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Description
Ive been trying to come up with a shading technique that would make heavily-stylized ponies look slightly less soul-devouringly creepy.
No success thus far.
Pictured:
No shadows
No reflections/specular lighting
Indirect ambient lighting
Simulated rim lighting
Cel shading
Studying the 3D art here on Derpibooru suggests that carefully-aimed angles coupled with very soft, washed-out shading is still the way to go.
No success thus far.
Pictured:
No shadows
No reflections/specular lighting
Indirect ambient lighting
Simulated rim lighting
Cel shading
Studying the 3D art here on Derpibooru suggests that carefully-aimed angles coupled with very soft, washed-out shading is still the way to go.
| Model by KP-ShadowSquirrel |
Source
not provided yet
The main problem I’ve run into is that there’s no meaningful metric by which to compare them. On top of that, the darndest thing is that photos of miniatures lead the top of “That’s not creepy, I like that” chart.
Mainly the latter, former would be a bonus if possible. The fake rim lighting seems to do the job.
2snacks’ work is probably the best of all I’ve seen (flat shading there as well), however camera angles still seem to present a hazard. Note how jumpy fluttershy’s animation is and how common flat angles are:
That’s the problem with ShadowSquirrel’s models as well: they can look great, but only from a very specific angle; if you want to do fluid animation or even a simple 3/4ths view, you’re in for a world of pain.
Not that avoiding the latter isn’t a valid solution, as shown.
I’ve yet to find a way to share files between 3D applications that isn’t a step above pulling teeth.
For what it’s worth, it would be interesting to see a comparison between the different ways people portray 3D ponies. Although, I doubt there is nearly enough material to make a meaningful comparison document. The best comparisons will likely come from internal testing, I imagine.
Actually, since you don’t specify directly - is it your goal to achieve more show accurate ponies, or is it to simply make a pony model that looks decent in 3D? Based on the reference picture you posted, I assume it is the latter. I believe there is some merit to keeping with the style of the show. 2snacks, Temporal333 and IG-64 are some good examples of setups that work well, and look natural.
I submit that the difficulty of making the ponies look good is in relation to the sub-par quality of KP-ShadowSquirrel’s models. By extension, the lack of decent source files for his models provides further challenge, which is an issue I have spent many hours circumventing to get his models working in 3DS Max. Like you mentioned, the solution seems to be to create models from scratch, as the aforementioned artists have done.
On a side-note, I really wish more artists would consider more powerful renderers besides SFM.
I wanted to make an actual comparison between different ways people do 3D ponies in the fandom, but it didn’t seem to convey anything useful in the end. Which is extra-annoying.
It’s rather odd that we have so many amazing traditional artists in the fandom, quite a few people willing to work with 3D animation, and yet next to no people making models themselves. Maybe the reason for that is that 3D artists give up the second they realise that the way ponies are drawn in the show translates extremely poorly to the 3D medium. I know I would.
To that end, I figured maybe it’s a good idea to start with finding the correct shading technique and then work on sculpting the models that fit the mold. I bet the final answer will involve moving away from the heavy stylization and coming up with a much more horse-like pony shape. From scratch. Ouch.
I will be very interested to hear of any further experimentation. Unfortunately, it seems there are very few people who are interested in the concept.