Low Poly Centaur

I believe the low poly of the centaur is finished, tomorrow I will hand it over to the riggers and animators to give it a once over to look for any final changes that might need making such as edge loops.

There will not be any more major changes to the design and the topology will remain largely the same, after this I will be unwrapping it and creating a high poly model.

The model currently sits at 7,413 polys which is within the 7500 limit set.

Here some pictures of it:

I've rework some of the topology and redid the hair to make it tidier. There are still some tris that need cleaning up where I have meshed some of the pieces together but other than that it should be complete.

Final Year Project Is A Go!

So, the time has finally come, the final year major project production has begun. I'm so glad to be out of pre-prod and into production, I thought pre-prod turned out okay but I much prefer production as that's where my passions lies.

So the beginning of the production is pretty hectic for me as I have to get two characters and some props in to riggers and animators so they can begin their work. We've timetabled it all in around each other and if things go to plan it should work out perfectly but it does mean I have less time to tweak if anything doesn't go to plan. Still I'm hopeful for this and I'll be working pretty hard on getting these done in time.

The first two things I need to make are the characters, the Fae and the Centaur, as they need to be rigged and sent to the animators as quickly as possible so we can get the animations in game. As the Fae's rigger will be rigging the dragon first I am making the Centaur to begin with so that can be rigged straight away. Then I can hand the Fae over as the dragon has finished being rigged.

So there's the plan. I have until the 28th January to get the centaur modelled and hopefully unwrapped before I pass is on to get rigged, if it is not unwrapped within that time I can quickly unwrap it before it gets skinned.

Here is where the Centaur is so far:

It's far from finished, the head especially needs work, but I have been trying out a new workflow where I switch between 3Ds Max and Mudbox constantly throughout the modelling. I used 3Ds Max to get the shape right as well as smaller details and topology work and then switch to Mudbox to get the forms right and sculpt in details. This method has proved very useful so far so I'll keep using it for now.

I'm going to be working with the riggers and animators closely and taking all their feedback on board especially when it comes up topology but I have spent quite a bit of time so far in trying to get nice flowing edge loops and making sure it will deform correctly.

Things seem to be doing well so far, any luck and we might have a half decent game by the end of it.

Christmas Pre-Production

Hope everyone has had a good Christmas and you're having a great new year.

So, with just over a week left of pre-production things should be a rush, and I do have plenty to do, but I think being at home means it hasn't quite hit me yet. Especially as the first hand in the business studies is in this week as well. I should be on top of everything though, I'm sure it will come together.

As the beginning of production is almost here my excitement is rising about the project and seeing everything come together from different members of the group is giving me a great sense of scale and seeing everyone putting so much effort into the project is making me feel like we could do what we've set out to do, maybe even more.

But on to some of the work I've been producing, some of it I'm quite pleased with, it's not great, but it's a weakness of mine so average works for me.

I began by doing a digital paining of the player character's head. It's a new style of painting for me, using a low opacity brush and building it up to darken it, creating lighter and darker spots. Nothing special, I quite liked it.

I did a quick Mudbox sculpt as I've met with some success using the different basic meshes to get my idea across. I'm still no expert at sculpting and I generally like to start with a 3DS Max model and sculpt in the form and detail, but to save time I just try to manipulate the mesh as best I can in Mudbox which is quick but I sometimes struggle to get across what I want.

I have a WIP of the Fae's turnaround, it has the proportion there so that other group members to can use it for their work, but this is top of my priority list atm, along with the centaur turnaround. I want to add a three quarter view to the turnaround if possible but it's not essential for it to be a working turnaround.

Finally for the Fae I have begun my maquette which acts as a final art piece for my character, this is still reasonably early in development with the shape and forms still being worked on, but it shouldn't take too long to finalise.

I also did a sculpt of the centaur by taking the basic human mesh from Mudbox and a downloaded horse model from the Mudbox store into 3DS Max, cutting them up a bit and then meshing them together before bringing them back into Mudbox to sculpt. I quite like this as I sculpted the muscles from memory as I have been doing a fair amount of anatomy research but having the basic proportions there from the initial basic models certainly helped no end.

I can use these sculpts to get a good feel for how the model will work in a 3D space as well as help me to get the proportions right when it comes to producing the turnaround and producing the final 3D model. As character proportion are what usually let me down (just look at my Thor character from earlier this year) these will be invaluable in ensuring that I produce a high quality work that will do the game proud. Well I hope that's the case anyway...

There's also the beginnings of a turnaround from the centaur here:

I have also begun the centaur maquette but as of now it is still only half covered in sculpting clay and the forms are far from complete, so watch out for the centaur maquette coming up soon.

Considering how much time I've taken off from Christmas and New Year to see family and friends I was concerned I hadn't done anywhere near enough work, but it seems that the time I was working was actually productive so I don't think I've fallen behind too much, I should have it under control and some hard work over this last week should secure it. So lets bring on production, I can't wait!

More broken stone

So after completing the wall a few days back I was quite pleased with how it turned out and tried to do a similar thing with another model. I was going to sculpt the bricks for the end part of the wall I was making in conjunction with that one, but I'm not sure I could take carving away at more bricks yet...

Instead I made a few floor stones or stepping stones which were quick cuboids which I added some subdivisions to and then quickly moved them around to a more organic shape, I then took them into Mudbox and did the same as I did with the wall

Here are the results:


In Mudbox:

In 3ds Max as a normal map:

It 288 polys in the end for the low poly mesh with normal map on it, perhaps slightly high for what it is but it was just a quick exercise so isn't too bad. The things that look like folds near the corners of the stones is due to my bad unwrapping (surprise surprise) I could clean them up but for what its worth I'm just going to leave it

Theres no diffuse or spec on there, just the normal map

Wall!

Just a quick update from the wall from yesterdays blog post, set up the normal maps, but a quick diffuse and AO texture on it and sorted the spec out. Overall? I think it turned out quite well, take a look for yourself.

I think it looks best from front on, but then thats normal maps for you isn't it. It turned out to be 1532 polys, perhaps a little higher than I would have liked but it could be cut down if the brief required it, its quite flexable but it looks good at this level with a decently low poly count.

The top hasn't had any work done to it, and I would want to do something to that before I thought about using it in a game or submitting it for an assignment. I still have an end piece of wall which I was creating beside this that could be placed anywhere along the wall for more customisation during the map layout. And...come to think of it I saw this wall as being able to be placed side by side to make a longer wall, but I could have laid the stones out better and sorted the top out so it would connect better...isn't hindsight a wonderful thing...

Back to work!

So yeah....it's been a while peeps...

And erm...I haven't done much work tbh...I found the free time thing quite addicting and have been doing nothing but seeing my girlfriend, friends, family and playing games...

But its been fun!

I started getting back to work over the last few days, I started making a fairy character in preparation for next year university project, but that hasn't been going oh so well... I think jumping straight back into a character was a mistake, should have gone for a prop or weapon first really. I'll keep working on the fairy and see if I can get it to look half decent, then I'll post it up on here.

Other than that I started modelling a wall yesterday, and it went quite well... then I put it into mudbox and it went great...then I kept mudboxing it and I don't think I looks so good now, probably overworked it slightly. Either way here is the mudbox mesh, I have tested putting it into max on a low poly model as a normal map and it works fairly well, but I think with a bit of tweaking I can get it to look better, if I works well I'll stick that up here when i get round to it to...

anyway here it is in max before sculpting:

And here it is in mudbox after sculpting:

I think the stones towards the top of the wall work better than the ones at the bottom as I think I overdid the damage a bit too much but I wanted the damage to be more severe towards the bottom of the wall, like it has been hit a clipped by things passing it. Hopefully that came across in the sculpt.