World Building 12 - Crab

For the final World Building project we had to model a crab based off reference photos, and give it Photorealistic textures. The following restrictions were:

• 4000 Triangle Limit.
• 1024*1024 Diffuse, Normal and Specular texture.
• Photo realistic textures.

I started with a base mesh and just tried to match the general shape of the crab's shell. It was a simple shape, but I wanted to make sure it had enough polygons for when I paint the normal maps in mudbox. I decided to do the limbs as separate objects, and began modelling the claw, making sure to pay close attention to my reference images to see how it's built.

I created one leg in the same manner as I did the arms. I then UV mapped the arm and leg, before I cloned them, this is so that they can share the same UVS and allows for more texture space. I then cloned the arms and legs, and made some tweaks before I was happy with my mesh.

 I used the projection tool in mudbox and the reference photos to paint the textures directly onto the model. I really liked this method of texturing, its a lot quicker than doing it by hand and I can get a result straight away. This is useful for getting the photorealism required by the brief. I did the normal map after the diffuse, using the painted textures as my guide to which areas should be raised/lowered.

I made some final tweaks in photoshop when I was happy, then created a ambient occlasion map and specular map and I was done.

I was really happy with the result of this project, I found a new method of workflow that works out to be alot quicker and more accurate than my previous techniques, one which I will be sure to use in the future. The only thing I'd change is probably make the end caps of the legs segments thicker, as they look a little thin from certain angles.

Vertical Slice: Lou the Player's Character

Using my final concept design Lou I began work on creating our play character's model.

 I began with reference cards for my character, then just began by simply box modelling the body using the similar technique to the minotaur box modelling.

I refined the outline and details trying to align it to the reference cards.

I forgot to take anymore WIP screenshots I'm sorry :(

But my process was to finish all the models, bake an AO map took it into photoshop to make a diffuse then used nDo2 to bake a normal map.

Once I was done with modelling the character and getting the majority of the texturing done, I sent it into Maya to create a rig for Nick to start animating with.

This was the first model we put into the game, but there still improvements that needed to be made.

Once I was done with the first iteration of the model, I decided to begin work on improving the textures as Tanguy suggested:

This was our final texture and design for the character.

Here he is from different angles.

This is our character with the different masks equipped that he could obtain throughout the game.

Overall I was very happy with my result of the character. I feel I managed to achieve the exact concept and design we set out for him, its just unfortunate that our camera is a little too zoomed out so we can not see the details of his model. I've also learnt to model and texture better for the project which has helped me out greatly for creating the other characters.

Vertical Slice: Character Design

My task for our Vertical Slice Project, was to design and create the player character and enemies in our world.

 I did a few initial sketches for the some of characters we would have. Since our game is a colourful platformer we were looking at animal protagonists.

We eventually decided on a sort of voodoo/shamanistic theme for our game, here I created some ideas for what some of items and weapons we could have in the world.

Next thing we looked at were enemy designs, and ideas for creatures in the world. Keeping in mind this is a voodoo based game, and our level takes place in a swamp, I wanted to look at sort of enemies that could belong in both worlds.

The image on the right was an idea for a potential boss character that would live and swim around in a swamp.

Next was deciding on the outfit and design for our character. We agreed on having him be an otter, so I did some sketches of difference outfits, with the one on the far right being the design we all agreed on.

I did a more detail paint up of the character, however after some discussion I edited the colours so that it would be more bloomy and bright, to appeal to a more general audience, as the washed out colours were sort of bleak.

Player Avatar Project from Christmas 2013

This Project was set at the end of our first term (end of 2013).

We had to design and model our own player avatar, which we would then rig, skin and place into unity so it can work with the motion-capture animation files.

Modelling:

I started off with a quick sketch of my character (above) making sure the front and side references were aligned.

Taking both references I put them into the scene as planes, which I could use as guides for my modelling. Since this was the first time I have modelled a character, I was following along with a tutorial, which used the poly modelling method, as opposed to the box modelling one I was more familiar with.

I started off by placing two spheres into the scene to act as eyes, which I then began to build around using planes. I used the edge extrusion on the planes to build my geometry.

I continued using this method to build the rest of the head - in hindsight I realise I've used far too many edge loops, which later on made it more difficult to fix the Topology. When the head was down, I pulled down the neck.

From the neck, I kept pulling extruding to create the body, and arms, and from then onto the legs. I kept the model in transparency mode so I was able to keep tweaking the shape in order to keep it close to the original concept.

From the legs I pulled out the feet, and continued tweaking and refining the shape of the model. The next part was tricky, as I had to tackle creating the hands. Though I feel I was able to get the base shape, I really dislike how blocky they turned out, especially the fingers.

With the main model done, or just about, I made a start on the hair. Now that I know more about planes, I would of added alot more detail to the mesh, but as a first attempt I'm fairly happy with it.

For a first attempt at modelling a character I was content with it, but I do think I made some stupid mistakes throughout, especially when constructing the face, and putting edge loops in the wrong place.

UVW Unwrap:

We were introduced to the tool Roadkill to assist us with the unwrapping process of our player character.

 I found the tool simple and handy to use, it took some getting used to, but it's definitely a very use friendly program. I tried to place my seams in the least obvious places, though I could of done a better job overall.

I had to resize my uvws afterwards to ensure certain parts of the model had more texture details than the rest.

Textures:

To create the textures I sent my model to mudbox so I can begin sculpting some detail for the Normalmaps.

This was the first time I really used mudbox as well, and I found myself facing several problems. Mainly concerning the symmetry tool, that kept misaligning now and then. Still I went in and started adding definition to the character's body and clothes.

Due to time constraints I did a rather scant job, but I made sure to put enough force on the folds of the clothes and some definition to the muscles. I used the extraction operation in mudbox to extract a normal and occlusion map so I could begin working on my diffuse.

I placed my AO map into photoshop, then used that as a sort of base texture, blotting in flat colours for the model. I started adding detail and texture to the character using photo references to help flesh him out.

I used the same technique for creating his hair and eyes. I finished off the model by refining it, as well as overlaying the normal for additional definition.

Rigging:

For skinning purposes we were using the humanIK skeleton, to work with the mechanim system in Unity.

 I used the skeleton generator in Maya to generate my humanIK skeleton, then I scaled my model to fit it. I moved the joints of the skeleton so that they aligned with my mesh's geometry.

Next task was to orient the joints, so that their orientation flowed in the correct directions, this is to prevent isuses with animations and to ensure they move in the correct directions and angles. This part was definitely tricky, as I had a lot of issues with the skeleton resetting it's position and orientation.

Once I was happy with the Orientation, I could then skin my model to the skeleton, using the heatmap skinning - this method of skinning was helpful as it reduced my workload by having more accurate weights initially. I then manually edited some of the weights using the weight table so I could have a more uniform and obvious spread of weights.

Using the inbuilt weight painting tool in Maya, I began to refine the weights and check how the model deformed by rotating and moving joints. This tool was quite fun to use, and it gave me a good insight into how the weighing of a model should be spread and done. Once I was happy with the weights, I created a control rig, then exported the model as an fbx to Unity.

I made some more tweaks afterwards, such as adding some additional edge loops to the model, reweighed it, before I was finally finished with the project.

Marmoset Render: