's going to be great! Great job on that.

thank you!

Looking good! Identical to the drawing, as far as my eye can see.

Good work!

J

this was a very good compliment!

it is one thing to come up with a character, but another to find a character that someone else design. This is my first collaboration with a group. doing this project is a opportunity to show diligence to be able to work with a group and bide with the group vision of the project. I think I let the spirit of the group enter into me, and possess my hands and skill for this one. I did the eye opening without an eye to work with, and when I got the eyeball it fit perfectly into the socket without one adjustment of the socket to fit. How that for perfect harmony?

who is going to do the rigging for it? I do not know how to rig it with the Squetch system. I found links to the tutorial, and watching the 3 part video. I am most interested in the rigging process of this. I will look for the progress of this in the Rigging thread.