Final Blog Entry

This is my final blog entry, everything is complete up to the same standard and i think it's a good time to stop before things get out of hand. I am happy with what i have produced at the end of this unit, but i am obviously gutted that i haven't fully complied with the brief. I am now going to talk about what i haven't been able to do in time for hand in.

Firstly, the most noticable thing i did was cut down to 1 character. in the brief it states to make 2, unfortunately i was not able to do so. because of my lack of experience in modeling it took me longer than i thought to model the gorilla when i would have really liked to make the zoo keeper also. i liked my design for the zoo keeper i just thought the gorilla would be more fun to model.

Secondly i have not left myself with enough time to paint weights, or animate, this is also due to lack of time and experience and maybe i spent too long in certain areas where if i had the knowledge i do know i might have been able to do faster.

another problem i found when rendering was the eyes, i followed a tutorial to make functioning eyes but when i rendered it didnt work. i tried to rectify the problem by going into hypershade and trying different shaders but nothing seemed to work, i even stripped it of any shader to start again but nothing seemed to work. i asked a number of people for any help or advice but no one could find the source of the problem, this is why in my final render the eyes are wrong.








What i am going to do is over the Christmas break in between eating a lot of food and catching up on a terms worth of lost sleep i want to finish the gorilla, so paint weights and animate. and also start if not finish making the second character.


So what have i done?
from a short description of a character, i have visualised this and created my interpritation of 2 of these characters through 2D concept work. I have then modeled one of the characters in Maya, i have mapped and textured the character to try and give the feel of something that will simulate clamation, i have done this through the bumpmapping of fingerprints in certain areas of the model as if it has been modeled but hand. i have then made a quick rig of my model using a plug in for Maya called 'puppet master' which i had enough time i would have used to help me paint the weights of the character. i then rendered it out in a revolving Tpose from 2 angles, one a full body rotation, then a more close up rotation, just showing off a little more of the bump map detail also i quickly added some music to the movie.

here is my final rendered movie




so pleased with what i have done but overall disappointed that i wasnt able to fully meet the brief expectations.

its the day of hand in and everyones heated, everyones tired and stressed.

so far today, i have created a rig using the maya plugin 'puppet master'
what this does is insert a basic rig then you move the points around to line up with your character then all you do i bind the skin. i know this seems like cheating but its just a fix for now until i have the time to make my own rig this christmas holiday.

before i bound the skin i saw that the feet on my character when smoothed looked a bit funny, too small compared to the fat body. so i just extended the front part of both feet to make it look a little bit more in proportion.

before


after



here are some screens of puppet master rig




sizing my model to fit the rig.




so now, if i had time i would paint the weights, but id rather do a good job of what ive done instead of trying to do too much and it but half done and sloppy.

now ive got to set up my model to rotate it and render the video out.

so i started uv mapping and texturing a few hours ago and here i am, with something i am quite happy with. obviously it is the night before deadlines and ive been up for a while so i dont have the time i wish i did have to fully complete the whole brief which i will explain later on.

here are some screenshots of me uv mapping. i took a uv screen, and opened it in photoshop then i went and started setting colours on the different parts of the bodies.



i then got a fingerprint image off google images





with this image i set off placing it on the uv map, i thought this may work and save me bumpmapping but unfortunately didnt turn out how i imagined.



it looked too flat and as if my model had some sort of rash.


so i decided to use bumpmaps, this in easy terms is making a 2d image appear 3d. this was the first time i had done it and i think the results werent too bad.




looking at the results of the two techniques i tried im glad i decided to bumpmap, it looks quite superier to just the flat paint texture.

things left to do tonight:
- render a quick look round my model
- sleep

things to do tommorrow:
- make sure i am pleased enough with my model within the time i have left
- take model into maya on a window machine and use puppet master to make a quick rig.
- then render a rotating t-pose and some more close up shots.
- put work on disk
- go home and sleep

pretty much..

...finished modeling the head now, need to add a mouth, eyes and teeth.


here i am using the select brush tool to text colouring and which material i want to assign etc.




i started making an eye ball as well, the longest part was scaling the ball and the eyelids to the right size.




i group the lid and the ball then duplicated it

lining the eyes up with the head


i then started modeling the mouth and teeth and it all started to look a bit more complete
to do the mouth i selected the face were i wanted to make the mouth then



next stage is uv mapping and texturing

just realised...

...that i had posted these last couple of posts on my other blog by mistake so I've moved them across and they should now be below this

sorry

i hope

..that i have enough time to do a decent animation. worst case would be for me to have my model all done and rigged. then have a sloppy animation.

i think if this is the case. I'll hand in what i have done. then over Christmas go back to it and finalize everything and get a decent animation done etc. so much so it'll be good enough for my show reel. then i can always go back and show my tutors for advice at a later date.

lets hope that i do get it done and all of this is just me worrying due to stress.

modeling part 2

so i finished modeling my body in Maya so imported it into zBrush to start modeling the head. when i imported it i didnt realise there were breaks in my mesh so went along and modeled my head anyway. i then used the painting tool in zBrush and started roughly painting the model with the colours i was thinking about using.







i was quite happy with how the head turned out but unfortunately the mesh broke so i couldnt use it.
i then went back into maya and sorted some of the issues, the main problem was that the vertex werent all lined up and merged together.

im just going to try and model the head in maya instead. thats the next thing on the list.

modeling

so this is the first time i have really modeled anything. so i started with importing front and side drawings of my character into Maya. i then began modeling. i planned to model half of my character then i would mirror the geometry and combine the two halves.

here are some images of the things i have been doing.













i have run into a couple of different problems along the way. i think this is due to my lack of knowledge in modeling. my main problem was the lack of this knowledge so i was sort of learning as i went along, through trial and error. so far i think its gone alright but i guess i'll only be able to tell when i try and do the next part....

sketches!

so here are my sketches for my characters
i really enjoyed trying out different head shapes for the gorilla
seeing as the gorilla is meant to be a bit more evolved than most other animals in the zoo i decided to add a monical to give him a stereotypical refined look.






















and here are some of the zookeeper sketches
















if decided on the look i want for my characters, and here they are




















next stage is to line up these drawings and then start modelling!! scarey

so its been a while since my last post but im about to bring you all up to speed.

so after choosing the character design brief i started researching some images for the 2 characters i wanted to create (the gorilla and the zookeeper)

















seeing as the zookeeper is scottish i thought a good characyer for referance would be willie from the simpsons.








so from here im going to start drawing up some initial designs.

when i grow up i want to be...

This unit is where we try and find out hat we want to specialise in. There are 3 briefs within this one unit, these are:
-Game design, to create the interior and exterior of a chop shop
-Indent, to create a series of indent animations for the National Gallery
-Character design, choose from 5 character briefs and create 2 of them in 2d and 3d targeted at London zoo

i have chosen to do the last brief. i chose this brief because i like designing characters, i feel i am a confident drawer and would be able to come up with some good designs for the concept art side of the project. Then i want to get better at 3d modeling and rigging and saw this as a good opportunity to improve on my skills.

out of the 5 short character summaries i have chosen to create the gorilla and the head zoo keeper.