Sci-fi pilot - Day 5 - final

Oh boy - the last day was productive.

As I said yesterday I unwrapped that model but I wasn't happy with it so I decided to redo it.

I took that ^^

Molded into that^^

and after applying it to mesh it looks like that^^

so if I paint that on top of texture^^

the model starts to look like that^^

and finally becomes this ^^ :D

I did my homework and learned how to apply normal maps correctly day after I finished that so if I were to redo that now it would look better.

The reflectivity is feeded by B&W mask. The darker the mask is the shinier the model is. 

The material is controlled by RGB mask  - red channel is for metals, green one is for material (or more like rubber...) and the blue one is for glass (like visor).

And that's how the model looks with ambient occlusion mask applied.

The reason behind all that masking mambo-jambo is that I wanted to export it to Unreal Engine 4.

I didn't but at least I know the workflow now.

I also tried to animate walking cycle just to test some tools, rig and my general gut instinct. 

That's the first try

And that's the second one. 

I'm John Snow of animation so don't cringe too much.

Hands are deforming in a weird way... guess that's the bad morphing cage problem.

Shape Keys are on my TODO list for tomorrow so it shouldn't be a problem in future models.

And here are high res renders of her. I hope that the blogspot won't scale them down terribly.

+ a small rotator of final product.

I've never seen that many "ands" in a written text. Guess that's another thing to work on.

That's it.

So long.

Sci-fi pilot - Day 4

I need a coffee and a break. Not a long one. 30 minutes is good enough. 

I'm done with that all pilot thingy. It's rigged, textured and all, so you can expect next part tomorrow. 

Later today I got planned some normal maps studies and tomorrow I want to wrap my head around morphing and shape keys in blender, because using morphing cage is unusable in Unreal Engine 4.

I exported that as *.fbx, opened UE4 project and got angry with myself. 

I haven't took into a count as simple and obvious thing that the morphing cage not working in UE4 because of its modifiers. 

I knew that from the beginning. I brainfarted so much that I almost laughed when I saw the raw version of my model in UE4.

Well the good thing is that I know where I've f***ed up. At least I tried.

Any ways that's what I got at the end of day 4:

Some extra pads, and sachets.

And here's where the fun part begins.

For you it's just a small colour change, but the change was kind of big on my side.

I unwrapped entire model and put some flat colours on it. 

What it basically means is: 

I cut that into pieces, flatten the shit out of it, painted flat colours on 2D image and applied to 3D model. Piece by piece, clip by clip, strap by strap...

As I changed it almost completely the very next day I don't have that version of UV layout or texture.

I'll show you what I'm talking about tomorrow. 

Now I have for you few GIFs.

Here's simple rotator of a helemet. The blackness on her earpad and respirator was caused by flipped normals. They flipped automatically after applying the mirror modifier.

Easy fix for that was to enter and quit edit mode. I haven't even had to recalculate normals which is nice.

Here's how it looked right before UV unwrapping and texturing.

And here's a wacky little animation that I used to check clipping and stuff like that. 

I started rigging right after I finished with unwrapping so it's early stage of that process. 

It's my first animation ever made using bones (except that rotator from anatomy sculpture but that was just a root bone rotation) so it's not even close to be good but it serves its purpose.

Oh and that weird flickering on the ground was caused by not having enough geometry on that plane.

Scaling it down (and later scaling it up again but with more subdivisions) solved the problem.

As I mentioned earlier I'm using morphing cage and mesh deform modifier and my cage is not accurate. That's why those hands are distorting with every move she makes. I really have to get into these shape keys...

To avoid the distortion on hard surfaces such as a helmet and accessories I vertex parented them to her body. 

"What does it mean?" you ask. Well... I basically stapled them to her body with tiny triangular staples :D 

ouch

If any of therms I use is for you unknown... google it. Really. It's not a rocket science,
and trust me - you really, REALLY don't want me to teach you that :D

Not yet at least. Maybe in few years.

The coffee break's over...

That's it,

So long

Sci-fi pilot - Day 2 and 3

So yeah... I was too lazy to write something yesterday.

I retopologized her hands and feet

I was using subsurface modifier (< this temporarily devides squares to 4 smaller squares so it gives me better look) during the retopology process and that's how it looks without it.

At that point I'm happy with my topology and I'm starting to add some straps and stuff. 

I put some basic shaders on them and that, I think, is the very moment when I said "goodbye" to my subsurface modifier.

I was switching that on and off, and then I decided to delete it and give some more loops in places like midriff, belly button. Basically everywhere where it needed more topology. As I said 4200 verts is the goal (for the base mesh at least) so I had to put those bonus quads rather sparingly.

And that's the only thing I was able to do yesterday. I mean some shader tweaks (I know I will change it million times but its purpose is to give me some directions), earpads and respirator is not bad for circa 3 hours of work for someone that creates his first animation-ready 3D model, but I wish I could do more.

That's it for today.

Back to work,

So long

Sci-fi pilot - Day 1

So I decided to do a bit more advanced stuff...

I even started with the concept art. Well... maybe not real concept art. More like 3 basic views of what I had in mind. to have something to start the modelling with.

Pushed proportions, few straps, some hard surface and the basic idea is ready.

I was thinking about Sci-Fi jet pilots and stuff. Something that'd be suitable for games.

I started with basic, low-poli mesh, somewhat resembling my "pilot" proportion-wise.

Defined her anatomy more

and more

and more

and then I put on her some details like shoulderpads, straps, helmet, and stuff like that. 

And then the retopo* has begun...

I'll do the hands and feet separately later. 

*Long and boring process of covering your super detailed mesh with more policount efficient version. 

Original had 250k vertices and retopologized model have 4200 of them. Not yet game ready but it's good enough for animation. 

I'll keep you informed about the progress.

That's it

So long

More 3D anatomy

Better anatomy and better rotation GIF.

Last sculpt left me with the feeling that I can do better or more like I SHOULD do better.

I started with same process as last time but then I thought "hey! let's do the rest of him! ~yaaaay~" (<-that may be a lil bit exaggerated).

I just drew out his legs from his torso and if the look flat... well - they are. They would be like 5 centimetres wide. 

Not wide. It's Z axis ( Y axis in blender) so it's depth I presume. 

I changed proportions 

Added some bulk

Then I kind of marked where the muscles are. I didn't put any form yet. It goes later. 

And then I ended up changing everything and repeating the process once again.

Few times.

I said that many times but if something is bad - change it. Even if you spent on it few hours.

I mean as long as it's not a commission and you're not constrained by the time limit.

That's how it looks in a close-up.

And those are crippled hands with non-functional thumb or whatever.

And that's how it looks now.

Throughout the entire process I was using awesome references made by Rafael Grassetti. 

Really really dope stuff. Just google it and let it sink.

Now I have to retopo it and it would be probably a good idea to also finish my Day #13 of Istebraks 14 day challenge.

Hope it helped somewhat.

That's it.

So long