Thursday, 6 November 2014

Designing the Main Character Part 1


For our main character we agreed upon expanding on the initial sketch of him, using him as a base idea for our model's inspiration.


Although we had a initial design I decided to try out some different themes for the character and his outfit.

I started with some rough silhouettes that I painted up, I left them unfinished however as I was getting frustrated with their designs and couldn't think of one I was happy with.


Instead I decided to work on some sketches divided into a variety of layers so I can easily move the different clothes and heads around, my aim was to have a variety of different styles so we can combine the group's favorite features together into one character design.

After deciding on some features, I began modelling a base mesh and test model for our grey box, based off the most favorable features.


I started by using makeHuman to create a base mesh for the character, then from there I began creating the symmetrical base of the model.



Once I was happy with the base, I made a rough mesh for his hair, making sure it's against the head model's faces.


My next stage was dragging out the tabard/tail coats, I extruded this from the model then just made sure it stayed hung in place.


Lastly I modeled the extra bits and pieces such as the belt and wrist bracer, so that our animator could keep these objects in mind when he started rigging.


I then sent the base mesh to zBrush to have a go sculpting and adding detail to the clothes, I then baked this into a normal using xNormal.


Finally I made my diffuse out of the normal map and a AO map, then just edited it in photoshop.


For a very early model for our test tutorial, I am happy with the results. Obviously needs more work in terms of sculpting and normal maps but I intend to practice more with zBrush considering I had not used it before.

My next goal for this model will be to work on it's final design:

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