Week Summary - BA3b Week 12

Low-Poly Model

I've started on the rigging now, I'm still running a little behind but again am confident that I have enough time to complete the project as intended.

I used locators to place the joints for the the character's arms as they're curved and so would have non-zero joint rotations if I tried to rig them the same way as I did on the previous character, so this helps to avoid awkward movement later on. The character's legs, I rigged by separating a duplicate from the rest of the model and placing the joints on a straightened version of the geometry before moving the bones in line with the original. They will swing outwards a little when moved, but as I'm unlikely to have time for a walk cycle and will probably be creating an idle to complement the animation for my first character this isn't likely to be an issue. The screenshot below uses a reverse footlock, however I removed this from the final rig because again, it's unlikely I'll be moving the character's feet a huge amount. 

At this point I started experiencing some issues with Maya, wherein it would experience fatal errors and crash with little to no warning. Nothing that I or my tutors did seemed able to fix the issue, nor could we figure out the cause - it seemed to be something to do with the model geometry, but the exact issue with it was unclear. Thankfully I was only making small changes to the actual model geometry, so it was fairly easy to work around, but it did set me back a couple of days while we tried to figure out the cause.

I used the time to clean up my texture seams, using Substance Painter moreso than Photoshop for its ability to paint nicely over seam lines. I could have used Substance for more texturing than just this part, however I'm more familiar with Photoshop and its layer structures and so it was much faster for me to create the bulk of the texture in there before adding the finishing touches in Substance. 

I also imported the model into UE4 just to get a feel for how it would look in-engine, although at this point I've decided to create my final submission turntables using Marmoset Toolbag. After some brief issues with the transparency map (below) I did manage to get it working as intended, and having it in-engine alerted me to the fact that my texture was overall rather dark, so I took the opportunity to brighten it up a little and give it a better read. 

In addition, I added some variation to the size of the fur planes to make things a little more organic-feeling. It's not an enormous change, but I think it makes a difference to the overall feeling of the model.

At this point, I was really getting into the finer details of the texture and really just addin more polish. Up until this point, I couldn't find a way of painting the fur on the backs of the hands that I was completely happy with, and I had the idea to use the fur planes instead. I think it looks much better and provides another nice little break in the silhouette in a similar way to the planes on the shoulders.

Given the lost time, I'll have to use next week to finish off the last of my rigging and animate the model, but I'm confident I can get this done. In the meantime, I've been updating my portfolio and working on my submission pack, so I'm still well on track.

Wax model

This week we added the neck muscles, abdominal muscles and rhomboids.

I found it really interesting how the obliques create the distinctive six-pack shape with the aponeurosis, I didn't realise that this was the cause and it's a strange fact to consider. 

I was also introduced to the website zygotebody, which is an online anatomical model and already an incredibly helpful resource. It's very easy to use and has all the muscles labelled on the body, as well as having the skeleton and the ability to peel away muscles layer by layer to see how everything fits together. I've already used it a few times for reference so far and I can see it being something I'll frequently be returning to in the future.