Transformers What-If: Behind the Scenes

Hmm, where to begin with this one? First of all I'd always wanted to see what the Transformers would look like SHSO-fied, especially movie Optimus because he's so complicated.

I've been a Transformers fan for a really long time, so I'm familiar with the characters and I felt I could create an alternate game pretty easily. In the end, this project took a few weeks to finish, which is an awful lot of work.

So, first I'll talk about the character models.

Movie Optimus

Movie Optimus took me a whole day to model and I created every texture from scratch just for him. I got a few reference photos of the real movie Optimus and scaled it to SHSO sizing, copying almost every part of him, and simplifying it. He even has a tiny Autobot logo on his chest!

I needed more then one hero to play as, so I also modeled G1 Optimus! I used fan art from around the internet as reference, and faithfully duplicated him to a tee. I cheated a bit though by reusing the same texture for the pipes as I did for movie Optimus, and reusing his hands.

Shockwave's model was based on the War of Cybertron videogames. I copied Shockwave's chest texture almost exactly. I reused Optimus's hands again, even though Shockwave usually has claw-like hands, because I was originally not going to show a mission picture and so I only needed to show him from the waist-up.

For the car forms I tried to reuse as many parts from the robot models as possible to sell the idea that they turned into the cars. G1 Optimus actually comes closest to transforming, but I had to remodel a lot to get movie Optimus to fit into his truck form. The end result was worth it though, since he really does look like a mini movie Optimus truck!

In order to create each screen, I carefully copied from SHSO screenshots and relied on gradients and overlaid textures to complete the final image. Shanix is the main currency that the Transformers use, and Galactic Credits are like the equivalent of silver. I didn't know what either looked like, so I made shanix look like sticks of gold and silver and credits like silver coins but with the Decepticon Cybertronian letter for "E" on them. Notice how the hand you use as a mouse pointer in the game is Optimus's.

To make the "Courage" booster pack, I took an image of Optimus and used Corel Painter X's Sketch filter. Then I made another image of Optimus where all the colors were flat, and combined that with a toon-shaded version of him, and that's how I got that final result!

The mission image is one of my favorite images in the What-If. I modeled Transformers versions of the pick-up barrels and a giant eye-like spotlight to stick behind Shockwave.

The wheel hubs are an interesting story because, despite how small they are, I spent more time working on them then any other element of the user interface graphics.

It was fun to think up different icons for the hub and each part of the hub represents a different part of the game. The gear represents the settings, the axe represents the store, the fist is for missions and the Autobot icon is for the heroes in the game.

In the actual SHSO game, they just flipped the hub icon they created horizontally instead of making a new one. A bit lazy, to be sure, but it made it easier on me because I only needed to model one. When it was all said and done, the hubs were 15% the size that they used to be. Oh well.

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Well, that's it for my Behind-the-Scenes of the Transformers What-If!

I have two What-If Bonuses to complete before I go on a What-If break for a while.

I saw that White Phoenix was made available for a week but I didn't report on it, sorry if you were expecting a post. Anyway, if she truly has more powerful attacks then I'd pick her over normal Phoenix any day, since I like her costume more.

I hope you had a happy 4th of July!

-- SHSOFan.

JLA Week 4 - Behind the Scenes

Yaaaaaayyyyyy! So my JLA weeks have finally ended, and that means the What-If navigation bar has been replaced with... that's right! An official list of every What-If ever, so check that out right now and then come back and read this!

To start off, I wanted to pull out all the stops and end with a bang, which was hard to do since all I had were two heroes and no new mission. So what I did was I decided to showcase a part of the Darkseid mission that you guys hadn't seen yet in my What-If pictures. With floating houses.

This image was actually really, really difficult to set up. First of all the characters are actually in the environment, which helps me a little. I had some leftover houses from an earlier version of the mission that I'd modeled, so I just created an sort of floating cliff thing like in Avatar with a house on top of it. Then I used the same exact path from the previous pictures and stuck in a red-eyed Batman. I had modeled a bow for Green Arrow from a different image, (the one that goes with the COOL FACTOR section), and then I just used that and the extended arrow I'd made to make it look like Green Arrow was shooting at Batman. This was actually really, really, hard to do because I needed Green Arrow to hold back an arrow on the string of the bow, and so I had to manipulate the actual geometry of the string, (sorry, I dropped a few big words there. Basically I said that I had to bend the string to make it look like he was drawing it back).

Now it's time to talk about a different image that I created for this What-If, and that would be the COOL FACTOR image. I know I've tried to explain how I make these gameplay images before, but often I don't have enough pictures.

So basically I take an image of the game:

(It's actually a leftover image from my Thunderbolts What-If!)

Then I select a part of the ground, which in this case is really easy to duplicate because it's lit basically the same for the whole surface, (no large shadows). I copy & paste it to cover up Elektra, then I erase the edges with a soft edge to blend it into the rest of the ground. Now it looks like this:

Now I'm ready to place my model on top of it. For this image I actually rendered my model right on top of the background, without needing to paste it in later because I used the edited image as my camera (the 3d editor's camera) background.

Uh-oh, there's a problem! The hero icon still is Elektra, and she's level 5 which doesn't make sense because I was supposed to just have gotten the character. Time for some digital magic!

I pose the model in the same position that all of SHSO's heroes take in the icon. Then I render out the image at 300x300 pixels, to be scaled down later while I'm using my hero icon template downloaded from the CBR forum's SHSO wikispace page.

Then I flatten out the image by saving it as a .png, which also keeps the transparent background.

I import the icon and drag it over the other icon, this time it's Batman's, because I use a template where I've already cut out the Heads-Up Display elements that overlap the icon in the real game, and in the template I also have the name set up and a fake level, with the colors that would be underneath them covering up the real name and level number.

Add a few blurry motion lines and

TA-DA!

Now you know how much work it is. I'm just kidding, the whole process probably takes only 25 minutes.

Okay, one other question you might have is, "How did you make Green Lantern enrobed in green light in the EXPLORATION section?"

Well, here's how.

WARNING: Lots of technical jargon will be used. You've been warned.

Here's the image. If it looks like Green Lantern is enrobed in a green transparent coating, you would actually be right. What I do is I create a pose:

Never said it had to be a GOOD pose! Now I copy and paste the model in the exact same pose, in the hierarchy of objects, like so:

Then I "bake" the skeleton, (that is, get rid of the skeleton but keep the pose the model's in, and collapse the mesh so that everything is in one object):

Next, I use "Normal Scale" which scales things up but keeps them centered, so it goes around the model:

Then I add the transparent material and we're good to go!

Then I lower the transparency until it works, add a light and render!

DONE!

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Okay, I hope that answered all of your questions, past, present and future.

Don't forget to leave a comment if you still want to know how I created a particular image.

Now, coming up over the next couple months I'll be doing What-If Bonus features where I either update old What-If models or create new pictures with the same model. You'll be able to vote on which What-If gets the next Bonus feature in my upcoming poll, so look for that.

Bye for now!

-- SHSOFan.

JLA What-If Week 3 - Behind the Scenes

Well it's another week and another What-If, and this week saw the "release" of no other then DARKSEID!

You may be wondering, "Just how much detail goes into these game images anyway?"

Well, it's time for me to explain.

First I model the characters and pose them by telling the computer how to move their arms, legs, etc. using a process called "rigging". I basically draw a skeleton on each model, and the skeleton tells the computer how to move the model.

The dots and lines represent the skeleton of the character in the 3D editor.

 As you can see, I've already added the fog effect, which is a tag that I can place on the camera. When I'm really building the scene, all the characters are already textured, because I import them into the scene fully textured, but for the purposes of "peeling away" the scene, that's what it would look like if I rendered it without textures.

Then I light the scene. Here's what it looks like without the anti-aliasing effect, (which makes it look like it's from the game).

Here it is with the HUDs added, plus a few modifications to the image, and it's done!

If you have any other questions, as always I'll answer them in the comments section below.

-- SHSOFan.

JLA What-If Week 2 - Behind the Scenes

So. Wonder Woman. Rather then try to model her usual costume, which is considerably more elaborate and would have been difficult to pull off, I used a costume variant that looked way cooler, in my humble opinion.

I couldn't find the exact same picture, but the one I referenced didn't have the jacket, so that's why my version doesn't have it.

Wonder Woman's face, though still not quite like SHSO's real female faces, is better then Moonstone and Songbird's faces from my Thunderbirds What-If.

You can also see the texture on the hair, which is not really visible in the final What-If, however I struggled to find an appropriate texture for around five minutes. I ended up blending together multiple textures in my painting program, and it ended up quite nicely.

The full-res hair texture, which you are free to use, (all textures came form various images I got online).

Closer view of the hair texture on the model.

There's obviously a lot more to say here about modeling, lighting, etc, but I'll let this movie I created do the rest of the talking.

In case you're wondering, I composed the music that accompanies this video myself JUST for the video. :D

Anyway, there's one last thing I'd like to talk about in this post.

Every time I release the What-If of the week, I change the background image to show the two new heroes I release, which is something new that I introduced with this What-If. I also put links at the top of this blog in the tab bar to help you navigate the weeks of the What-If. what will happen when both of these features are no longer there? Well, the backgrounds will go back to the way they were before, changing ore or less whenever a new hero is released to showcase that hero. The header image will be changed to a brand new one that I hope will look way better then my old one. And finally, I plan on releasing a special What-Ifs page that will give out links to each What-If post I've ever made, from my Batman TDK What-If to this one. So look for all of that soon. :)

Thanks for reading this Behind the Scenes Post!

If there are questions you may have, you can ask them in the comment section below.

-- SHSOFan.

JLA What-If Week 1 - Behind the Scenes

My long-awaited Justice League What-If is finally here, and this week, I "released" Superman and Classic Batman in what is actually my 150th POST OF ALL TIME! Yay! :D

Now, you know by now that I don't like to repeat myself, and I've already gone over how I made the Thunderbolts loading screen, and how I composited the TDK Batman gameplay pictures, so you'd think there wasn't much to say as far as how I created these images. Except that I haven't gone much into detail as far as the actual modeling process of these heroes goes.

Each hero starts with a cube. Not a box, which is 2 dimensional, but a cube, which is in 3d space.

I then began manipulating the cube using various tools, which is where things start to get complicated.

Here is the cube after I have subdivided it, which basically means that wherever there was one side, now there are four. But it gets even more complicated. This type of subdivision is called a Catmall Clark Subdivide, which rounds out edges. Of course, I don't think about this kind of thing while I'm modeling a hero. That would be distracting.

Here, I pushed around the polygons a bit, by bringing down a point to form the top of the chest, and flattened the sides of the cube.

Here, I extruded the sides to form the arms, and pushed a few more points to strengthen the chest area. I could go on like this for many, many more steps. I could describe how I carefully add symmetry modifiers, weld separate objects together, convert to points and invert the selection to get rid of unneeded objects, etc. etc. But I know that that would probably bore anybody who doesn't really understand it to death, so I'm going to stop here. You can, however, request a full tutorial if you would like to know, down in the comment section, and I might be tempted to write one if enough people are interested. 

The real reason I showed you all this was to impress upon you how much effort goes into these What-Ifs. It's not like I have a team that models, textures, rigs, poses, lights and renders these heroes for me. Each hero takes me roughly thirty minutes to an hour to model, twenty minutes to texture, and two to three minutes to rig.

Here's what Batman's model looks like, un-subdivided and without textures:

I'd also like to mention that I actually model the hands and legs separately, and then attach them later to the body model. And that, in the final model, the cape is rigged for movement as well as the skeleton.

Another new thing that I did involved Superman.

You'll note that my Thunderbolt What-If didn't require any male characters with their faces exposed, which made it really easy for me to model them.

I did need to model Moonbeam and Songbird's faces, though. Unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job, as a closer inspection reveals.

But for this What-if, I needed two completely exposed faces: Superman and Wonder Woman.

I spent a lot of time on Wonder Woman's face, trying to make it not completely flat. And Superman's head gets re-used for every other male character except Batman, because I liked it so much. I think it works best on Flash and Green Arrow.

Here are the hero icons:

I can't wait for you to see the rest of this What-If, it's going to be AWESOME!

-- SHSOFan.

What If: Thunderbolts - Week 4 Behind the Scenes

Well, my Thunderbolts What-If series is done! I hope you enjoyed it, it was mostly fun to make, (even though it did eat up a LOT of my time!) and I think it was my best What-If yet.
See below for the last Behind the Scenes, showcasing the awesome group photo at the beginning of my last What-If Week.

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So obviously to make a group image you need to have a group! I imported all the Thunderbolts into my scene, and then posed them accordingly. To pose them, I referenced the original image, (pre-tampering), that I was going to place them over. I tried to make it look as natural as possible-- Songbird and Ghost float, but you can tell where they are standing. Swordsman is in the middle of the image, because that's who I was pretending to be playing as. I tried to make it look as non-set up as possible. I'm not entirely sure I succeeded. I also made one of Swordsman's swords go through part of Radioactive Man, as though the models collided in game.

Here is the final poses without textures. Notice how I set up a subtle light so that Radioactive Man's arm would shine slightly and not look completely flat.

Here is a wireframe of the image. Not much to say here, it's just pretty. :)

Here is an image I rendered from a different, more dramatic angle. It's completely unedited, and as you can see, Swordsman's reflections are added in post. :)

You may use this as a wallpaper, it's big enough.

Here is the final image! Originally, there was a Spiderman standing where Scourge is now, and he was accessing the Prize Wheel, so I carefully placed Scourge so that he would be using the Prize Wheel, and that was my biggest mistake on this image. It's nearly impossible to use the Prize Wheel and face front at the same time in the game! Oh well, it's still an awesome image. :P

Finally, here are Ghost and Scourge's hero icons. :)

And that wraps up this totally awesome month! I hope you've enjoyed this, it was TONS of work. Whatever's coming next, I'm sure it'll be awesome. And, by the way, if you guys at Gazillion want to do the Thunderbolts, go right ahead. I want to see what you guys come up with officially!! :D In fact, that would be really cool, because then I could compare my What-If images to official ones! :D

Man, now that I said that I really want to play as Scourge in the game.

Well, you guys probably have better things to do, like making an Absorbing Man mission, (please)! :)

-- SHSOFan.