Back on blogging-track! This week i've managed to rig two characters :D (not including painting weights, sadly, but I couldn't get started on this until Andy had finished a few things.) Pretty good progress though, I think. And rigging has been surprisingy easy to get back to terms with :D (apart from one horrible day which I will describe shortly). Here's a pictures of the first rig I completed on Swash:
Nothing much to talk about, a very basic rig. The only new things i'll be attempting this time round are a jaw bone, and an extra bone in the arm for forearm twist (although I need to sort this out...) but basically nothing mindblowing. I managed to finish it in almost 1 day, which is great time, but painting weights will be fairly time-consuming I think.
So, I finished Swash all fine and dandy and was really chuffed, and quickly went on to rigging Dodger, the main character. This was all going fine, too, until I got to making the IK/FK arms when it took a turn for the worst. I'd set them all up just like I did with Swash but one thing kept on going wrong. I'd move the IK arm, switch to FK arm and move it and rather than sticking to the location of the IK like it should do, the IK handle kept snapping to the new position of the joint, when the FK controls moved it. Sorry if that's a little confusing, but bear with me.
So I tried a million different things, tried switching restraints on and off, remaking the entire arm from scratch, creating new, test arms along side this one and NOTHING was working. So I wasted pretty much an entire day on this one stupid problem and couldn't figure it out so I decided to leave it. Came back the next day and still no joy for about an hour, but after trying every different thing I could think of FINALLY I got it.
It was this bugger! This tiny, seemingly unimportant looking button, which I have no recollection of turning on either in the menu you see here or the button in the option box menu when you create IK handles. But remember this! It could save you some time. Enable IK Snapping is bad! Glad I figured it out in the end :D and now Dodger's rig is finished too.
Just one more week to go, one more rig to make and then three characters weights to paint... I can't remember how long weights take, but i'm foolishly optimistic that I might still be able to complete it lol. We will see. Here are some cool pictures to finish the blog :) I'm really happy with how the characters have turned out and what's even better is that they seem to come from the same world and all relate, while still remaining individual. Wooo
I haven't posted in ages! And I ruined my one-a-week track record :( Oh well, it was going to happen some time. I won't dwell. Instead here's the stuff that i've actually managed to finish in the time that i've not been posting :D
There's swash. All done and nice and tidy in the outliner :) As far as i'm aware i've done everything that's necessary to have him move really nicely when he's finished rigging, but we'll only find out when it starts (which is hopefully very soon! possibly even today, but more than likely next week). I'm really quite happy with him, I think the face and body have a good amount of character in them, and the topology is pretty clean. Now it's up to Andy with the texturing and materials, which I hope he does a good job of. The only thing that i'm wondering about at the minute is Swash and the rest of the gangs eyes. I've always made the eyes quite er... stylised in the way that they have very hard edges on the rim of the eye, and pretty much all over the eyelid. I've not had to do any blendshapes or facial rigging in the past, so i'm unsure whether this is a good route to take. My instinct is telling me that they should (or maybe i'd just like them to be) a bit more natural looking, so i'm probably going to research this before I model my characters. (which i can't wait to do :D) Anyway, I can't really remember any of the problems that I had modeling Swash, but everything that I came across was solved with basic modeling techniques, so there's not much wisdom I can impart at this time :P So onto Buckle.
There we go, two haphazard turntables for Buckle. I'll probably have to present them nicely for the work submission before we leave, so maybe i'll get some pretty pictures up at some point. Something that i've learnt in this process is that it majorly speeds up your workflow if you can basically steal parts of other models and reuse them or reshape them to fit other characters. Every character i've made has the same ears, the same hands and the same feet. Just move around the topology until it suits you and bob's your uncle. I even reused swash's trousers for buckle, although it was quite tricky because of their difference in mass. Hands and ears were a godsend though, especially. I'm pretty happy with how this guy turned out, as well. I believe it's the first time that i've made an entire connected torso and head, and it wasn't so bad. It can be tricky in places like the arm/shoulder area where you have to choose between extruding the arm out or connecting a different piece of topology (of which i chose the latter) and then sorting out the topology, but i'm quite pleased with the results. I'm yet to see whether it will all work out in the end but i'm sure we'll manage it. Again, Andy will be texturing all of the models so now it's up to him! (Although i'm sure I won't be able to keep my nose out for long.)
Now all there's left for me to do is go ahead and rig. And I have two weeks left. And three characters <_<;;; That's a little worrying. Hopefully the vast (pleaaseee) majority of the rigging will somehow get done, though, and all with be well for us to leave for crimbo and get on with our dissertations (blarg).
Anyway i'm fairly happy with how all of this has gone. I'm happy with all of the models (Although i prefer the baddies to the good guy, but that was gonna happen due to the fact i modeled him first. And i'm sure texturing him will make him look pretty) and given that we've had a fair few lessons in between all of this stuff, along with the presentations, dissertation tutorials and all of that junk, i think i've done pretty well for time. I've definitely put the hours in anyway :) And i'm tired now but soon we'll have a lovely break, and then I can start on my guys :D :D
This'll be a quickie cause I don't have much to say really, but I finished the main character! (pretty much) and I have some spare time to have a little blog.
The week has felt kind of slow, and the model still feels kind of unfinished, but i've felt this before and i'm pretty sure it's because it IS unfinished - really. There's still the UVing, Texturing and Rigging before it'll be complete and ready to animate. But the modeling in largely done. There are parts which i'm not sure will work, but the only way we will find out is by starting the rigging. I've been pretty careful and tested things a few times so I really hope there are no major problems, cause there'll definately be some minor ones. I guess let's get on with the pictures!
Front and side of his current state. Put some coloured lambert materials on for fun.
Boots which i'm sorta proud of, so simple but effective. Here i learnt the power of building models with a very strong idea of what they'll be used for. Since i knew the boots where to be wrinkled in such a way, i made the topology according to this and making sexy wrinkles was real easy.
closeup of the face (still with temporary hair cause we don't really know what's happening with this) and i'm showing off the detatchable eyebrows for... some reason. They were originally part of the same object as the face, but I had a chat to georg and he said that it's cool if you can get away with detatched. Hopefully we will.
Remodeled the hands at the request of andy. I was happy with the old ones but I like the new ones too. They look much neater at least, and the thumb is better. Also showing off the cuffs i made, again I'm not sure why really, they're pretty simple...
finally here's a video. This post feels really self-indulgent for some reason lol. I really like vimeo, anyway. Nice and clean and HD and all that jazz.
Still a few things left to do with the model such as making proper hair and maybe a few more tiny details and of course rigging, then it's all up to Andy!
That'll do, weird post but it's sunday and sorta late. See you Friday!
Hoi, back again, busy day today. Finished reading a book that has to be returned tomorrow, have to write up notes for it, do housework, write this blog, do a spider chart... erg, still loads to go. Blog time anyway.
So this week was the week of the presentation and so it consumed practically all of my time. I created a video to present my idea to the panel and everyone and it was quite a time consuming process, but i'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Here's the vid firstly:
Please ignore the horrible writing (I hate writing!), and the cheesiness which was partially intended. It was quite fun getting back into Premiere. Since it's a fairly easy piece of software to get into and it's always fun learning/relearning stuff. Managed to make some fairly quick but nice looking animations for the transitions of the pictures and stuff which I think helps the style of the characters and everything as a whole. The music helps a lot too, if you're wondering it's Helix Nebula by a band called Anamanaguchi. Good tune. Er.. yeah, anyway. Did the pitch, shitting myself for the initial introduction thing which I mumbled my way through nervously, played the vid then answered some questions in a much more relaxed manner for whatever reason.
The criticism that I got back was mainly to do with the depth of the story. I think I always have, hopefully not always will, have had this problem with creating really interesting stories. If i'm honest I like art for art's sake, and I like to feel the story in the art... but I guess this doesn't cut it when you're pitching stories to people. But that's not my area anyway, i'm just the art guy. Whatever, i'm not making enough sense for this to be worth writing about. It was alright though, and while the week is gone for little reward, i'm happy with the little vid that I produced, and having all the characters together on the screen made me at least feel like i'd done a fair bit of work these past few weeks/months. Especially considering my (lack of) speed.
On to the MODELING!
I think I might've spent Monday from last week working on the model before the rest of the time was eaten by the pitch. Not entirely sure what I worked on at that time, and i'm sad that I didn't fulfil my hopes that I would have a finished model by this time, but I can show what I have, and it's far more impressive than an eyeball and whatever! Anyway, this is my progress:
There are some nice wireframes for all of you that care, too (NOONE!).
Still have a lot of work to do, hands will probably be a pain, and i have the legs and that, and also I want to rework the topology in the face and shoulders because I want these really to be stellar, how they look and how they animate. The area i'm most concerned with is the shoulders at the minute, so i'll show you some of the research that i've been carrying out recently, which is surprisingly a fair bit and looks quite neat now that i've put some pictures together. Here we go:
Okay this is what I've got with the model in it's current stages. I did a little test because of the problems that i've come up against in the past (how pro is that? ;)). Definitely not happy with the deformation at this point, but a big factor is the fact that these arms won't even be seen - they'll be hid the entire time underneath sleeves. The only reason i'm modeling this much is because it may be needed to collide with the n cloth on the sleeves if andy ever gets around to putting it in. SO these may actually be fine, but in the sake of learning i'm going to try to make them really nice anyway. It'll benefit me when I come to creating the rest of my characters anyway. I was a bit confused as to how to topologise it for maximum goodness, so I did some research...
This is a highly accomplished (i think) rig in it's nubile stages from the gnomon people. Something I noticed here, when compared to my model, even this guy, in a slightly further stage of rigging than my guy, he still gets the deformation on the top of the shoulder. This means I'm probably on the right track, i just need to tweak, and of course, a very large stage of the rigging process - paint the weights well. Also i believe this model in it's completed stage uses blendshapes on the shoulders, this is something i've little knowledge in... anyway, i digress.
These images are from this amazing tutorial on the area. I'd forgotten about this place until Georg reminded me, and actually i'm always coming back to this particular one. It's really great. So here are two pictures, very helpful. I'll probably try to copy this topology when I get back to work on monday.
Here's the link to it, anyway. And also you need a login. Anyway: http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/chapter_2_building_a_cage
Forgot about this on friday! And i'm hungover now er so this post is gonna be super short. Edit: Lolz, it's about 5 hours after I started this post, I am now post-hangover as well, so I can put more energy into this. Good stúf. Bit of chatter first. I feel like i've had a mini holiday, since I missed Friday due to a different hangover <_< I've been doing that a lot recently, missing the Friday, not always because of hangovers, but anyway I should stop doing that. I work hard when i'm in uni but at home i'm a lazy bum and I love it. Gotta be pulling 5 day weeks to keep up the pace, i'm slightly slipping behind with the schedule that I sorted out. Nothing major though. This week i'll pull it together. woop woop.
So yeah, I did actually plan on working at home on Friday but annoyingly my version of Maya didn't even accept the files cause in uni we're on 2010, and at home I have 2008. This means I can't make screenshots like I planned either, but I'll get you some (hopefully) finished model shots of the main character of Andy's short in my next bloggy. For now, i'll chat a little guff about the experiences I've had this past week getting back into modeling.
Getting back into Maya was surprisingly easy. The majority of the shortcuts seem to be lodged in my brain quite firmly, that's good. And with my new, clean way of working I've had little problems recently. Had one crash but I only lost probably 20 mins of work or even less. My sense of topology is better too, but there's definitely room for improvement. The problem here is that i just literally don't have the experience necessary to work out certain problems. While I do find solutions, i'm positive there are better and faster ways of doing things.
I've officially started working for Andy, on 'Corked' now, in case I didn't mention, where i'll be modeling possibly all three of the characters, and also rigging them. I'm happy to be helping out, and since I have a creative outlet with my project, I can work to his designs exactly without meddling with any of the design choices. The only input I have is in the form of the hopefully careful and stylish modeling. I've really been trying to keep as faithful as possible to the designs, and being most perfectionist because I really want these characters to pop. Also in this process I get to see more what it'd be like working in an actual company as a modeler, as you have little creative freedom in certain jobs.
From a technical point of view, this week the troubles that I've been having are with the face in perspective. I mean I got a good likeness to the original turnarounds in the Front viewport fairly early on, and from the Side it was pretty accurate too. So both views look good, but in perspective something would look a little weird, something just wasn't working and I couldn't put my finger on it. It's weird, and there's no definite answer to the problem that I can think of, but I believe all that's necessary is to just continue modeling, and with a better idea of 3D space it should come. In this instance I just tweaked and tweaked until the guy started to look cool. He looks pretty sweet at the minute actually, his head is fully finished. But sadly there are no pics atm! Instead i'll show you the only pics I do have, in reference to the earzzzz. In a sec though. I'll just quickly say that I had trouble with the eyes of the character, too. They are really large in the turnarounds and look great, but after modeling they seemed to bulge. Need more experience in this area too. Again I just tweaked until they were better.
So ear stuff. Pics:
Here you see the half completed face and two ears. Notice i've not joined up the different parts of the face, I used this technique this time round and it worked really well for me. Easier than plapping in edge loops and having them run around the entire area of the face when you're fiddling around with difficult areas than the ear and the nose etc. The ear that I created first is the one on the left, and I started this with the outside loop, the part of the ear that folds over, and I worked my way in. With the second (and much more successful ear) I started on the inside, in the bowl or whatever it's called, and worked out. Both techniques could be used i'm sure, but I found the second one gave much nicer effects in my case. A much more organic looking and still stylised ear (even though it's not actually anatomically correct!). Also note that the lobe is poking out like that because of Andy's design choice, and as I said i'm being 100% faithful :D I like the ears anyway, might nick em for my later characters!
Here are the turnarounds i'm working from too, in case you wanted to see em. THIS IS NOT MY WORK! Credit to Andy
Oh, also I finished my evil baddie :D And I gave him possibly the best background yet? I think I may frame all my characters cause it just adds a really finished touch compared to the colour reaching the edges of the page. Also played with the frame with the evil lurking arms coming out at you. Here he is, disgusting and slimy:
For inspiration this week I don't think it would be art. It may be a bit umm.. flowery? I dunno, but I just watched Ray Mears in Canada on Iplayer (which I won't link because they take it all down, silly bastards), but I found that really inspirational, the way they were talking about how all of the animals and the trees rely on each other and also death to continue the CIRCLE OF LIFEEEEEEEE. (They didn't say that, but something more sensible) Anyway it was really inspirational and calming sort of. Anyway sorry for talking bollocks, I get like this when i'm hungover, I think it's the remains of the alcohol in my system. Until next week folks!
Hiya. Back again on a Friday oh yeaah (I might brag about this every week... It'll be a sad day when I miss my first weekly blog.) Been getting on with business this week. Finished my Mascot, and i've even almost finished off my bad guy. It's really strange how I work. I probably took a week and a half on the Mascot (if not more... I don't want to think about it though) and then I go and blast out a fairly detailed painting of another character in almost 2 days. Why is this? Anyway, that's all that i've been up to work-wise as far as I can remember. I'm hoping *fingers crossssed* that the studio will all be lovely and shiny and working by the time I get in on Monday morning. Even though I can work perfectly fine without Windows 7 etc, I just feel a little left out with computers that aren't what they're meant to be. I'm contemplating buying Windows 7 myself actually, since it's only 30 quid for us students and the amount of praise i've been hearing (and it's shiny). Anyway let's get onto the pikchars::::
Mascot, of course. To be honest i'm really happy with the way that this one came out. I think it may actually be my favourite at the minute. Re-doing the entire thing definitely paid dividends. The reason I like it is probably because of the rendering that I achieved on the armour, notice the shine on the breast plates etc lol. It may be a strange reason but it's just that I managed to achieve pretty much exactly the material that I wanted to portray, and that's pretty cool for me. It's something that i've been trying to push for in most of my paintings and this time it worked out. I feel like a lot of the materials I paint look exactly the same, and I achieved something this time round. I also like the background. It should be obvious that i've been experimenting with the backgrounds on all of these paintings, and also that i've really been into the dissolve layer function. The desaturated green towards the lower half of the painting doesn't really make the character stand out as it possibly should, but I find it creates an interesting effect. Also, not to keep blabbing on but I purposely left the lower half of the character loose. Even if it was mostly because I had been painting the Mascot for farrrr too long, it was also interesting for me to see whether your eye was drawn to the detail in the upper half of the body or not. I still can't decide, but i'm happy with it anyway (maybe all apart from the rendering on the legs, light source is a little confusing there...) Woo!
This is the Baddie! He needs a name still though. Actually this is the sketch, just in case you cared at all.
And here's where i'm at now. Character is pretty much done, and the background is half done. I did something differently with this painting. Should be fairly easy to spot, but I tried out a more menacing, dramatic lighting, compared to the fairly soft, top down lighting in the other pieces. I think I managed this alright, although my lack of knowledge/experience with the sort of thing made me a little uncertain of a few things. I think his face may be a fair bit more dramatically lit than the rest of the body. First time anyway so I guess it's alright. With this guy I tried to make him both goofy and a little bit grotesque. That's the reason for the lighting, the pale arms, dodgy face etc. Worked alright I think, definitely handy as a painting exercise too. He's not completely finished, but I should be able to deal with him in an hour or something on monday, lovely jubbly. Might even start modeling for Andy!
That's it for work, not including sparse dissertation readings (that're actually very very interesting surprisingly, thanks to great writers), so now for some inspiration i've come across this week.
The above videos are just bloody god damned hell amazing. Really blew my mind when I first watched them. It's strange really, and a little sad, for reasons I will explain. This model was submitted to Dominance War IV and when I was browsing through the winners, I almost completely disregarded it along with a friend, because it seemed to be similar to things we'd seen before, namely in Metal Gear Solid and stuff. So i never paid it much attention, found a few other things which I thought were better, and forgot about it. Then later in the week I came across these videos, and as I said they blew me away. The INSANE level of detail that the model has, and the fact that it is almost entirely built in Maya is crazy. Watch the videos and you'll see what i'm on about. The 'rigs' are just great too, even though they aren't technically rigs. They move beautifully, just like real machines would, and this is a skill which I am completely devoid of. Maybe I should study some mechanics. The other great thing is the amount of time and effort this guy has gone through making the video. Not just to showcase his work but to educate others along the way, and I think that's just great. A big thanks to this guy, I am really inspired. His website is here: slipgatecentral.livejournal.com and vimeo page here: http://vimeo.com/slipgatecentral Where you can find a few more great videos.
Almost let it slip there! Wasn't in uni for very long on Friday so I didn't have time to do a blog, but I pulled it out of the bag and here I am on sunday night (H).
This Wednesday (?) we had our presentation thingy. Was a tiny bit nervous and did a fairly poor presentation but it wasn't marked or anything, and was more of a 'look at this stuff' then a pitch or anything like that, so no biggie. But after that, a previous chat with Georg and a post chat with Andy, i've now come to the conclusion that i'm no longer making a film. But i'm really positive about what i'm doing in place, which is creating some awesome models! This way I can make sure that I really produce some cracking models, and have noone to blame but myself if I don't pull it out of the bag. I plan to come to terms with Mudbox along the way, really get down to some good texturing and maybe even produce some fairly complex rigs, for the experience and for the benefit of animators. A new thought i've also been considering is that since these models are for a computer game, then perhaps I should attempt to make hi-res AND lo-res versions. Although I have very little idea what i'd be letting myself in for with this, I think it'd be a massive bonus for my portfolio.
Anyway i'll cut this really short cause it's super late. Here are the paintings i've been working on this week. I've been painting the Mascot, this was the first sketch, which i did in the middle of summer:
Pretty bland I guess. That led to this:
But I was not feeling it at all, so I ended up scrapping it completely and starting again. Here is where I currently am:
Definitely an improvement, but something still irks me. I almost feel as if I don't know my style yet, which is probably true. But i'll keep working on it and i'm sure something will appear. I do like his shiny armour at least. And i'm pretty sure the first attempt failed because I remember during drawing it, my heart wasn't in it, was low on motivation etc. I'm in a much better mindset right now, and really can't wait to make some models! :D
