DJTHED's 3D Dumping Grounds

DJTHED

Amateur 3D Animator
is a Top Artist
If you're looking for my thread where I post animations of Pokemon that imitates the rendering style from the 3DS Pokemon games, you should go to my Smeargle's Laptop thread instead:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/custom-3d-animated-renders.3526922/


DJTHED's 3D Dumping Grounds
3D is art?! Yes. Who knew, right??

Alright. Some of you may already know me for some of my 3D Pokemon related work in the CAP project and/or from my thread that I linked above. Most of the work I've published here on these forums are, for the most part, imitating the 3DS render style. But that's not all I do. Chances are, my current avatar is animated using more realistic lighting and with higher resolution 3D models. I make stuff like this all the time. And while I post some of this stuff on my tumblr, I don't necessarily have a place where I can just dump all the work I do that's Pokemon related into one place. So this thread was born.

So what is it that I do? Well, I definitely animate things... In 3D. But lately, I've been working on more realistic and (mostly) static renders of models that I've ripped from the 3DS Pokemon games (or downloaded them from http://models-resource.com courtesy to RandomTalkingBush) modified to make it look much nicer when rendered with realistic lighting at high resolutions. I'm not perfect, though. I'm not able to create realistic textures to map onto these models, so as a result they may lack detail that they otherwise should have in a setting like this. But... What am capable of is just going to have to do for now.

So, this is what I normally start with:


The model here is exactly how it is from the 3DS games. What I do is make it look better in a setting like this, essentially. It usually goes from that to something more like this:


I revise the textures by removing the outlines since the realistic lighting doesn't generate outlines around the model itself. And I add more geometric detail in general, more specifically towards the face. Mind you, this render of Bulbasaur is a bit old now, and I haven't touched it in a while, so expect Bulbasaur to look better than this soon.

While I may have not completely finished Bulbasaur, there are a couple models I have pretty much finished, and I have quite a few renders to show of them. Some renders from earlier on, and some from within the past few weeks.




This Pokemon is one of the first models from the 3DS Pokemon games that I started using.

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And it didn't start off looking as pretty as it looks today. This was made in February 2015, about a year and a half ago from when this thread was made. This version of Eevee's 3D model was scrapped not long after this and was completely reworked. The version you're seeing here had quite a few problems. It still used the original low resolution textures, with outlines, from the 3DS games. The eye sockets were sloppily made, and the rest of its face was still just a texture. The model was terribly subdivided. Etc. Etc.

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A few months later I came back to Eevee to make it look better. This was the result of my second attempt. The most notable addition here is the rather complex facial rigging. Gone with the face textures, and in with something that's actually 3D. The eye shine was also dynamic now and moves independently from the eyes and points towards a dominant light source. My posing in general started to improve around this time, and I spent a lot of time making this pose look right. This model here is pretty similar to the one I use today, but this version still had a few problems. The eye shine was still pretty limited. In most lighting situations, the eyeshine would almost never show up on both of the eyes. This is mostly because of how the eyes are not perfect spheres. They are very flattened spheres. And the method I used then couldn't compensate for that. There was also some minor creasing problems that I wouldn't have fixed until recently. And the eye and ear textures still had the inconsistency of having outlines. Most of these problems were solved in a much later revision of this pose here:


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Imgur Gallary Link

The entire purpose of this was to test out the facial rig I had created for Eevee to see what works and what doesn't, and to get used to it. These poses were inspired by the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2 Pokemon Chat icons. PMD2 as a whole is what inspired me to work on stuff like this, so if it weren't for PMD, I wouldn't have been involved with 3D Pokemon related stuff.

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Not too much to see here. Still using the old model and rig. Just a test animation.

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After taking a break with working on Eevee, I came back to improve it some more. Got rid of the outlines in all of the textures, finally, and started making more test animations for it. Made a video going more indepth about this here:

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And now here's my latest edition of Eevee. Completely redone pose to make it look more adorable with simpler lighting, and also fixed a few minor issues with the model itself here and there.





I just love how Leafeon looks. Definitely my favorite Pokemon to date. TOO BAD IT SUCKS IN COMPETITIVE JUST LIKE MOST OF THE OTHER EEVEELUTIONS. WHERE'S THE LOVE TO THE EEVEES GAME FREAK?! Anyway, Leafeon was (I think) the first 3DS Pokemon model I've used.

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And here's the earliest of my works. The model is identical to the 3DS counterpart in every way. All the work I've done here was the animation, setting, and lighting. I made this so that I can have a go-to profile picture for forums and such. I still use something very similar to this for a lot of sites I use to this day.









This was worked on overtime as I got better at doing what I do. I revamped the model just like I had done with Eevee to look nicer up close. I struggled to find a way to make the eyes look right, but I finally got what I wanted eventually, which is what I have and use today. This render is one of the best I've made so far in my opinion. Can't say I can improve it much more.

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Here's some more test poses and animations I made since using the same model.




Here's a few more models and renders I've created that I don't have much about them to share or talk about.






Haven't really had a chance to finish Bulbasaur's model properly. It's facial rig is really limited right now, hence why I don't have much to show yet.



Same story here for the most part. A friend had asked me to make a render using Glaceon like the others before. Never finished the rig or textures or anything, but my friend said it was good enough so I didn't continue working on Glaceon any further. Pretty happy with the pose I made for it, though. Would like to finish it soon-ish.


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Wigglytuff shows a scary time in my learning process. I was experimenting with textures and such at the start but proved to not work too well overall, but that's not really what I was talking about when saying "scary"...



Jesus. Okay, so if you haven't already noticed, the teeth looks hideous. What the hell was I thinking?

Anyway, at this time I was still experimenting how the teeth should look like for all the Pokemon models I had worked on so far. This was one of the early attempts... Let's just say I'm glad I ditched this. Thank god.

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Not surprisingly, I tossed the old model you saw right before this (that may also give nightmares to some) and started from scratch. Still not entirely happy with the way it is now, but it's pretty good. I guess.



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Heh...
Here we go. Some of you may like this. Some of you may hate it.


So when I needed to test out the facial rig I had created for the Grovyle model, I needed some dialogue to test out how well it can be lip-synced, and that's the first thing that popped into my head. Thought it would be funny. Kind of is, but damn. Not sure what I was on that day when I came up with the idea.

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This is what Grovyle looks today. This pose was based off of Grovyle's promotional art for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2.


I love the Time Gear from PMD2. Beautiful. Had to come up with my own interpretation of it. This was the result.


Also thought I'd round up all of the renders that I would deem "ready to be judged".

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That's basically all I've got to show at the moment. At least from what I've been able to dig up. I'll share more as I find and create more...

Thanks for stopping by and having a look at my work.
 

Max. Optimizer

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I can barely begin to fathom the amount of effort and time you must've invested into the making of these projects.

This is some genuinely stunning animation if I may say so myself. It seems so fluent and almost lifelike.
In my honest personal opinion the animation of the facial expressions is a considerable forte of yours.
I specifically like how you managed to get Leafeon's authentic gaze to convey emotions.
It's a fluent emotional transition, ranging from shyness to curiosity, to happiness and finally satisfaction in a matter of mere seconds.

The lively facial expressions strongly remind me of how the Dreamworks animators managed to capture Toothless' emotions.

Very well done, keep up the great work.
 
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From what I can tell, you've really put a lot of effort into these models, just like you have in the CAP 3D Modeling Project. I really loved your model of Krilowatt and the others.
 
Hey man, this is really dope. i found this trough google images, is it possible to use these renders for my instagram pictures?
 

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