Week Summary - BA3b Week 8

Low-Poly Model

The next part of the process was the weight painting, which took a long time to get right. Parts like the ears and head worked well from the start, but other sections like the legs and jacket took a lot more trial and error and hence a lot more time. For the most part, everything works fine as long as the deformation isn't too extreme.

Below are some examples of the kind of posing that works successfully.

The deformation given by this weight map is still not perfect; there are issues with clipping mainly due to certain topology flows between the torso and jacket, which I don't particularly have time to fix at the current stage in the project and instead will keep in mind for my second model and any future models I make.

I made the idle animation in maya; below is it displayed with and without the skeleton visible. 

I'm very happy with the overall look of the model and animation, I'm aware that it could be more polished in places but I find it pleasantly bouncy and fun, inkeeping with the nature of the character and the game atmosphere I was going for. One thing that has been pointed out is the regularity and frequency of the ear flick in the cycle, which I'd like to come back and fix if I have the time to after getting the second model to a similar level of polish. 

Wax model

We spent this week adding the ribs and sternum, which was done using an extrusion tool to create long strips which were cut to the necessary length and wrapped around the figure. The ribs here aren't quite symmetrical, but then that is true to life and I think they look nice and clean even so. The blue sections represent the cartilage connecting the ribs to the sternum, and were added using the same method.

I learnt a lot this week about just how variable the construction of the human body is, even down to things like the amount of ribs, which one would think would be constant across people but can vary. Given that we usually only consider typical anatomy, this variation wasn't particularly something I'd considered before, other than obvious changes such as the shape of the skull or length and width of things like the limbs or torso.

Week Summary - BA3b Week 7

Review Presentation

Review of work so far, I'm still a little behind but catching up. I received some helpful feedback during the presentation session which I've elaborated on below.

Low-Poly Model

I made some slight colour adjustments and removed the lower eyelashes in line with a tutor's suggestion during the feedback, I may also still further stylise the eyes to bring them in line with the rest of the model's style. I was also advised to adjust a few small elements like the angle of the belt buckles just to help the flow of the design. I think the overall look is much improved and is very close to where I want it to be for the end result.

At this stage I did a very quick test render in UE4. The model imports very small, but can be scaled up easily enough. It's really reassuring to see the model in-engine, and I'd love to get it moving around.

Rigging went mostly very smoothly, I had to make a few changes as I went to make sure joints were positioned as they should be - given the relative lack of geometry here and the nature of the trousers, I had to be very particular in my joint placement. A friend suggested that I probably could have constructed the legs inside the trousers and added those as a separate piece of simulated cloth, and in hindsight this may have indeed been a better idea, but we'll see how things turn out after the weight painting is finished.

Below is my initial rigging setup; I really wanted to be able to move the ears for this, so they have their own joints attached. I could potentially rig the hands and/or mouth, the geometry is set up for that, but I opted to skip that stage for simplicity's sake and to save on time. This process took a while as it was one I was relatively unfamiliar with having only run through it once or twice before, but I found a few very informative tutorials and took what I needed from each of them to make things work.

And then the final, skinned rig. It includes controls for hip, shoulder and head rotation as well as a locator to define the character's look direction via a point constraint. The arms are rigged with an FK setup while the legs use IK, as that's all I really needed for this project. It still needs some weight painting to be done, especially around the legs and in particular the knees, which I will be running through next week.

Wax Model

No session due to interchange week

Week Summary - BA3b Week 6

Low-Poly Model

This week was mainly spent on texturing - I used dots to place the eyes initially and make sure they were where I wanted them to sit before moving onto the rest, but the look with just the dots was actually quite effective, so I may come back to it later.

There was unfortunately some wasted time on the UVs here, as I initially tried to get more out of my UV space by mirroring the facial features. This may have worked fine if I had modelled the eyes into the geometry, but as I've painted them onto the texture it meant that I wouldn't have been able to animate the eyes looking around, as any animations would have been mirrored across the face. To compensate for the loss of texture space, I adjusted the scale of the face UVs to give that area more texture density to work with.

I decided to design some knotwork of my own for the coat detail, using existing Manx knotwork as a reference. Initially, I started working in illustrator, but moved back into photoshop to finish the process as I didn't have time to spend working through it in an unfamiliar programme. I made sure to make the design something that could be used in a repeating line, as it has to wrap around a shirt cuff.

I had to simplify the pattern to go onto the final texture sheet so that it was still readable on the model at the required scale, and in the end I think a lot of the detail and nuance was lost, but I'm still happy with the end outcome. 

Below is the model with finished textures. I've made some further minor adjustments to the topology, and there will likely be more tweaks made moving forward, but for now I'm happy to move on from this stage and onto the rigging and animation. 

I've tried to find a good balance between hard and diffuse shadows throughout painting the textures - in some places, such as the trouser legs, hard shadows provided a much better visual, however in places like the hair and around the face, diffuse shadows gave a much better effect, so I've used one or the other depending on which looks best in each context.

Wax Model

Spent this week adding the skull, it was really interesting to consider the structure here and I've found it so helpful in personal drawings I've done since constructing this. I still need to do some refining and work on the teeth, but overall I think it's looking good.

The below painting needs some further work, but I think it's a good example of how learning this section of the body's anatomy has really helped in my facial structures. I've started to stop on occasion as I work to draw out the form of the skull underneath the face, and I think it's really improved my understanding of the translation of this shape from 3D to 2D.

Week Summary - BA3b Week 5

Low-Poly Model

The model geometry is now finished, and I've completed an initial UV layout which I think is reasonably well done. Certain areas are a little rough, but as this is going to be a flat-shaded model I can allow for a little of that in the UVs, although I have tried to keep things to as professional a standard as possible. 

I had a couple of discussions with a tutor about proper topology flow, below is the topology before tweaks.

In particular, I'd made a lot of adjustments to the side profile since last week to keep a strong line of action intact.

Below is the initial facial topology I had, and then the tutor's example of proper edge loops that I worked my edited version off of.

Below again is the finished geometry.

I've opted to model in the nose and mouth instead of painting them onto the surface because of the effect it gives to the face profile, making it much less flat and giving it some visual interest, though I will paint the eyes into the model's texture map. This approach means I can animate the eyes fairly easily if I want to by making gif animations for the model's texure and applying them to the model in Unreal, without having to spend an excessive amount of time rigging eyes present in the geometry.

I've also started on the texturing of the model with an initial UV map. I've kept the colours true to the original concept for now, but may tweak them moving forward.

Wax Model

This week was a review session going over the anatomy of the leg, it was a really useful exercise and really helped me to mentally nail down the muscle groups and locations. I feel like this knowledge has definitely made an impact in my work so far, and will continue to moving forward.