For Matt 2

This is the first scene I have completed for Matt so far. The animation was pretty straight forward and made a lot easier by the camera angle. He checked it off and seemed to be really happy with it which is good. I'm not a hundred percent happy with it myself but realistically I could tweak an animation forever before I'm satisfied so I think its time to move on. One thing that I am happy with is Matt's rig. Its great for mechanics but not so great for facial expression, never the less its better than most of the rigs I've used before. Which is a testament to Matt and the beauty of Set Up Machine. As always all criticism is welcome.

Walk Cycle Test 1

This test is just the inital keys for my walk cycle. It has several issues, such as the legs popping and the arms swim a little, it is also missing the animation for his spear. Its not too far off though and I'm quite happy with the outcome at this stage. I think the attitude of the walk is nice it shows my characters confidence, plus it cycles well pre and post infinity. All feedback is welcome.

Comparison of model to concept

For Jenn

I did a little bit of lighting for Jenn and went through the basics with her in Maya so that she could start to light her own. We did a couple of lighting tests which she has on her blog. This is one of them. To achieve this effect I used final gather and global illumination combined with a system similar to three point lighting using three lights a main light, rim light, and fill light as well as one additional light to set the shadow intensity.

Cloth Tests

I had thought that nCloth would be quite a hard, technical area of Maya, but to my surprise you can achieve quite a high quality aesthetic with very little effort, and the process is relatively simple to follow. This first cloth test for his loin cloth comes quite close to the look and feel that I had hoped to achieve.

This second test is a lot closer to the what the final outcome will be. To achieve this look I had to fine tune the gravity and the stretch resistance of the cloth. This second material is a 90% chiffon 10% silk mix.

Rigging (by Matt)

Matt has done an excellent job rigging my character in 'The Setup Machine.' Not only that but he has shown me the fundamentals of how the package works. I know feel confident that I could make a decent attempt at rigging another character using TSM. It appears that a common bug with TSM's rigs is that when the arms are pushed forward the shoulder inverts a little. Matt combated this by making me some blend shapes that i can use should I need to correct any deformation problems during animation. He has also attached some set driven keys to the eyes which make the eyes a better shape when closed. I'm really impressed with his efforts and I am glad I asked Matt to do this for me because I'm sure that i wouldn't have been able to achieve such a high standard, especially in the timescale that he has.

Props and colour test

For Matt

I am animating eight scenes from Matt's story. Most of the scenes show subtle gesture and emotion unlike the mechanics I have planned for my character. This should benefit us both adding some diversity to my showreel while allowing Matt to get on with the more technical side of his project. Matt has given me his rigged character and a block out of his set as well as an animatic to work off and some quick blockouts, to help me with camera placement and such.

We have agreed on a file referencing system so that he can add cloth and texture to the model later, after the animation is done. I will be using the system of referencing myself for the same reasons on my own character.

Final Model

Call it anal but there are only 2 triangles and 4 n-gons which isn't to shabby. A pain in the neck to get the number that lo but should i have wanted to take the model into Z-brush, for normal mapping i would have needed to keep the number this low. Ive scrapped the idea of normal mapping i simply don't have enough time.
I really like the knuckle topology, its depicts the knuckle quite well and should deform even better. I decided that i would create the nails as part of the base mesh rather than adding them on later and don't think they have turned out that bad either.

I have tried to get the best topology i can out of this model and on the whole don't think that I have done a bad job. I managed to keep the poly's relatively lo for the level of detail that i have achieved. I am also quite pleased with the style and aesthetic of the model. Its pretty spot a carbon copy of my concept which makes me happy.

Testing eyes

Specular

Colour


Test Render

This was just a test to see if I could get the material of the eyes right. The eyes will be different in the final model, but I think I have learnt enough to create the eyes I want for the finished article.

Modelling hands

This attempt at modelling hands helped me to understand their topolgy but wasn't as successful as I would have liked. The hands did not fit the body well and they appeared too flat.

Modelling attempt 2

I really struggled over this model, I researched human topology and managed to draw some conclusions as to where and what geometry needed to be used to represent different parts of the body. It took a lot of re-drawing of topology to get to where I wanted and often felt like I was chasing n-gons and triangles around my mesh. I found loads of new ways to trouble shoot my topology. All sorts of tools and techniques not only in how to describe the human form, but also little tricks that allowed my mesh to be almost completely made of quads. I'm quite proud to say that this body only has 3 n-gons and no tris.



Unfortunately again I am unhappy with this model! I think the main problem is that its just to realistic and the proportions don't fit my initial concept. I think this is because I haven't produced quality reference to inform my modelling decisions. This has lead me to conclude that I need to draw a front and side T-pose of my character in order to model from

Modelling the Face

I liked this face but after modelling it I felt that it was far too realistic for my design. Although the edgflow is nice and would have created an expressive character.

Face

Here are the front and side view I intend to model my charcters face from. There a little more realistic than my intial concept, I went for this look because I felt that there wasn't enough detail in the previous sketches I did.

Playing

I had a little play at modelling a face by using the images I had already drawn when creating my character concept. to create this I experimented with a plannar modelling technique.

For Sarah

This is Sarah's concept for her charcter. I was initially going to model this character for Sarah but she has now changed her idea, and doesn't what me to model it any more. Luckily she told me this just before I got into the meat of modelling. It's kind of a drag though because I was looking forward to creating her character.

Modelling begins

I started by modeling the torso . I used a lattice to get the torso's inital shape without creating to much geometry, and then sewed on the arm and neck.


Then I began shaping the upper body trying to rough out the basic muscle shapes ready to fit the leg. The problem I had was that the leg and the torso didn't fit together so I had to create a piece of geometry that would merge the two together. Luckily the model needed a pevis area and it wasn't to hard to work out how to make both sections fit.



This is my first attempt at modeling a character, and I dont think it is that bad for a starting point, but there are some problems with it. Mainly with the shoulder and the pevis. The problem isn't as much that they dont look acceptable, more that I dont think they will deform as well as I would like. So I think I'll have another stab at it. Ultimatley it can only help to practice.

Concept prt5a

This verson of my previous sketch is more complete. I felt that I needed to add to the shading of the character to describe the three dimentional nature of my creation. In hindsight I dont think this sketch was necessary, but at least now I have decided that this will be my final character design. I really like the charcter and think that he will serve my purpose well.