World Building 1 - Aquatic Life Paintover

This week, our task was to research and design our own underwater creature, and produce a paint over as a result.

Some of the main features I discovered about marine life were:

• They have gills on either side of their body, that connect to their lungs which allow them to breathe underwater.
• Most fish have sleek bodies in order to cut through water, with reduced friction.
• Their fins are normally made of spines.
• Most fish tend to have skeletons, despite their flexible body, normally made of cartilage.
• No external ears or eyelids.
• Fertilization takes place externally outside the body.
• Eyes are on either side of head, or some fish don't even have visible ones.
• Some fish like squids and jellyfish are spineless.
• The deeper you go underwater the weirder the fish tend to look.
• Fish that live around coral, can have some type of camouflage.

I also put together a small moodboard, in order to highlight key features as well as do a few sketches of the fish I've researched.

I also did a few sketches to get a few ideas, mainly concentrating on greatly differing designs in order to have variety in main features.

I settled for a combination between sketches 2 and 5. I liked the overall intimidating design of sketch 2, but I wanted to include more curves and the alien design of 5 in it's form.

Next stage, was to start creating a rough model in Mudbox.

Started sculpting the head from a simple sphere prefab, once I was satisfied with the details, I began to stretch out its body, and adding subdivisions for extra details and polys.

Started bringing out the creature's fins, and adding finger details to it's mouth. I also pulled out and sculpting it's back tail and fin, adding additional subdivisions to add more polys and smoothness to the model.

To create the correct pose, I added joints and put the fish into a decent pose. I also used Mudbox to edit the lighting and add additional shadows and detail.

I produced three different renders, with three different compositions and lighting, before deciding which one to use as the final render.

I took the render into photoshop, adding textures and some underwater effects, as well as tweaking the lighting.

I'm quite happy with how this project turned out, although I would of liked a bit more time to work on the paint over, possibly adding more finer details. But I am quite pleased with the sea monster's design, hopefully with more experience in mud box, I'll be able to create something in more detailed and authentic.

Game Mechanics 1 - Jon Luard Building

This week's brief was to make a model replicating a section of the John Luard building.

After taking a variety of reference photos, I began putting together the model in Maya, starting with some simplistic geometry.

Creating the steps was a little tricky, but I mainly just used grid snapping to move the each step beneath the other, in order to keep them all uniformed.

Using the insert edge loop tool along with the extrude tool, I started adding details to the building, such as doorways and windows. I also made seperate simple models for the other geometry.

I used the reference photos I had taken to create the various different textures for the model, I also made normal maps in crazy bump to bring out the details in the bricks and roof. Although I was still getting used to reusing Maya after the summer, I found that using tiled textures was fairly simple, but required a good tweaking in the uv maps. For the small props and models, I unwrapped the uvs myself manually.

Once I was with the textures, and adding various other models, I started working on the lighting for the piece, experimenting with the mental ray options.

I then rendered a variety of angles for results.

Overall I'm happy with the results, I found that the lighting and render settings made a huge difference to the result of the work. I think if I had more time, I would of maybe started working on adding more details, such as the various wires and cables hanging off the building. Also my uv maps are a bit of mess when looking at them, but for the purpose of this project, I felt they worked well, however I would most certainly unwrap them manually in future, even for the tiled textures.

Year 2 Work

From this post, all newers post will be for work from my second year of CGA at UCA Farnham.

2d Lesson 22 - Muscle Anatomy Study

This week's brief was studying the various major muscles of the human body, researching and painting an illustration indicating the majority of major muscles.

Research

• Muscles exist to create force and motion in the body, and are in control in the change of posture for the body.
• It's formed and made up of protein filaments.
• Muscles can be seen moving beneath the sky, provided the body has a low enough body of fat.
• Certain appendages such as fingers and toes, are controlled by tendons rather than muscle.
• Muscles can grow and expand over time when they are exposed to tension and weight, and a supply of protein in the body's diet.
• The basic movement of muscles are contraction and expansion.

I started off by studying a few of the major muscles and sketching them out.

I started off by studying the leg and ab muscles, generally because they are the muscles responsible for dynamic poses - squatting and tensing leg muscles will come from the core and abs. I found the leg muscles to be the most interesting, as they have so many different muscles making up the leg, and it's more than just bulging out.

 

Next I was looking at the arms and upper body. I didn't go as in depth of this one, as I understand the fundamentals of how the upper body looks in a pose, I found it worthwhile looking at the way the muscles bulge out and contort as these will be best way to indicate strength on a character.

I used the skeleton as the literal base for my muscles, and simply began painting out the silhouette of man. Then I went into separating out the muscles, drawing the lines that intersect, along with the tendons, and cardiac muscle.

Then all that was left really, was to polish and add detail to the illustration and mark out the muscles more clearly.

When finished I annotated the major muscles.

When I was done, I also added a variation with the skeleton overlaying the muscles.

And another variation with the muscle cut away to reveal the skeleton.

Overall I'm very happy with how my illustration came out, I definitely feel I have got a better grasp on the muscles that make up the body, and how they contract and move, and I'll be certain to apply this knowledge to my future drawings and character designs.

Mudbox Lessons 3 & 4: Zombie Thing and Muscles

Lesson 3 - Zombie Thing

Following our studies on the human skeleton we were tasked with trying to create a skeleton in Mudbox. However this proved too challenging at the time we were allowed to create a zombie/flesh skeletal creature instead.

I started off with a skeleton reference and simply painted off where the various bones would be onto the model to act as a guide.

I experimented with using the mask tool as well, however it didn't work very well at all, as half the time it wouldn't mask or it would mess up the model when using the sculpt tool. Overall I found the task very difficult and I wasn't happy with my results at all, so I ended up giving up on it.

I think with more practice I could achieve a better result, but at the time I found it too challenging. Still at least it resembles a skeleton-thing.

Lesson 4 - Muscles

Our next task was focused on muscle anatomy and we had to create a sort of flayed sculpture showing off the muscles.

 This was alot easier than the skeleton sculpt, I started off with using an image of muscles as a stencil and filled in where the muscles were on the body. Next I just sculpted and raised the actual muscles, and chiseled into the gaps between them.

Adding additional subdivision levels made it easier to define the muscle on the model.

I was a more pleased with this outcome than the skeleton one, it's definitely not perfect but I found it a fun exercise in learning anatomy and mapping the muscles.

3d Lesson 20 - Maya Death Star Turret Normal Maps

Since the last update with the Maya turret we've mainly been texturing it, and learning how to make normal maps in Maya.

To start with I would duplicate the turret, and add additional details to it - increasing the poly count and adding depth and bumps. After sorting out the uv maps on the original lower poly model, I exported both turrets soon after.

 Using a program called xNormal I generated an ambient and normal map from the higher res model which could be applied to the lower polygon turret- giving it extra details without the higher polygon count. I also used the ambient map as the base for my colour/diffuse texture.

I found this a useful method overall as it can really add additional detail to a model making it stand out, whilst still being optimised with the lower polygon count.

Mudbox Lessons 1 &2 - Experiment and Old Man

Lesson 1 - Experiment

My first two Mudbox lessons served as an introduction to the program, and a means to familiarize with the tools.

The first lesson we were not given a task in particular just simply had to adjust to playing with the various tools.

I found the program very easy to use, but with obvious depth to separate veteran users from new ones.

I enjoyed the various sculpting tools as you could easily achieve a result instantly, and the layer system was similar to that in Photoshop that allowed me to put detail atop detail.

For this piece I played around with the various brush tools, and just had fun pulling and molding the face model. It's nothing special at all, but I had fun with the piece.

Lesson 2 - Old Man

Our second lesson we had to create an old man's face from a photo-reference, it sounded difficult but actually proved to be quite simple.

We were shown how to use the stencil tool that could paint or even transfer detail from an image onto the model, it's a really cool feature that can actually make modelling and texturing so much easier.

I started by only painting the front of the man's face on via the stencil tool, then I simply used the photo as a reference and just modeled the face to match the man's as best I could, adding additional subdivision layers for more detail.

I'm fairly pleased with how the piece came out, I found out I could also paint the texture in Photoshop and transfer it over, which is another nice feature. I had the most difficulty with the ears, as it's very difficult to model them, at least at this stage.