Guile Flashkick, ICE "black ink" and fire

[Squizmek]

Here is the result of a personal project I did for the learning experience.
Thanks to DDS for letting me use his Guile model!
Critique is welcome.

Rigging and animation was done in XSI, modeling in 3dsmax (by DDS).

The black trail wasn't rendered at all, instead the particles were directly captured from the viewport using constant shading, which takes less than 1 minute for the whole shot.
In the attached picture you can see the trail effect before any compositing effects are applied.

[owei]

Hi..!

Nice "practice" so far!
Let me mention some points of critique. I think the light setup should be reworked. Didin´t you use a backlight or something? The character has very heavy black seams around it´s silhouette. The flames in the bg of the first shot may perhaps look more "flamy". The character´s jump up into the air should be reworked. By now it looks a bit to "stiff" in my eyes. Keep it up..!

cheers,
oliver

[Squizmek]

the black line around the silhouette is on purpose. i guess it should be more distorted and the texture of guile should be more cartoonish to get the point across...
we'll see if i get the time to improve those points.

thanks for your input

[owei]

...ah, I see. Yes, in that case you should decrease texture detail and shading detail to get a more cartoony look. Have you tried out the toon shaders..?

cheers,
oliver

[Squizmek]

...ah, I see. Yes, in that case you should decrease texture detail and shading detail to get a more cartoony look. Have you tried out the toon shaders..?

cheers,
oliver

yeah, the black outline is actually a toon shader with a phong in the base color input.

[owei]

..ok, I see. Did you use the ink-lens shader..? To get a better over all cartoony look you may make use of the paint- and highlight-toon effects instead of using a phong. Perhaps mixing it up ...

[Squizmek]

nope, i tried the ink lens shader but didnt end up using it.
but seeing that you thought there was a backlight missing, i have to work on my shading skills some more

[bryitis]

cool stuff, if only i could figure out a good way to get these kinds of FX into my game.

[arikruger]

I'd love to know what settings you used for those black ink trails ?

I'm looking to do that for a short film that I'm working on.

Thanks.