3D Progress.

I didn't manage to completely finish my adult character. I'm happy with where I reached considering my terrible time management this semester.

Ultimately, from the sculpt I aimed to capture the essence of my 2D design work. I could possibly argue that I spent too much time in 2D, but I think the problem is rather that I work too slowly in 3D, as my pipeline knowledge is rather limited in 3D as I've always been a 2D artist. However, the amount I've learned this semester is crazy. I can now use Zbrush for one. I can work with Dynamesh, I can retopologise meshes, I can project the detail of my high res models onto low res ones for game engines. 

As a whole I feel the strong 2D personality I created for the character served very helpful when realising it in 3D. Although I made some errors in the projecting of the model, through some amateur retopology on my part, I will be able to append these errors next time round. 

Not only that, but my understanding of Zbrush now means that the designs I can brainstorm are much more effective. One of the main errors I made in this project was the lack of extracting, or extruding, for new parts of the mesh. So for example, his rucksack, etc. are all part of one mesh, when really it would have been much more appealing to sculpt these as seperate sub tools. 

Textured with Polypaint.

3 Million poly sculpt projected onto low poly mesh in Maya for game engine. 

Maya Test & Sculpt compared

Here you can see the errors of my normal mapping by not effective retopologising.

Retopology process.

ZBrush and I

Since my post the other day I've been focusing on 3D work. And I've been loving it.

Yesterday I started a digital tutors video which focused on the Maya & ZBrush integration. The tutorial is great and I'll be continuing on with it tomorrow or next week. 

Basically the tutorial showed me how to take low poly models into ZBrush for sculpting, and how to navigate the ZBrush UI and take advantage of its insane power. (Something I'd only ever done in Mudbox). 

So I made a simple rowing boat because of the boat my character is shown sailing in as a child in concept art from a couple of months back. I then took it into ZBrush and subdivided it a ton of times and began going through the different brushes and also messed around with Alpha, noise etc. I left off just about to UV the boat and create a normal map and a displacement map. 

D'oh. I forgot to take snaps of the boat. So I'll hopefully remember to put one up here after I grab one tomorrow.

UPDATE: I remembered. Here it is below. 

Maya > Zbrush 

Then today I decided to start something from scratch just to sort of get warmed up and to get more used to the controls before I started on a head. 

So after Dave was kind enough to lend me a 101 on Dynamesh I was off. (Thanks Dave!)

I started with a sphere and ended up with a gargoyle!

I actually quite like the way this guy's hands turned out. Arms, not so much. 

As I was basically sketching in 3D with no huge intent on creating anything specific, I kept my PDP in mind and really tried to push the proportions. I think this again really helped push the design and actually lends a nice sense of balance to the sculpture. The hands for this guy were so much fun to sculpt. They're supposed to look like he's holding on to something, and I think that comes across quite nicely. Obviously I didn't want to spend too much time on this guy, because I promised myself I would begin sculpting my character, and so there's quite a few issues. His front profile is really weak and it's hard to distinguish his mouth and (poorly sculpted) goatee-beard-thing. The side profile works much better.

So for the character I knew I needed to refer to the front of the sculpt more often and not get too focused on the side view. 

Again I started with a sphere and after a couple of hours I had the basic sculpt down and had some hair thrown in too. I liked the way the lips were looking here originally - besides being a bit to perked and narrow, and the trimDynamic brush was letting me convey the sharp stylised facial features I strived for in the concept art. I accidentally destroyed these lips and they never quite returned to their former glory. I'll sort 'em soon, though. 

One thing I did during this sculpt (but didn't actually mean to) was not actually look at my concept art once. I had stared at it so long while doing the character painting that I could just picture it in my head whenever I was unsure. Dave showed me spotlight and all, but I just never felt like I really needed it. So the sculpt is really more a likeness of the concept art, it's not exactly a direct 2D-3D translation. Like I said I was sort of just playing to the nuances I pictured in my head. 

Although I think the silhouette from my initial sketches has actually survived rather well. 

Despite my efforts to keep the front profile as interesting as possible, I think I still might've failed. Although, I think tucking the hair in just above the ears should do a great deal, and I might also make them larger. 

The side profile again with this is so much stronger; I really love the balance and the way the rucksack sits on the sculpture and gives the sculpture so much more intention and sense of life. 

~3 hours work.  

So I'll continue work on this soon. I've been neglecting a couple of other modules, so it might be a few days. But I'm excited to see where it goes. 

Thanks,

Ps. Here's the sculpt in Sketchfab so you can get a better feel for it :)

Adult from tooartsy on Sketchfab.

Work on the side: Quick Style-driven Concepts

Between trying to get the hang of ZBrush/Maya integration I decided to do some brief 2D work to remain of sane mind.

Focus on Proportion & Suggestion

The main challenge I've enjoyed through my 2D research has been in the suggestion of the line work. Less is more. I think this is something I started appreciating through the focus on the silhouette at the start of the semester.

As I stated in my PDP, I wanted experimentation with pose and proportion to be a big part of my practice, in the hope that this would make my designs far more interesting and varied. So far it would seem that it is leading my sketches to be much richer in character and appeal. At the moment however, it's unfortunate that my 2D work outweighs my 3D practice a great deal. After all, the justification for this project is the way they are captured in 3D, and how their appeal stands afterwards. So I really need to get a move on with 3D if I want to have something to evaluate. 

Cheers for now, 

Stylised Character (Adult)

I decided to spend some time yesterday taking my sketches into a final character design paint. It ended up being a lot more difficult than I expected. Originally I ran into a few problems regarding anatomy. 

The whole nature of the exercise was to create a detailed stylised character whom I had developed through preliminary sketches and studies. But I found it difficult not to pander too much to real anatomy when designing. It felt like a bit of a juggling act most of the time as I tried to play to realistic anatomy, while tuning it to fit the illustrative style I was going for and of course the personality of the character. 

This is one of the first character paintings where I have asked for, and received a fair amount of critique from classmates. Most of the critique I received understood what I was going for; some didn't. For example, a few people mentioned some of the characters' features were wrong, when really, they're just stylised. For example, the nose doesn't exactly look like a proper functioning nose, but it does at the same time; it fits a certain style. 

Features can be abstracted to help the character design.

I'm reasonably happy with how the final design turned out. I think this should provide an interesting platform to sculpt/model from. I'm not going to create a front/side/etc view because that would defeat the purpose of this exercise also. I want to sculpt something purely from the essence of this stylised concept. 

As for my personal critique, I think a few things stick out. I really need to get better at painting clothes and fabrics. I also think the hair looks off and the face could use some extra features to help make the character more memorable.

Thanks!

Thumbnail Exercise Cont. / On Style

As I mentioned previously, I wanted to take (what I felt was) my strongest environment thumbnail, and block it out quickly in Maya. After this, I would begin the process of lighting the scene in the most interesting and effective way. I'm still messing around with lighting, but I did block out the scene. Tomorrow I'll be testing different camera angles and lighting.

Quick thumbnail block-out for lighting tests. 

While reflecting on the 2D designs I'd been working on so far for the project, I became aware of the lack of stylised presence. The main point in the project is the development of stylised artwork and the effective translation into 3D. 

So I spent a lot of time looking at 2D artists who are really known for their distinctive style. I wanted to find inspiration in 2D work which wouldn't typically fall into the realm of concept art for 3D modelling, and really bring the stylised aspect straight back into the forefront of the pipeline. 

Rob Laro is an artist who I've admired for quite some time. Laro's illustrative style is very strong and recognisable - as you can see here. 

He is also a prominent 3D artist and some of his techniques are loosely explained throughout his blog. I also managed to find a time-lapse recording of him sculpting one of his 2D (stylised) characters in ZBrush. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5hSHllFfG0 

 I think I'm going to alter my PDP having seen this. I know I said I wouldn't, and that the intention would be to model in Maya, but I can't hold off the urge to attempt some awesome sculpts any longer. 

So my next step will be attempting to sculpt my character in ZBrush!

Also, because I didn't think my original concept art was stylised enough, i decided to do some more sketches of my adult character with bolder lines. You can ignore the top-left corner, that section was more an ease-into the style practice beforehand. Hopefully the Laro inspiration is strong with this one. 

Thanks,

New pipeline. Step 1: Thumbnails.

It's been a really long time since I last used thumbnails (Honours). So I really enjoyed working with them again. It's incredible how useful they can be for getting ideas down quickly and comparing them.

So in the above thumbnails I brainstormed scenarios for my warrior character (adult version).

This Guy

So as I mentioned in my previous post the reason behind these thumbnails was to take them into 3D software and block them in, including lighting, and then take into PS to create a final concept piece.

However, with the first few thumbnails I went a bit off-focus. You can clearly see in the first 2/3 I was more interested in scale/narrative/etc - basically focusing wayyyy too much on the details.

I realised this was becoming an issue during thumbnail 3. And so with thumbnail 4 I totally stripped back the styling, and only focused on values. However, I was still thinking pretty big in scale, and so with the final two I brought the scale right down, and ended up with two thumbnails I'm happy with.

Thumbnail 5: Has a nice sense of motion, and this streamlined valley could have some interesting lighting going on. However, the only materials in the picture are rocks - with a few structures in the distance. So this would probably be a very bland final composition.

Thumbnail 6. I think thumbnail 6 is the most successful of the thumbnails. It's fairly simple, ties in nicely to the character, and most of the image is in the foreground. There is also a broader range of objects/materials (grass, water, clouds, stairs, house, etc) which would make for a much more interesting rendered composition.

The next step is to begin blocking out the scene in Maya. Hopefully I'll remember to screencap this, because I want to not only work on my time, but watch it back and maybe pick up on any dumb things I did. I'm no 3D expert.

Cheers,

Mentor Advice.

I've heard back from two of my mentors this week: Mike (Traveller's Tales), and Alex (2000AD).

Both have provided great insights into their professional practice, and as such I now have a few experiments I want to try out over the next few days.

I won't go into the detail of the e-mails for obvious reasons, but Alex did explain his production methodologies. He explained his process at the beginning of a project, and went on to describe inspirations, and general practice.

All this can be seen across on his blog.

So from his advice I decided I would explore the 3D side of early design benefits. In my PDP action points I addressed an interest in "Designing through 3D" and so I hope this will help me in that part.

From Alex's advice I think I'm going to attempt this pipeline:

Thumbnails > 3D staging & lighting > Final paint.

This is something I've never tried before, and so I'm really excited to see how it turns out. It probably won't be great, but I'm sure it'll benefit my research.

Mike also gave incredibly useful advice. He referred all his practice to the famous LEGO series. His perspective is from the role of Technical Animator, so this actually ended up being a great help to further connect my project for this with my animation module.

Action points for the next week

- Thumbnails for my character.
- Select thumbnail to mock up in 3D with an emphasis on speed. No point sketching in 3D if it takes all day.
- Create effective lighting in scene.
- paint over and replicate lighting in Photoshop.
- Analyse work.

Modelling with a low budget.

Having done several concept development sheets for this module, I decided to begin some low-poly modelling practice.

I decided to do one of the Digital Tutors 3D tutorials focused on modelling with a low budget. The tutorial ties in nicely to my PDP as the reference image is rather stylised:

Not my work.

In the lesson the artist is not supplied with a model sheet.

Instead he uses basic model sheets which aren't directly from the character, and only uses these to directly reference the early stages.

After that it's all about looking to the concept art, and throwing in your own creative nuances to define/flesh out the model. Ultimately however, the final model stays relatively true to the original concept.

Early propotions

Beginning to refine.

Current State

When creating models at a low budget it's crucial to consider if something can just be normal mapped instead of modeled in. The tutorial drew at attention to the idea that if the strength of the silhouette of the character is affected by leaving out extra polys, then it makes sense to model them in. This was the reasoning behind the armor topology you can see around the torso of the model. From the side angle the armor, even when mapped would seem strange.

I'm going to continue working through this tutorial (it's taking me longer than I would like to work through than I would like) and try and become more efficient in my modelling. After all, one of the core interests of this project for me was to scrutinize sketching in 3D. And if I'm taking too long then it defeats the purpose. In the meantime, I'm also going to experiment with the costume design of my child/adult character and consider the modelling restrictions of the costumes, allow the concept art to fuel the ideas for cyclic animations for Lynn's module, and begin a high quality piece of concept art for the adult version of the character in a dynamic pose.

Bye for now :)

Various Life Drawing.

Here's some life drawing from the past few weeks that I thought turned out OK.

Low Poly Modelling - Explained!

Good news everyone, 

we've been assigned mentors for our projects and I've refined my idea some. 

I've updated my PDP slightly since last time as I hadn't drawn enough attention to the concept art side of the project. 

Core Discipline: Character Concept art and Modelling for Games. 

Area of Enquiry:  Remains the same.

Agreed Action points:

General:
Remains the same.

Design and a contextual relation.

Experimenting with pose and proportion. (Traditional/digital sketchbook)

Design methodologies to enhance model topology and quality. 

Designing through 3D – Emphasis on topology budget. More interest in designing in low poly opposed to high poly sculpts > low poly. 

Agreed Deliverables:

Appropriate Visual Development (in the form of traditional/digital sketchbooks) for the creation of 3D character assets for both low poly and any high poly models.

Digital sketchbook should include the understanding and exploring of necessary topology. 

All Maya files for 3D models created and their corresponding texturing, mapping and rendering images. 

Blog in the form of a .PDF

Transcript with personal mentors in the form of .PDF.

Mentors.

So this is very cool. For this module we are assigned mentors from industry, who we should remain in regular contact with. It's quite awesome. 

The mentors are relevant to the area you chose, and the mentors I've been assigned are fantastic. 

To cover the concept art and modelling side of things I have been assigned Alex Ronald - a brilliant artist who has worked in many areas across the entertainment industry. From Comics to Crackdown, his career so far is fascinating at a glance, and so I'm very much looking forward to meeting him. 

Mike Cummings is my other Mentor. He won Dare the year I started my undergraduate back in 2009 with "Shrunk". Since then Mike has worked at Travellers' Tales as a technical animator. As a kid, and even now, I was a huge TT fan. Puggsy was one of the first games I ever player - and played it I did. A LOT. Sonic R and Sonic 3D also provided many a fond memory. Nostalgia aside, it'll be incredible having a professional , from a company whom are such a huge inspiration to me personally, to help me out with my work. 

Pose and Proportion. 

Today I decided to create a character sheet for what could potentially be my first 3D models of the project. I've created a lot of 2D designs so far and they've been a great help for developing my skill, but this is the first one which I believe can serve my 3D practice well. 

I was thinking this morning about the 3D modelling of a character as a child, and then also as an adult. Typically, peoples personalities and physical appearances tend to change with age. So I thought it would be a great idea to establish one strong character profile, but at different stages in his life, and then move onto the topological and animation considerations.

As you can see in the development sheet below, I've also included some simple vehicle designs. I find that including things like vehicle designs and environment sketches helps me find context in my process. Hopefully I'll have time to do some quick models for these vehicles as props for my final models. 

Considering how a character changes with age. (Click for High-Res)

Low Poly Modelling and Textures.

Low Poly Modelling and Textures is a module which places interest in the appropriate topology for specific 3D model applications.

For the module we've to create low, and high polygon models for a character, a vehicle, and an environment.

The first step of this project was to complete a Personal Development Plan (PDP).

So this is what I wrote up last week, and is in no way final:

Student Name: Rory Jobson

Core Discipline: Character Art for Games and Animation.

Area of Enquiry: Stylised conceptual artwork and an efficient transition into 3D assets for games.

Agreed Action points:

General.
- Module Blog
- Life Drawing Classes each week. (Subject to demand)
- 2-3 Digital tutors videos per week.
- Study of relevant industry professionals for each area of development and where applicable/available study the pipeline from 2D - 3D art.

Design and a contextual relation.

Character: Experimenting with pose and proportion. (Digital Sketchbook)
Vehicle: Experiment using existing methodologies. Focus on theory behind (Mechanisms).
Environment: Ongoing study of architecture and nature and how they correlate.

Agreed Deliverables:

Appropriate Visual Development (in the form of a digital sketchbook) for the creation of 3D character, vehicle, and environment assets for both low poly and high poly projects. Digital sketchbook should include the understanding and exploring of necessary topology.

All maya files for 3D models created and their corresponding texturing, mapping and rendering files.

Blog in the form of a .PDF.

I should hopefully have some artwork ready to show by the end of the week.

Cheers