Note: if you don’t want to read the details of the topic and the modeling process, you can download the models directly from the top of the topic:
Introduction
We know that CIU uses pre rendered assets from 3D models, but what if…
These models were public? Useable by everyone to make creative stuff?
And that’s what I did. I recreated the assets of the game into models!
But before going into them, I wanna make rules for the models:
- They models should be as accurate as possible in shapes.
- Colors, Lighting maybe be different from the original models
- Complicated systems won’t be remade such as eyes tracking, animation, feather/fur details
- Not each model will be remade
I’m not actually the first one to do that, there are many examples of cool stuff inspired me:
Now it’s time to make my own models! Here’s my first model in Blender!
It’s ok, not necessarily accurate but these are the steps of making something giant. the next model was actually a better one:
See? Better lighting, better background, this is amazing and.. it kept being better!
CI1/2 Chickens
Till now, we made a great progres, but it can be better! After many trail and error we got to the iconic CI2 chicken we all know:
This is by far my favourite model, it has biggest accuracy that I made a pain animation for a mod. which looks convincing as it was made by iA:
We’ve made big progress so far and with that model, now we can create more characters!
I planned to include everything this chicken had in the original CI2 but of course, I was beginner yet these items made me reach to my limits…
I think I should end here, making the other episodes would make it a huge project, imagine creating models for every single chicken in the game, funny isn’t it?
Chickens of Other Episodes
If it’s that funny then, we’re gonna actually make them:
CI3 model made a really good progress towards the normal chicken that exists in CIU, of course the beak was hard to model but now we need:
- Upgrading the legs
- Add Nosetrils
Should be easy.
And it wasn’t, even though it’s finished it took time to make the legs. This is one of the few times when I used textures… Great thing it makes the model more realistic.
But how we make the chicks? We have legs, beak, eyes, wings done with the normal chicken. we can post these stuff and edit them to make them like chicks, and here they are!
I of course didn’t add the feather effect, how do I add it? So I posted the model without that effect. It’s just for details and it’s still recognizable without them.
Now we made the chick, we made the chicken, what’s left then? Hmmm, oh CI5 Chickens!
These ones actually use some big overhauls the now have bread, better hair. Are these ones hard? Nope. They aren’t:
The hair uses a basic trick, I basically shrink the edges of the hair to make them look striped. Can we go further? Like Alchemist from CIU?
Yep, we get into CIU stuff already:
Yes, he’s naked.. I’m still a beginner and can’t do the clothes pretty well. This is also a new beak shape and that means pain…
And as making the chicks was easy, I made the berserk chick, it was a quick rechange of the original chick. Which was easy.
Now, we made chickens, what are their biggest enemies? The answer is…
The Spacecrafts
We have chickens in models, why not make the ships then? And we made them starting with the Moller Muller ship!
That was easy, the only stuff were hard are the cockpit, lines around the engine, other than that, the model is accurate.
But what about the other ships? Of course, they’re done too:
Stuff passed quickly, The same issues with Moller happened again with these models but as the engines aren’t the main focus, they’re accurate to the original ships, original…
What if we also did the original ships from the Episodes? Surely it can’t be that hard…
Episodes Specific Ships
It wasn’t that hard actually, managed to do CI1, CI2 ships pretty easily.
The only issue I had is that I couldn’t replicate the shiness, it doesn’t matter as the shape is accurate.
And about the other episodes ships? These are also easy, reshape them slightly from CIU ship, recolor them and we’re done:
CI4 ship is easy, few changes, new ingsteaks, it’s almost identical to CI3 ship except for colors:
We’ve made the chickens, ships 3D but what if… we remade the galaxy in the main menu? Surely it can be easy.
The Galaxy
We need some rules first of how the galaxy was made:
- All colors are just gradient of 2 colors, cyan → purple.
- Each object are flat textures and face the camera.
- Each object uses additive blending to show glow.
- The galaxy is 3D in game, there aren’t any parallax illusions.
- There aren’t any overlapping objects in the 3D world.
- There’s a single nebula per section but around 10 stars per section.
- There are 2 spirals to make the galaxy look, replica of top view:
Well, this wasn’t expected… It looks even harder… We can replicate this in 2D but as I’m limited by my skills in 3D, it is not possible for me to recreate the galaxy. That was sad but as I’m more experienced in 2D I can make a top view of it:
Yep, that’s it for the galaxy, a short lived hope, let’s get back to actual models.
The Last Models
As we made the normal chick and the berserk one, what about the version in CI3? Wait, did CI3 even have chicks? Yes, in the Easter edition, I’m making these editions models now due to their uniqueness.
And let’s get into another edition to make a model of, the turkey!
That wasn’t straightforward, the worst thing that the beak was curved… Which took long time to do, I also used textures for the body and somehow, you notice that the wings are very accurate..
And I have a bad attempt at making them 3D:
Luckly, As I learned how to make 2D stuff in models, It’s time to get advantage of it in Feather Brain!
Yep, the only thing flat here is the hair. It doesn’t look that accurate unfortunately, if I :
- Raised it up, it will look wrong.
- Pulled it down, it will clip the head
So I had to balance it. We’ve finished pretty good characters from CI except… Hen Solo!
It took time to make, it wasn’t too easy, it wasn’t that hard. But it looks good enough. Now I wanted to make one specific model. and you guess what it’s…
THE FINAL MODEL
It’s the Rabbit Model!
This pose is really better than in game.
Now before going through the model, I want to say this is the 3rd rabbit model I made!
But why the rabbit model specifically? It’s because…
It’s a chance to do something effecting the game rabbit, currently the game uses old renders from CI3 ages. If it got rerendered, now wonder how it will be better.
The rabbit in CIU has issues:
- The exact same render from CI3
- Neck bug as the lack of 3D model of the rabbit for recheck
- Eye Follow System is missing.
With just making the model and giving it to iA hands! We’ll fix these issues and more!
Now, I guess it’s time to reveal the model, it took days to make:
think the results are worth it, we’ve got huge accuracy here compared to the old models, There were issues I have been dealing with:
- Face: It was easy but there are still few minor stuff which makes the face a bit off from in game version.
- Hands: I had no idea how they would look like from the back so I had to speculate of what’s happening, turns out, it’s wrapped to the bottom of the main hand.
- Legs were easy but the clips of the original model confused me of which objects are their own.
- Ears: The hardest part to figure out, don’t get fooled by the simple lock, I had to cut, stretch, cut, bend the ear over and over to get the shape right.
And this model is really my favourite, even though there are minor issues, It can be posed really well without any rigs.
And I guess that’s it!
THE END
Not really, these are just the main models, I may be doing other models in the future but don’t expect new ones soon…
Other People’s Models
Did you think I’m just the only one was doing models? Of course not! @Callum managed to make his own retro models. Here’s one of them:
This includes all of the retro enemies seen in game.
And that’s it!
Conclusion
If you actually read all of this, you won, here’s your prize:
For real, this took a long time to do, this also includes the writing. Thanks for taking your time reading all of this! This is one of the biggest projects I’ve done so far.
This isn’t the end of modelling, there may be a new model come out in one day but I better close the doors temporary as the studies are knocking the door… That’s it and…
