After having completed this project, I realize that I have to be more patient while working with unwrapping, it is not my favorite area – but it is important. There were some areas that showed some stretching in the textures, which is really annoying – and I had to try to make the best out of the situation.

The same goes for the skinning area, it is important – but not the most fun part of the process. However, it can go fast and easy if I had done a proper job with placement on rigging of the character. Something to think about when I do another project.

I wanted to do more with the turntable. I wanted to have close-ups of the chest and up, maybe a camera that moved upwards as the character turned more slowly. Due to the deadline sneaking up faster than I would have liked, I realized that I was not able to complete this. The render time was longer than I had anticipated.

All things taken into consideration, I am happy with how this project turned out. I tried to create a realistic look to the character, and not the cartoonish style. In my opinion I succeeded.

Head over to the portfolio to see the completed work!

Hands

At first I thought I would be able to copy a hand I have already made for a different model, but that seemed to be trickier than I would’ve thought – so I made new. The human hand is a very intricate thing to model, and it will ( at least for me ) consume a lot of time.

To create the hands I follow a great tutorial by Ryan Kittleson (http://youtu.be/J1mExXURsWk) and I would highly recommend it. This video helped me a lot to understand how to build up the hands of the model.

As always there are some areas I would like to tweak more, but this is something I will have to come back to. The tip of the fingers could need some more work, they do not look that good, but its fine for now. The knuckles need some refinement, and maybe the shape of the fingers overall can be tweaked a bit.

I quickly get caught up in some small thing and spend hours trying to make it look better, whether this is a good thing or not, depends on the situation. At this time I need to get more done on the model, and then perhaps go back to continue tweaking.

Head

I was really dreading the modeling of the head, as it is all about the organic flow of the lines in the face. Something that helped me get this done faster than it would without, is another video by Ryan Kittleson (http://youtu.be/xls25e08sSg). This method of working through the modeling ensures that you have the right edgeflow throughout the face.

However, I must admit, I ended up with an n-gon on the face, without any idea or when I got it, I was able to get it back to a quad without causing too much trouble, but it still annoys me that I got it in the first place without noticing it.

At first I was following the reference images to create the face, but decided to stray from the reference to create a more “unique” face, and not copy the face of the reference all out. In my opinion this has worked out better than expected! I will surely spend some more time adjusting areas however, since I always find something to adjust.

I decided to add the eyes to the character, with texture. Since they bring so much to the face, and the before and after difference is quite large. I went for a “fire red” color to the eye to bring the back story of the character in to his appearance.

I had come quite far with the method recommended by the teacher, but it did not work for my workflow, and retreated to my safe method. Although this does not mean I didn’t learn anything from it. Some of the different aspects I learned I took with me to my previous method – because yes, they were really good.

The hip

In the previous method there wasn’t a “good method” to handle the hip. I would just continue upwards as I would’ve done normally, but what I learned in the other method was ingenious considering the edge flow of the model.

 

As you can see, the torso is a modified box with extrusions – what this box does however is really great. When you add more segments to the legs, the edgeflow naturally flows through to the other leg, not up the rest of the model.

 

The shoulder to arm area

The same goes with the shoulder area. In the previous method you would just make a hole and extrude the arms outwards. This also comes with a problem if you would, to the edgeflow on the model. This is solved with the my new method of doing it, and you’ve probably guessed it, its almost the same as the hip.

 

With a modified box with extrusion for the shoulder, the arm comes out from the shoulder instead of the main chest area of the model – giving the segments a more natural edgeflow.

 

The model so far

I’ve gotten further than I expected, the main body of the character has been blocked out, and due to some annoyance at the basic blockout – I’ve done “most” of the refining already. Bare in mind that most of the base of the character will not be visible when clothed.

 

I will have to model the character in a reasonable way considering that the character will be textured, rigged, skinned and posed with lighting portray the characters personality in the best possible way. It also has to be a realistic proportioned humanoid.

Research and planning

I have been thinking about what i would like to create for this assignment, and came up with an idea relatively fast: A lone man, an outcast of his species – able to wield the corrupt art-forms of fire. He is exploring the Universe on his own, trying to find something that resembles the stories he has heard about his home planet.

After doing a lot of searching and finding the different elements I would like to have in this assignment, I spent quite some time drawing up the character as I envision it in my mind. There are still different parts on the character I am not certain of, and might change during the production.

Time is of the essence

When I first got the assignment, I felt I had a good long time to complete all the different tasks that has to be dealt with during the production. After writing down all the different parts that needs to be done, I felt time shrinking – there is a lot to be done.

Embros: The outcast touched by volcanic powers

Backstory

Fiori, once populated with dense foliage and beautiful landscapes, was thrown into complete destruction by ravaging flames that were sleeping beneath the Earth for centuries before they licked up through the surface and gradually consumed the total essence of life that had flourished.

Before the planet totally consumed itself from the inside out, a handful of native inhabitants staggered together to build a rudimentary space rocket which then launched them out of what would have literally been a hellish fate. As they receded away, the fierce heat from the cremation radiated outwards. This dying breath lingered around them for a great distance before it was ultimately silenced by the vast and permanent winter of space.

Those left behind were chained to the molten crag as they were beyond rescue, and beyond escape. Most were gradually incinerated to ash, of which was thrown by the savage winds towards the mountains to coarsen and sharpen the blazing peaks, but as nature should have it, one was inadvertently selected in gestation to be befriended by the planet’s new persona; the intense heat from a tiny scattering of flickering embers had blistered the genetics of a lone child, unbeknownst to the mother.

His mother, impregnated by criminals just before the departure, did not know of her genetic mutation from breathing ashes and embers for several years. She decided to keep it for the sake of continuing the bloodline of the Fiori people, months later she gave birth to a child whose body gradually manifested volcanic characteristics. Due to this, there were unfortunate consequences for his mother. Her genetic mutation was not as far along as her child’s, she was not able to withstand the damages caused during birth. After seeing her child for the first time, she faded away, joining the people of Fiori in the afterlife.

This unfortunate situation inevitably left the child to be raised by primitive and feral foragers who taught him how to steal food from the paying passengers, and how to defend himself. He eventually mastered the volcanic powers flowing beneath his skin and thus became exceptionally advantageous within these corrupt art-forms.

Getting older and wiser, Embros decided it was time for him to go on his own, explore the Universe. Traveling from planet to planet, he leaves scorched earth behind him, and whatever he finds, he turns to ruins, for he only knows destruction, war, and chaos.

The first assignment I got was to work together with someone and model, bone, skin, and animate any arthropod creature of our own choice. After some discussion between ourselves, we ended up choosing Black Widow for our project, and it went better than expected to work alongside someone else.

I can say that I am happy with how it turned out, although the texture could need some extra work to get it right. The reflection needs to be more blurred out, but I couldn’t find the exact parameters to get it just the way I want it. And the reflection in the image now shows off the aspects of the spider better than the other test renders we have done.

I fumbled around for a while with the animation, but I never got the hang of creating a natural walk for all the eight legs on the spider, which annoyed me quite a lot. So we ended up delivering still images of the spider instead of an animation – although I would have preferred an animation, I don’t want to deliver an animation of poor quality.

Sackboy

This week we’re working on our own version of Sackboy, the well-known character from the game Little Big Planet. I have “completed the modeling”, that meaning I will probably make more adjustments along the way to give it the appearance I want.

I chose to make a flash version of Sackboy, can’t really give an explanation of why I chose this appearance – it was the first thing that popped into my head.

I have given an attempt at the texture but I will work more on this since I did not really spend that much time on them, but it shows the general idea of how I envision the final model.

I have done a lot of tuning and adjusting to the animation to get it to the point where I can see myself satisfied with the work I have done. It is almost at that point now, it just needs minor adjustments.

Looking at the animation I have created, I can not help but wish that I had chosen a different idea for the project. It is very technical and straight forward, suiting a news intro – but to be honest it did not pose much of a challenge.

I believe part of the thought behind the assignment was to give me a challenge, something that I would learn from. As mention there were not many issues with the creation of this animation, there were some minor areas that needed more thought than I had at first thought – but these were fixable with some thought.

Testing different ideas

After I had nearly completed the assignment I decided to look at other areas of 3D which I wanted to learn more about. The one that interest me the most is particles, all the things you can do with the system is impressive!

I made a few different scenes with the use of particles, the one I liked the most was a scene where the particles flew around – and combined into a sword at the end before blowing away with the wind again.

I have looked at several good plugins that can be used to create magnificent particle effects – such as MassFX and FumeFX but they are too expensive for me to purchase at this time, maybe later. I would also have liked to look at Krakatoa (volumetric particle rendering).

After looking at several different videos of vignettes and identity animations – I have come to the conclusion that I want to create a vignette. I have looked at a lot of different videos to get inspiration to what I am going to create.

I got my inspiration from videos like:

At first I learned about the basics of animation, which at the time, seemed quite tidious and not very interesting. But after working some more with animation and learning more about the subject, I can see how these basics prinsiples are important when animating.

I started with the bouncing ball exercise, which at first glance might look very simple and something to just breeze through – but that is not the case. The basic principles learned in this exercise are relevant to everything you animate.

When studying references and playing around with the ball I realized how the simplest things can build upon the realism of the animation, and if I remove one of these simple things – the whole thing looks fake. An example of this is the stretch & squeeze. This happens to all  objects, although it might not be as visible on everything – however this does not apply to hard objects like a frying pan etc.

Another good example of basic principles is movement, does the object ease in and out of a movement? Or does it move in a linear fashion? For instance a ball bouncing on the floor, it hits the floor in a linear fashion, it doesn’t slow down, but when it is at its highest, it slow down before reaching the top and eases into the falling curve.