Week 10 and 11

I spent week 10 and 11 adding the final polish to everything. I managed to find time to get the hair cards done which I wasn't sure I'd have enough time for. Overall it turns out much better than I was expecting.

Week 9

Things really started to come together this week, especially with texturing. Not only did I manage to get almost everything left from last week textured, but I also got to go back and really fix some of the things I didn't like about the work I did last week.

I'm much happier with her harness now. I basically went back and re-did the whole thing.  I also really like how her boots came out, but I'd really like to get some more scratches and dings on them.

Before I think about adding in anymore details though, I need to finish her fingers and get the specularity map working right. I think that the lack of proper specular highlights is really hurting the textures. Once I get that working I need to focus on giving her hair, and then maybe I'll have time to think about adding more details to the textures. Unfortunately I only have a week left, so I need to make sure I have this project at a presentable point before I can worry about the little things.

Week 8

This week I began working on the textures for my character.

I started by doing a quick color block in maya.

It was mostly just a test to get a sense of how I wanted to break the character up and not so much for the final colors.

I then got into making the actual textures. Of which I managed to get a good portion of the head and torso done. 

 For the face I used multiples photographs of my actual face and stitched them together over the UVs.

Although it was good practice I'm not very happy with most of the textures I have right now and will hopefully be able to make some major changes to them.

I played around with making a specular map as well, but it was more as a test. I'll have to do a lot more work for the final one.

For week 9 I am really hoping to be able to get the limbs done so that I can circle back during week 10 and really polish things off.

Week 7

Watched a lot of tutorials for making normals and tried things out. Didn't have much success with them. I tried to bring things into mudbox as is and paint them but found that there was just not enough detail for them to transfer properly.

 Here's the face without any normals.

Here's what it looked like when I added normals. As you can see there isn't much of a difference.

 The legs weren't too bad but they weren't great either.

By the time I got to the arms I realized I needed to do something different and fast if I wanted to be able to determine whether or not normals would be worth my time for this project. After talking with some class mates about possible solutions I decided to duplicate  my model in maya and protect it's edges so that when I smooth it in mudbox it would retain the proper shape. Then, because the UVs were the same I could apply the normals I made on the smoothed model to my original low poly version. As a result the details I painted in mudbox were much cleaner and well preserved.

Here's a comparison of what I doing at first, and how it looked when I did it with the smoothed model.

 This is how the normals for the arm looked when I painted on the unprotected model.

And here's how they turned out when I painted on the smoothed model and then applied the normal map to the unsmoothed one. 
Clearly the second method worked much better.

However, after careful consideration I decided it would be better to skip the normals and jump right into texturing for next week because they still would need a lot of clean up and I want to have something that is presentable by the end of the quarter.

Week 6: Modeling and Uvs

So this week I buckled down and finished the model. I had really been struggling during weeks 3-5 with getting the model started because I was spending too much time on the details and not enough time working on the overal model. This week was completely different however, what ever was bogging me down stopped and I was able to quickly progress through the rest of the model.

I think part of the reason was that I was very stressed out with work and in the end it just prevented me from being able to focus and work effectively. On top of that I was busy preparing for the Dreamworks and Autodesk Visits while also trying to get my portfolio together for the creativity fair. But all of that is finally over and out of the way and things are going much better.

Overall things turned around quickly and I've almost caught up to my initial pipeline schedule.
I think the toughest part to figure out were her boots because I wanted to be able to make them as seamless as possible. In the end I turned out with getting them to be entirely seamless which was great!

I was expecting to have more difficulty with the arms as well but they turned out to be relatively easy.

Once I finished the model I got right to work on the UVs, which thanks to the Bonus Tools are going extremely well and I expect to be done by the end of today.  I did take the time to try out 3D coat, which worked very well but I found that it did not save me much more time than using the Bonus tool because this is an organic model. It did seem to better for hard surface models however simply because of the way it lays out the UVs for flat surfaces always turns out better than in maya.

I will be mirroring over the boot and arm so I won't have to do them twice.
So far all that's left is the one section of her leg, the collar around her neck, her eye, the buckles to her harness, and the piece of armor that's sitting directly on top of her hand.

For week 7 I plan on finally getting to sculpting in mudbox and possibly even begining the textures.

Week 5: Modeling

I began modeling the character about 2 weeks ago. Before starting I did a little bit of a follow along with a Digital Tutor's dvd called "Modeling Next-Gen Characters." 

Once I felt comfortable I started modeling my actual character. 

I realized the way I was modeling the chest, however, was incorrect since she is wearing a shirt so when I was ready to attach the shoulder I ended up redoing her chest area as well.

I ended up having a lot of trouble with the shoulder so I watched another Digital Tutor's Dvd called "Creating Digital Humans." Unfortunately I lost more time that I would've liked while dealing with the shoulder and am currently still trying to catch things up. 

This week I managed to finish her face and get far enough that I could start modeling the clothes. It will be tough but I think if I keep up this pace I can get back on schedule with everything.

Finishing Up Week 2

I made guide sheet for the setting. Which then really helped me to put together some guidelines for the character.

Character Guidelines:

Name: Freide Liesel

Age: 25-27

Ethnicity: Russian/German

Hair Color: Black

Eyes: Brown

Strengths:

Intelligent, strong willed, loyal, passionate, fearless

Weakness:

Emotionally distant which makes it hard for her to work in a team, has a tendency to over think things, can be too rational at times

Personality:

Known for her serious nature as a soldier and ability to focus and act quickly in combat. She is often bold and not afraid to outwardly challenge others. Although she is respected for her skills in battle her peers generally dislike her because of her outwardly threatening nature. Her personality can be rough but her intentions are generally good. She is extremely loyal and while she does not enjoy working in a team, she will fight to the death to protect her comrads.

Build: athletic

Profession: Special Operations  Field Agent

I was then able to finish up the thumbs drawings which allowed me to really get a sense of the style I was going for after the 3rd or 4th one. You can tell that the style of the outfits get more consistent about half way through the thumbs.

Finally I redid the t-pose and made a new hair style sheet.

 

Redefining My Character

Recently, I have been working to develop a clear concept of the character that I am going to create for my project. At first I was just trying to jump into starting the modeling, but I realized that I was having trouble really visualizing who my character is and what they are supposed to be about. Usually before designing a character I have a somewhat clear idea of who they are, their history, and their personality. But for whatever reason I have been struggling to come up with something for this project.  I had done some research on a style that I thought I wanted to follow and came up with the following sketches.

 I had decided to do the design in the middle and even came up with some T-poses to base my model off of.

 But after trying to start the model and doing a little over an hour of work on it, I realized I wasn't feeling any attachment to the design or really even drawn to it at all. There's something special that happens when you're trying to create a character that you really care about, and I realized that what ever that is was missing.  Now some people might argue that it's not important that you feel attached to what ever you are making, but I've found that when you have that special connection the love and care you put into the creation really does show through in the end result. If you don't care about your character, then it's likely no one else will either.

I decided to check out a video on character design called, "Character Design Pipeline: Production Art & Research Techniques with Barontieri." After trying some of  Barontieri's exercises for how he develops his characters, I realized I was right about not having a clear idea of who my character was.

I had developed new character thumbs that were entirely different from my first ones, which to me, really proved that I didn't have a clear and cohesive idea for what I was trying to accomplish. And it has become all the more evident that I really need to sit down and flesh out a clear concept and guidelines for what I want to do.

Now that I have returned to the drawing board, I have decided to take things a little slower. Before even trying to design the character visually, I need to design them emotionally.
I need to know:
Who is it that I am trying to make? What are they like? What's their personality? What do they do? What are they good at? What kind of world do they live in?

For all of these things I need to first find references. Which is why I have been putting together some rough style sheets.

Next I want to make one for the setting and then hopefully I'll be able to put together a clear character bio. I'd like to have this all done by tomorrow so that I can restart designing the look and feel of my character.