New Quarter

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I'm inbetween changing classes and prepping my portfolio/fixing websites and so on. Unfortunately because of all of that I haven't had too much time to do any new work so I don't have too much to show. I'll be starting up my new 3D classes tomorrow which I am very excited about.
I'll be taking a class on 3D printing and Shading in Maya so I'll be sure to share the work I produce through out the quarter.

Once again I don't have too much to share for the moment, so here's an older peice that I've been working on every now and then in my free time.

Finals Fiasco

I have returned! I know it's been quite a bit since my last post, but in my defense, I have yet to even nail down an official posting schedule. Either way, I'm here and I've got a lot to share.

When I last updated, I talked about some difficulties I ran into with my character project. Well if you haven't guessed already, the reason for my absence is exactly that. As it turns out things did not go as smoothly as I had hoped they would. 

I went through with my plan to step backwards on the jacket and retopologize it using 3D coat, unfortunately, when I brought the new topology into Maya and attempted to UV it, I found that I was unable to because Maya kept telling me I had more than one object selected. I have since attributed the issue to a bug with the auto-unwrap UV tool that can be found under the bonus tools. Unfortunately, at the time I had no idea what was causing it, and since I was running out of time on my final I decided to just bite the bullet and start over.

Quick note on the Bonus Tools : They are absolutely fantastic add-ons that users can get for free by signing up for Autodesk Area on the Autodesk website (Click Here For More Info). If you haven't looked into them, I highly recommend it! The Auto-Unwrap UV tool in the bonus tools is, in my opinion, 99.9% more effective than the auto-UV tool that comes built into Maya, and unlike the standard tool, it actually works! Aside from a few bugs (like the one I found) it's fantastic! I've found that it's far more effective than doing UVs by hand with planar, spherical, and cylindrical. It still might require some adjusting after wards, but it saves a lot of time.

That's when things started to go down hill. I restarted the jacket, almost from the very beginning. Except this time I was sure to UV it before taking it into Mudbox. I re-did the whole thing in Mudbox, and tried to take it back to Maya, but things where still just not working right. Bottom line, somewhere along the process I had my workflow messed up and I was running out of time for my final. At that point I had a little over 2 days left to UV and texture the whole thing, plus get the jacket figured out. 

It became pretty clear that as much as I wanted to learn these new modeling work flows, trying to figure them out right there and then was not an option. I had to fall back on my older methods and ended up recreating the jacket again for a second time, only this time, all of it had to be done in Maya. I managed to model in the folds without any issues (I've found that my drawing experience with cloth has really helped me when modeling it in Maya) but I had to take out his front pockets because I didn't have time to really add them in and make it look like they weren't rushed. I managed to get the jacket redone and everything UVed half way through the second to last day. I started texturing as soon as I could, and managed to pull off decent enough textures for my final. I even found time to add in hair while my ambient occlusions were rendering.

And here he is! Texture-wise, he is far from finished, and I have a long way to go. I did almost all of his textures by hand using Photoshop and some filter forge to generate the tile able cloth patterns.

Overall though, considering the obstacles I ran into at the last minute, I am very pleased with it. I think I have some great base textures going. I should be able to build off of this without too much difficulty.

I do want to mention that while the actual zipper is a texture, the material on his zipper pull is just the mea material default chrome shader and that I do not plan on keeping that. I will be replacing it with my own textures. 

Aside from that I'd really like to add more dirt and tears to his clothes. They look far too perfect and don't really fit in with the idea of him being an orphan. 

I hope to start working on him again very soon, but I also need to work on my portfolio overall this holiday break so it might be a little while until I can work on him again. 

Right now, I have to redirect my focus to fixing up my resume, putting together some turn tables, fixing up my portfolio site, and showing more of my process in my portfolio overall. Winter is when companies start accepting applications for internships, and I'd really like to get one for next summer if possible. I've spent the last two summers working for Bethesda Softworks as a QA Tester, and while I have enjoyed every minute of my time spent there, I really need to try to get an internship where I can do actual 3D work. Ideally I'd like to stay at Bethesda, but unfortunately they do not always have openings for 3D interns so I have to look elsewhere for the time being. 

With any luck, I'll get a decent portfolio together in time and hopefully land myself an internship. Keep your fingers crossed!

Making Mistakes and Moving Forward

It's been a few days since I've given an update on my project. The reason is because like anyone learning how to use a new program there are new workflows that need to be learned. And seeing as I am brand new to mudbox, I made one of the most basic mistakes in my workflow that has set me back a little bit. I forgot (queue dramatic music) to lay out my UVs prior to importing my stuff into mudbox! Which means I cannot bake out displacement maps to use on my lower poly versions of the models without having to start over. I could move forward with the mesh at it's higher level, but the amount of geometry is such that it would make UVing it jus as difficult and time consuming as starting over.

Luckily, there are a number of ways I can back track and solve this problem so all it not lost! I am planning on using a program called 3D Coat to help me re-topologize King's jacket and hat so that I can keep the details and have a more manageable mesh.

Normally a person would probably be very frustrated in this situation, but if I've learned anything from being in leadership positions in group projects, it's that staying calm at times like this is essential. Freaking out over a situation, no matter how far it might set you back will only set you back further. Panic not only prevents progress or rational thinking but it spreads very easily from one person to the next. So rather than panic, I've decided to look at the positive side of the situation.

First of which being that making this mistake early on during my introduction to Mudbox is likely to help keep me from repeating it later on. Not only that, but the fact that I am also forced to now find a solution to this problem will allow me to be better prepared in the event that it should happen again. I'll also be learning another useful program because of this. 

Overall, I think the set back is manageable and while I will be losing some time it will not damage or hurt the final outcome of the project in any way. Once I finish re-topolgizing the coat and hat I'll be ready to finish up the UVs and texture the character. I'll post some updated images as soon as I have some.

Return of the King

And I'm back again! It's really because I just can't contain my excitement about my current 3D project. I worked on him again today, even though I told myself I'd get my other homework done first. Normally I would probably wait longer before posting new pictures of progress, but I feel like the changes I made today have made such a big difference that I couldn't wait to share.

Redid his face today. I decided to just do the whole thing over again because using Mudbox had made the mesh so high poly that it was difficult to effectively make any changes to it. What I did was make the old mesh live (making something live makes it so it's like a magnet and you can snap other things like vertices, objects, and so on to it) so that I could use the create polygon tool to redraw a lower poly mesh directly on it.

Having less polygons allowed me to quickly change around the face in Maya without having to do too much clean up after wards.It made it a lot easier to keep his face smooth and free of creases(visible pinches or lines on the surface of an object when smoothed). In the end I was able to fix up his eye sockets, which needed a lot of work and end up with a much cleaner looking model overall.

Straight on view of his old face. The nose was far more simplistic, which wasn't bad, but didn't really add anything to the model overall. There's some obvious issues with his eye lids as well, as they don't quite match up cleaning with his eye.

And here he is with his new face! I went ahead and made his nose more complex, but not too complex since he is supposed to be a cartoon. Having the new nose and eyes really adds to his character and in my opinion make his design so much stronger.

Only a few changes left to make before I can really start focusing on the textures again.

The King of Hoodlums

Hello! I'm back and surprisingly soon as well! I thought I should maybe try and time out my posts so that they aren't random, but I'm really just too excited about what I am currently working on to keep waiting to post about it.

Over the course of this quarter (RIT currently runs on the quarter system rather than the semester system) I have been developing this character for a game idea that I came up with. He started out as a doodle at first, but I got so attached to him that he ended up in two of my projects for school. 

  One of them was for a design doc for a video game that I ended up using this concept for since I had thought of it earlier in the quarter. The other is the final project for my Poly and Sub D class that I am currently still working on. 

 A quick bio on the character:

Name: King

Age: 10-11

Grade: He does not attend school, but if he did he would be in 5th grade

He's the leader of a gang of orphans known as the "hoodlums,” which includes him and at least four other children. He's a mischievous troublemaker, but he has generally honorable intentions. He is extremely loyal and does everything for his fellow Hoodlums which he sees as his family.

For the design doc I did this (top left) quick concept drawing of the character, which was okay for what I needed it for, but I really wanted to push it further. Once I found some time I revisited the image and added some red light to give it more of a dramatic feeling. 

It's still not quite at the point where I am ready to call it a finished picture, but since pushing this particular drawing further has become more of a side project it's something that has to wait until I can find time before I can work on it.

The Crown and the number "5" in the top right corner is his trademark and are actually painted on to the back of his jacket. They're just a prototype for the time being, and I intend on cleaning them up since they look more like they are dripping with blood rather than paint. 

For Poly and Sub D I have been working on modeling him. Here are some thumbnails of the different points of progress I had. He’s come a long way, but I'm still not quite done yet. I'm about 95% done with the model and am about to start texturing him. 

For the model I blocked him out in Autodesk Maya and refined the shapes. I took his face, jacket, and hat into Autodesk Mudbox to model in the wrinkles and folds. I contemplated doing the same thing for his pants, socks, and scarf, but I found that because i could easily add in edge loops and then use the slide edge tool to manipulate them that I had an easier time modeling them in Maya. 

I think that in most cases it may be easier for people to model them in Mudbox, but I am fairly new to it and find that I am somewhat messy at it. So when It came to spending a few hours in Mudbox trying to add in wrinkles and then having to fix them as opposed to one or two hours in Maya, i decided for now I wanted to go with what I was more comfortable with.

Here's what I have currently:

All of the modeling is done except his hands, the tails of his scarf, shoe laces for his left shoe, and his face which needs to be adjusted.

I made a quick texture for his jacket using Filter Forge. I will be making it much dirtier later on, but I wanted to test the base texture out so I threw a quick automatic map on him to see what it would look like. Once I UV him properly, I am going to take him into Mudbox and add some more details using displacement maps and normal maps, as well as possibly texture him in Mudbox using textures I make in Photoshop or Filter Forge. Once his model and textures are done I am going to redo the lighting and set him up for rendering and then try and add in hair. I tested hair out on him earlier which worked well I just haven't played around with the settings yet. 

Before I go, I want to ask if anyone has any characters over their own that they'd like to share or even characters in a TV show or comic that they particularly like. Leave comment and tell me about them. Who are they? What are they like? What do you like/hate about them?