Nexus Prime 3D Renders

Hello Again My Friends

Wellcome back. From my previous post, I had mentioned that I would be making some 3D renders so that you guys can use it for your desktop backgrounds. But I ran into a bit of a snag when I was posing my character. The current rig that I had for Nexus wasn't good for my work flow, and the process of actually posing him was a bit of a hindrance. I like to go in more detail on what I experienced as I was creating the renders. But don't worry, I have a few renders for you guys today. 😊

Firstly, after I was done wrapping up on Nexus last week. I couldn't stop thinking about Nexus as a whole and how I could make him better and more efficient with the armature rig. When I was trying to make cool dynamic poses for him, I realized that the process of it was taking too long. So I made the decision to add inverse kinematics (IK) for the character. Previously, it was forward kinematics (FK). Think of it this way, forward kinematics is like a robot. It needs more movements to do a simple task like walking or picking something up. Whereas humans, it'll probably take 2 or 3 movements to pick up a ball from the ground. In a video game, you might have noticed your character's leg lifting up slightly with the terrain from a hill or a street curb. In a nutshell, inverse kinematics is having smooth human like movement.

With my rig however, I had to put IK bones in the hands and feet. The process of this can get a lot more complicated. Like the relationships of each bone and how it communicates with other bones. If not set up correctly, the rig could fall apart, which has happened to me a few times through out the years of trying to rig a character. Like a marionette puppet, if one string is cut, the magic of movement is lost. As you can see the photo on the right, i've built custom shapes for the rig. So, instead of moving the bones themselves, I have a controller to make that process more streamlined. But setting it up was even more tedious than how I originally had it. I had to go in and parent each body part to the bones, the fingers took the longest!!! (lol). 😅 Honestly, I may have to do this all over again, since I'm updating the character more frequently now.

My whole process for posing a character is slow and methodical. Rushing the creative process can lead to unsatisfactory results. I try to see what looks cool and how it correlates with what's being presented inside the camera. If the pose looks a little janky within the camera, I simply make a few small corrections so it's appealing to look at. Then I added in the environment because without that it wouldn't have a cohesive feel to it. I messed around with the lighting and a couple of settings to make the overall render look better. And then I render the image and polished it more in photoshop.

In my minds eye, this is how I'd imagined what the blockchain would look like on a playing field. The blocks you see with different complex designs on them is the data and since we're on Hive, I'd tried to go for different shades of red and white. Also, I would imagine the blockchain on Hive having beautiful scenery with milky white clouds and digital particles blowing with the wind. But holy cow, this looks hella cool!

I figured I'd use the thumbnail as well because I thought it was pretty cool too. Of course I modified it slightly for a desktop background. As you can see with inverse kinematics, you can really get some dynamic poses with ease. You know, the more that I look at this, the more it reminds me of MegaMan battle network. Maybe I should make a grid base environment for Nexus to play on. 😎

The combination of using a gun and a sword is probably the most dopest thing. Like Dante from the Devil May Cry franchise. It definitely gives me more crazy ideas when it comes to combat for my animations in the near future. By the way, I really had fun with this particular pose.

And now, we've arrived at the end of the post. I hope you've enjoyed some of the renders I made for you guys. I know I've certainly enjoyed making them, especially after the inverse kinematics process. 😅 If you want more renders like this, let me know in the comment section. I like to point out at that the current rig that I have for the character is still not 100%. There are a few things that I need to tinker with to make it even better for posing and the animation process.