A whole bunch of BS

2D land: the sequel:

2010-06-26T22:30:00.003-04:00

Well, apparently Blogger doesn't like uploading more than 6 images per post, so here are the rest of the paintings:

Self Portrait with puffy, smirking lips:

Self portrait with suspicious purple:

Garth as a badass with cancer stick:

Pit Stop in 2D Land:

2010-06-26T22:13:00.004-04:00

Well, now that college is all said and done, I decided to take a little detour down to memory lane and revisit some of my old 2D roots. I haven't been doing anything too terribly risky at this point, mostly just some quick portraits of myself and friends that I'm basing off of photos I can pilfer from Facebook. Here is my short collection of these little creations. I'm mostly just trying to learn a bit more about form and lighting, as well as push the envelope of color theory and speed up my process. While I'm not really sure I've achieved any of these things, I certainly have had fun making them with CS5's new mixer brush! Anyway, enough jibba-jabba, here's the scoop:

Seister with living hair:

An old picture of my Grandma:

Chris contemplating what it means to be a badass:

Loverly Denise:

Sorceress 'Reducks'

2010-04-11T03:07:00.006-04:00

So, as the title states (sort of), I've managed to unearth the old sorceress concept that I was working on back in Christmas '09. After this much time, the design has fermented in my brain a bit, as these things are wont to. This 'mental digestion' of sorts, was actually far more pronounced than I would have expected. In fact, so much of my original idea has changed that I thought it would be prudent to take some time to explain. For starters, here are the old and new concepts respectively:

Old Concept:

New Concept:

I know, it doesn't make much sense, right? Well, I decided to try something a little different this time around with my character designs. Taking some excellent advise from the senior character designer of EA games, I tried to give this character some backstory. As a result, the concept has shifted considerably since my last attempt. Basically, the idea for this new concept is this character is actually from our world, but has found herself in the fantasy realm. In as much, I tried to visualize what traces of 'humanity' she would have kept after several months of living in a different world with different styles and customs. The fact that she happens to be a mage in this new world has also shaped her attire as well. In as much, I thought boots, pants and backpack would probably be the last to go since they're pretty practical and could potentially have sentimental ties (the bag in particular has little dangly bits that are meaningful to the character).

Anyway, enough rambling, here's some pictures to look at now!

Old roughs:

New Roughs:

WIP 1:

It's over. . .sort of

2010-03-13T04:56:00.005-05:00

Long time no post. The finals were really getting to the team as we pushed ourselves harder and harder in an attempt to have a project we were actually proud to show. Titles and tasks got mixed into a frenzy and I found myself performing a myriad of jobs that I initially had never thought I'd be doing. Never the less, the final presentation has come and gone and we got through without any substantial glitches or hiccups (other than the one's we knew of anyway). It's not a perfect game, but for 8 weeks of work, I think we all did something we can show in our portfolios. That being said, I realized that I never posted any finished renders of the scientist, so here are some high quality renders, posed using donnie's rig. I'll probably throw up another version of this when I get around to it, as well as a turntable animation. Hopefully, one of our more Unreal-savvy team members will also get around to throwing together some matinee's of our level. If and when that happens, I'll post those up here as well.

If there's anyone out there reading this, thank you for your time and have a good week (spring break over here!) Great job, team!

B.S

Forgot I had this screen shot lying around (it's the load menu for the game that Joe and I threw together):

Light Maps and Normals:

2010-03-02T15:57:00.002-05:00

Well, I got a bit side-tracked today because when I was doing some research on foliage volumes, I found some interesting stuff about light maps. It turns out, the problem with overlapping UV's has to do with how the object receives light. If the object doesn't have second UV channel for a light map and has overlapping UVs, the object will look like crap. However, with a second UV channel and light map, it looks just fine.

Furthermore, I discovered that UDK really washes out normal maps due to light mass. I did some research online and found that it really improves the visible quality of the normal maps if a Constant3Vector is multiplied with the original normal map with settings something like this:
R = 2; G = 2; B = .7
This jacks up the bump on the normal map and makes it visible even with light mass. Also, I found that it really helps to overlay multiple normal bakes via photoshop to really saturate the normal colors. Check it out:

Without the vector multiply:

With the multiply:

Tree(s)

2010-03-01T04:36:00.003-05:00

Well, I'm still working out a few minor kinks, but I think I got us a tree system that might work. I tried using a foliage volume, but quickly discovered that UDK hates instanced geometry and proceeded to apply the same lighting to all the leaves. Maybe I just don't know how to change that 'feature' but it seems like it's an inherent problem with the setup because I've heard other people having the same issue. As a result, I decided to resort to the good old-fashion hand-placed branch alpha technique. I think the shape of the trees could still use a little refinement and the bark obviously is a place-holder, but with what I learned with this tree, my next attempt should be far better and take much less time. The tree up close is about 5,000 tris, but I added a LOD so that it is about 1k after a certain distance.
Hopefully this won't choke our level any more than it already is.

LODs in action:

House I think. . .

2010-02-28T02:38:00.002-05:00

Well, I think the house asset should be just about done now. I decided to use a BSP for the base house and add my assets on top of it. The only thing we're going to have to do differently than what I have set up, is raise the whole house up a bit so the stoop isn't sitting straight on the ground. Other than that, I think it's going to work!

House Front:

2010-02-26T07:03:00.002-05:00

Spent probably too long messing around with materials in Unreal to see if I could achieve a pseudo reflection effect. This uses a scene capture 2D actor that I'm projecting onto the texture with an add and alpha mask. I also threw in a little parallax so the reflection looks a little more lifelike. It's not perfect, but I think the effect is pretty convincing to the scrutinizing eye. I also learned that bloom effect = awesome. More to come soon! But now, the sweet siren of sleep is calling. . . why is the sun up already?

Sky Domino:

2010-02-24T04:04:00.004-05:00

Been working on the sky dome for the past couple of days. I think I'm pretty close to being done - maybe a few more tweaks here and there. I've also got a portion of the nebula for the bottom half of the sky, but it still needs some work so I'll save that post for another day (hopefully tomorrow).

The sky dome Texture:

Unreal and a little fun with glowy stuff:

Purple Clouds:

Look Mah, no seams!

The asset Train:

2010-02-18T15:21:00.004-05:00

Well, I'm definitely not as fast as I'd like to be, but here are some assets for the house / rift-wild. They're all unwrapped and ready to go - I might do some zbrushing for the brick on the chimneys and the wood on the table, nothing too fancy though. Hopefully I'll get a little faster at this and have a few more ready for Saturday.

EDIT:

That poly count is waaaay off - I forgot to delete one of the high-res assets and it's adding about 7,296 tris to the scene. In other words, actual poly count is 4,826 tris total.

Translation Device and Monocole Together at Last!

2010-02-15T19:10:00.003-05:00

So, I think I'm about 95% done with the said Translation device and Monocle. I need to read up on some Tutes for animated textures so I can fix the emissive aspects. Other than that, I think it's time to move on to some old-fashioned, hard-core assetting!

Translation Thingy:

2010-02-15T01:31:00.002-05:00

Well, it's been a while since I've updated the old blog, but I'm still working, I just decided not to spam the site too much. Anyway, I've been working on the translation device and monocle for the scientist. As of now, I think the translation device is just about done. The monocle still needs some texture map slapped on it, but hopefully that won't take too long seeing how time is of the essence. . .

Texture WIP:

2010-02-07T04:43:00.003-05:00

Now, to follow up for the night, here's a little current status update on where I'm at with texturing. I'm still not 100% sold on the leather pants, but the blue genes he had before were a little weird. Anyway, I'm not minding the overall brownish tone he's taking, I just hope it doesn't make him too bland.

Normals and Lighting:

2010-02-07T04:37:00.002-05:00

Well, forgot to post the shots of the scientist that were in the Alpha presentation. Basically just normal maps and diffuse to test the baked textures. I also did a little lighting test to simulate roughly what he might look like in the game environment (if he were all grey).

Final Topology:

2010-02-02T14:26:00.003-05:00

Alright, after several hours of topo-grinding, I think I'm pretty much done with the low-poly cage. I'm pretty happy because for once in my life, I actually made my triangle budget! He's sitting comfortably at 9,474 tris, just a bit under the 10k constraint we're working with. He could have been much lower res (and might end up being depending how people react to it) but he's got a lot of detail in the cloth wrinkles and I didn't want to sacrifice it. The result is a bit triangle-heavy, but I tried to put them in places that aren't going to interfere with deformation of the model. Anyway, enough chit-chat, here's the results:

And a closeup of the face:

Zbrush Milestone:

2010-02-02T13:48:00.003-05:00

Alright, here it is - the final(ish) Zbrush model! I probably will go in and add a few minor details later, but I needed a break from Zebrushing so I went to work on re-topologizing a low-poly final mesh. Anyway, here are some high-res shots of the Zbrush Model:

Quick Zbrush Update:

2010-01-25T15:42:00.003-05:00

About half-way through the first zbrush pass. Still have to work out a few logistics. . .

Onwards to Science!

2010-01-21T13:26:00.003-05:00

Well, I'll probably end up doing some more concepts for the environment, but for the time-being, I have some time to work on the Scientist character. He's a sort of quirky mix of Doc Brown and Einstein with a little Kramer in there as well. Here are a few concepts as well as a quick Zbrush rough for proportions / anatomy:

First concept:

An ortho-sketch:

Rough in 3DSMax:

Rough after some Zbrushing:

Environment Concepts:

2010-01-21T13:14:00.003-05:00

Well, through some strange series of events, I wound up being the primary environment concept artist for the project during pre-production. I don't consider this to be my strong suite, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Anyway, here is a sort of 'rough' outline of what the game environments will look like, starting from the boy's house and leading into the rift-wild:

Right outside the boy's bedroom the house begins to fall apart:

Finding it quite impossible to get out of the house the conventional way, our hero finds himself in this strange cave/house hybred after going through a coat closet:

At the end of the cave stands the unlikely front door to the boy's house. There is no reason why it should be where it is, it just is. Out beyond is the great unknown rift-wild:

Outside for the first time, the boy's sidewalk is rapidly falling away and the environment is replaced by strange floating islands. To the boy's left is a strange glowing device that is almost in reach:

After falling through the Aether (the energy dimension) our hero finds himself on an island full of strange and wonderful sights:

Rift Has Begun:

2010-01-21T12:58:00.003-05:00

Well, after about two weeks of pre-production on two different projects, the vote finally came around last Tuesday. The class democratically decided to work on a project called Rift. Rift is a sort of surreal / fantasy / sci-fi platform /adventure game that follows a young boy through some rather strange events. Long story short, scientists from another dimension have discovered another dimension full of pure energy and created a device to harvest that energy. Unfortunately, somewhere during the initial testing of the harvester, the membrains of the dimensions became unstable and eventually shattered, creating a multi-demensional rift. It just so happens that this Rift opens right outside the house of our protagonist (the young boy). The Rift-wild is a surreal, strange mish-mash of our reality and the other dimension's reality.

For the scope of the team project, we hope to finish the first chapter in the story, which would involve the young boy finding one of the surviving scientists who worked on the device and getting back to the device. At this point, the device would suck both the scientist and the young boy into god only knows where, ending our project with a cliffhanger of sorts.

If we were somehow able to make the whole game, it would involve the boy trying to help the scientist repair the device and restore the dimensions. Throughout the game, more dimensions would get sucked into the Rift and new dangerous dimensions would threaten the future of the entire universe.

Since I have been studying mostly character design in my time at SCAD, I will be working mostly on characters. However, in our team is the very talented Leng who is also a character designer. As we only have two major characters for the scope of this project, I will stick to the scientist character and Leng will work on the main boy character.

If all goes according to plan, Leng and I should be done with our characters around week 7 and be able to help the other teammates with any left over asset modeling and texturing.

Stay tuned for art updates and the like!

B.S

3D Roughs

2009-12-22T20:14:00.002-05:00

Well, I think I'm pretty much done with the concept art, so I decided to dive into 3D just to get something going. For this iteration of the process, I'm just working with a very basic box model with terrible topology for the simple purpose of defining the overall proportions of the model. As a result, none of this model will actually be present in the final version as it only serves as a guide in which to overlay the other assets and subtools.

relatively done:

pre-Zbrush:

post-Zbrush:

Time to pick up the pieces

2009-12-18T00:05:00.003-05:00

Well, I can't say I've been goofing off, but I can't say I've been very productive either. Anyway, this here is seeking to remedy that little detail before the break is over. I'm hoping to at least get the model done before the madness of school takes over again. This here is a revised sorceress / mage concept that I decided to make because my other concept was feeling a bit generic. As a result, I decided to try to shoot for something a little more eastern and avoid the classic fantasy style if I could help it. Anyway, it's not done yet, but this is what I came up with. compare with the first concept...

new concept

old concept

Renders with Stand:

2009-11-30T23:52:00.004-05:00

This is a little late, but I thought I'd throw them up anyway. I haven't gotten around to making a fancy stand, but I found the renders improved drastically by having just something for the Lich to stand on. With that in mind, here are the renders with the stand included (and the concept art):

Final Final:

2009-11-19T14:08:00.010-05:00

Well, this is it. I made some tweaks based on the feedback I got from my presentation. This is the 'presentable' poster format of the Lich:

Not to be forgotten, the turntable movie: Lich King

This is The End:

2009-11-17T01:47:00.001-05:00

Final countdown folks. DVD, powerpoint, renders. Good luck to you all!

Final Renders?

2009-11-15T05:34:00.002-05:00

Alrighty, I've spent most of the weekend rendering and tweaking, waiting, rendering, tweaking, repeat. I'm not sure if it's just the 5:30 am talking here, but I'm feeling just about done with the whole thing. Here are some pictures to consider:

Pose with textures:

2009-11-12T04:40:00.002-05:00

Alright, here's a few render tests with some photoshop bloom effects tacked on. I'll probably be messing around with the lighting for the next day or two, trying to get everything working the way it should. As far as the pose, I'm not 100% on a few things - mostly just how the hands are positioned. That's enough for tonight though, I feel the bed calling to me with it's sweet siren song...

Dear God Why, Or Rigging WIP?

2009-11-12T04:29:00.002-05:00

Gotta love rigging. And man, what the hell was I thinking with all the little dangly bits on this guy?? Thank the gods that I don't have to rig this thing for actual production use because I think I would kill myself. In as much, I'm just getting as much as I need to concoct a decent pose out of this guy. Some early render tests to come soon:

So Close and Yet So Far:

2009-11-09T03:32:00.004-05:00

Almost done with texturing for the main lich, but I still have to do the staff and Dagger. Hopefully those won't take nearly as long as the lich did (quite honestly, I can't afford them to). There are definitely some things I could probably do to make this texture pass a bit better, but I'm starting to really feel the time-crunch here. I'm going to move on to the accessories and rigging the lich. If I have time, I'll go back and touch up some of the textures a bit more.

The Texture Saga Continues:

2009-11-07T03:14:00.002-05:00

It's been slow-going on the texture process, but hopefully I should be able to finish it up by the end of this weekend. That may require an all-nighter or two, but better now then later. I've been looking to unify the color scheme a bit more in this pass so I added some color to overlay the entire texture. I'd say I'm about half-way done right about now, more to come tomorrow.

Textures Begin!

2009-11-05T04:08:00.002-05:00

Well, it's been a little while since I posted on the blog, but it's usually because I'm working until about 4 am and I'm too damn tired to post when I'm done. That being said, I whipped my ass and decided to go ahead and post some progress. Not a whole lot here, but hopefully enough to keep me from being screwed in the finals rush. On a side note, I have no idea why his head dress is purple behind his head but I'm too tired to fix it tonight so enjoy the little accent. In other news, I'm probably going to modify the fabric texture on the head dress as well. After looking at some real-life fabric, I realized threads really aren't that course. Oh well, everyone's gotta learn sometime...

Second Bake pass:

2009-10-31T03:42:00.003-04:00

Well, I don't have a lot to say at this point, just trying to get to bed before 4 AM. I think I'm going to manage, provided that I don't end up talking too much in this post. In addition to finishing up the baking, I've also been optimizing the poly count considerably since my last attempt. Currently, I'm sitting comfortably under my 15,000 limit with the lich at ~12,000, the staff, scabbard and dagger at 2,536 with a total of 14,529 triangles. I also threw in a couple of renders of the textures:

Baking Party!

2009-10-29T04:18:00.003-04:00

Bring your high and low res meshes to the oven, we're having a baking party over here! It's really a shame that you can't eat normal maps because they actually take longer to cook than cookies. It's probably for the best though because all that tangent bluish-purple doesn't really look that appetizing. Anyway, enough C list comedy for one night, it's time for bed. I still didn't even manage to finish the bakes, but I think I have a rhythm going now. One more session should be all it takes to propel me to victory. Farewell and goodnight, all my beloved, non-existent readers!

UV Fest:

2009-10-28T00:45:00.002-04:00

Well, I really don't want to talk about it. UV's, I think that says enough. At least the worst is over, hopefully.

Holy SH1T it Didn't Explode!

2009-10-27T03:12:00.004-04:00

Alright, I'm about 67.26% done unwrapping so I thought I'd do a quick bake test to make sure all my work wasn't for naught. Thank the gods, it actually worked. Here is a snapshot of the ~10,000 triangle low-res cage with the high-res details baked on in the form of a normal map. I was nervous it wasn't going to work because I had a few scares before with xNormal not working even though the models were in the same 3d space. Fortunately, I was not plagued by these problems for this occurrence. Looks like relatively smooth sailing from here out (aside from all the work that still needs to be done). Anyway, time for bed...

Low-res in the works:

2009-10-27T00:01:00.002-04:00

Well, nothing ground-breaking here, just a little update to show what I've been up to lately. Basically, I've been trying to cram the lich into a 10,000 triangle budget and it's been a pain to say the least. Currently, I'm sitting around 10,600 tris, but I'm thinking I'll be able to trim a good thousand off once I get the baking finished. In other words, I'm forced to preserve some extra detail to make sure the xNormal bake doesn't freak out. I've managed to get most of the retopologizing done, so I've been working on getting the UV's done. Next update will some fantastic UV shots. Oh yeah.

More baking experiments:

2009-10-24T02:54:00.003-04:00

I'm starting to like this whole baking thing. I'm able to generate normals and ambient occlusion that gets ~70 % of my desired look. There's definitely going to be some serious tweaking with color maps, but it's a good start. I tried some experiments with baking my textures onto a slightly higher res model in hopes that it would generate slightly higher quality maps. While this was generally true, it was a bitch to line up the silhouettes of the UV's since there was much less detail on the low-res cage. Nontheless, it may be a good technique to keep in mind for some of those shapes that lose a lot of detail in the bake (the metal rings that hang the heads). Speaking of which, I found that putting a normal map on the rings was actually counter productive and made the model look worse. I'm thinking that I'll probably just make the rings separate objects and create a separate shader as well. This shader will have the usual maps but not the normals.

Anyway, here's a little update on a couple of heads. The colored one is just a quick and dirty ambient map placed on the color channel and the ambient channel, a normal map and a spec map. The one on the far right is just the normals.

Staff of Evil:

2009-10-22T16:08:00.003-04:00

Alright, here's an in-progress shot of the staff model. This image is the normal map + ambient + spec in maya 2008. I'll be tweaking the spec and normals to get rid of some of the darkness around the sharp edges and adding a color map later on. I'm starting to get a little worried about poly-counts now because the staff is currently sitting comfortably at no less than 1,580 triangles. I tried to encourage it to loose some of it's girth, but the bastard was persistent. If I chop off any more, I end up with a model that doesn't accurately represent the concept. With that in mind, I'm now shooting for a 15,000 poly budget for all assets. I'm still going to shoot for ~10,000 for the actual lich model, but I'm sitting around 3,000 tris for the accessories alone. That and the collection of 7 shrunken heads are looking to hog about 2,500 tris. I think I'll be able to do it, but it's going to be tight.

Major Status Update:

2009-10-22T15:11:00.003-04:00

Alright, no assets to post at this point, just a general update on progress and a projection for the future. Although I have successfully avoided the blog this week, I haven't been idle in progress. After finishing 4 shrunken heads in Zbrush, I have been worknig on finishing the accessories for the Lich (Book bag, Dagger, Scabbard, Staff). As of now, I am 90% done with all zbrushing and will be retopologizing my assets for the rest of the week. I have finished retopologizing the dagger, the scabbard and the staff (these have also been unwrapped). I have decided to create a separate 1024 X 1024 texture space for the dagger, scabbard and the staff. Therefore, the end model will have a set of 4096 X 4096 for the lich and a set of 1024 X 1024 for the accessories. Renders and other thoughts coming soon!

Shrunken Servings Parts 2 and 3:

2009-10-16T21:32:00.002-04:00

Not a whole lot to say at this point, just posting a couple more shrunken head variations. I'm hoping these are different enough from the first one to pass as original. Let me know if you think they're too similar though:

Head 2:

Head 3:

This is What Happens When you Piss Off a Lich:

2009-10-16T16:55:00.003-04:00

Need I say more? This is the first shrunken head. My plan is to use this head as a template for the other heads, simply creating variations as I go. My only concern is that all the heads may start looking the same. If that happens, I'll have to whip out some original art. Anyway, I'm about to go test out this theory...

Shrunken heads on the menu:

2009-10-15T04:01:00.002-04:00

Well, the title is a bit of a misnomer since shrunken heads are my next meal. For this entree, I just threw together today's progress in the form of another turn-around. Fortunately, I finally discovered how to shade a plane as double-sided in Zbrush so no more f**ked up silhouettes! It was ridiculously easy to do, but for some reason I never noticed the setting before (under display properties - who'd a thunk it?). So, that led to redoing some renders I already had, but it was worth it (I think...) In slightly worse news, I just realized that I forgot to divide the belts before rendering, but I haven't really changed them since yesterday and I don't feel like redoing the renders for a third time tonight so enjoy the choppy belts. In other news, it's time for bed...

72 Files and Still Not Done:

2009-10-14T03:24:00.007-04:00

Either I save way too much or my hard drive is too small. Seriously, Zbrush's patented 'crash while saving' feature has driven me to near paranoia and obsessive saving. While there surely could be much worse methods of dealing with the circumstances, 72 * 200 MB = I need a new hard drive. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but it is 3:30. Anyway, to the actual meat of this post: I've been slowly working my way down the model, nearly to the feet at this point! Hopefully I'll be able to finish-ish the Zbrush portions of this project this week and get on to the retopolo-party before last call!

Head Shot:

2009-10-13T01:46:00.005-04:00

Well, it's way too late for someone who has to get up at 8:00 in the AM. Nevertheless, here I am, still awake for some reason. As if that weren't bad enough, I just spend 20 minutes tweaking a zbrush render to post on this damn blog. Anyway, enough explanation, I'm tired and I want to go to bed.

This is a Test:

2009-10-12T02:01:00.004-04:00

Well, aside from my two exams tomorrow that I probably should still be studying for, I decided to make some test normal-renders of a quick-and-dirty unwrap job in 3dsmax. The three models on the left are the low-res cage ~1,500 triangles, the one on the right is the high-poly zbrush at ~3,000,000 triangles. The mesh isn't final, I just wanted to sum up how well xNormal works for my lich character. Considering this is a pretty rough pass, I'd say it's going to work out. By the way, Maya's perspective render gives this guy some wacked out perportions. I'm 95% sure these aren't true-to-life proportions, but I'll be double-checking just to make sure. Comments and criticism are always welcome...

Zbrush in Progress:

2009-10-10T16:24:00.002-04:00

Alright, high time for an update on here. I don't have any breaking new stuff at the moment, just some WIP shots of the Zbrush detailing. Once I finish detailing in Zbrush, I will export a ~500,000 triangle mesh of the detailed version into Max and create a retopologized ~10,000 triangle game-ready mesh. Once I'm done with the optimized mesh I will export the full high-res model from Zbrush (~30,000,000 triangles) and bake that mesh's detail onto the low-res cage using xMapper. Comments/Criticism welcome as always:

Something little says a lot:

2009-10-07T21:46:00.005-04:00

Well, this isn't much to show for a post, but the significance is too great to not mention. Basically, with these little crappy attached images, I have managed to confirm that my new pipeline is going to work! I will now be rapidly detailing my model in Zbrush and rather than re-topologizing the Zbrush model, unwrapping the model, then going back into Zbrush and detailing the new topology, I will simply detail the base mesh in Zbrush, retopologize in 3D studio max and bake the high-res detail onto the low-res mesh using xNormal. The following images are examples of this process and my quick little experiment:

This image is the 'low-res, high-res' model consisting of two zbrushed spheres at about 150,000 tris used for retopologizing in max. The actual 'high-res' model used for the baking was ~700,000 tris (I didn't bother to take a picture of that).

This is the low-res 'game-ready' model. As you can see, I didn't spend much time on it. The goal was to make sure I could bake a multi-mesh onto a unified mesh. The test succeeded.

All engines are go!

Ben is Happy:

2009-10-06T12:30:00.001-04:00

Oh man, just like the title says, I am a happy person. After previously griping about the inconveniences of upgrading to 3d max 2010, I stand an absolute convert. Why? 2010 has a little something called Graphite Polytools, which basically transforms max from a decent program into an amazing program. To be slightly more specific, these new polytools let users select and anchor mesh and all polygons drawn upon that mesh will conform to that mesh's shape. In other words, retopology tools that don't suck (see you later Zbrush). That means I'm revising my pipeline a little, but with great satisfaction.

Topolo-party!

2009-10-02T23:27:00.002-04:00

Alright, as promised, here are some shots of the in-progress re-topologization! Exciting stuff. Anyway, still got a ways to go, but making head-way. Hopefully will be done with all this by the end of the weekend.

Roughing in the 3Dees:

2009-10-02T23:18:00.002-04:00

Hey all, this was actually done a coulple of days ago, but I was too lazy to put it up. Anyway, this is the pre-topologized mesh, before sculpting and after. Ad you can see, zbrush is not without it's charms. Currently, I'm working on retopologizing the model. I did a good portion in Zbrush, but I'm now moving on to the max side.

Color Studies 04 - Final @&*$#!% color pass:

2009-09-28T22:51:00.002-04:00

Well, for some reason I decided to make 6 more color studies. Lord only knows why, considering I probably could have and most likely will end up going with one of the earlier versions. Still, what's done is done, at least I've combined them into one numbered comparison chart, so hopefully it will be easy-ish to point out the more effective designs. Anyway, if there's anyone out there, a "go with number 3" or "they all suck" would be greatly appreciated...

Color Studies 03 - color themes:

2009-09-28T01:37:00.005-04:00

Alright, I think I'm starting to get a feel for the lich's design elements. I've been able to identify a few key things: primary color areas, secondary color areas and accents. As of now, there are two accent colors, but one of them is analogous to the primary or secondary color, so it doesn't stand out too much. In other words, here's a massive dump of more color studies:

Color Studies 02 - second batch of cookies:

2009-09-28T00:38:00.002-04:00

Cookies are delicious and so are color studies. Ok, that may be a bit of a stretch in the comparison department, but this is my blog and I set the rules here. That being said, here are some more delicious color studies. I'm not sure if I've actually made any progress here, but it's more to choose from, no doubt...

Color Studies 01 - first pass:

2009-09-27T23:01:00.002-04:00

Well, I've successfully managed to avoid color until now. This is the moment of truth, the moment I usually put off until long after it would have been useful. I guess I'm glad to be proactive about this, but doing so makes my head swim with all the different color combos. Here is the first pass, but after looking at these, I already know there are going to be more. As always, comments/criticism welcome!

Model sheet part 5 - Mostly Done:

2009-09-27T00:00:00.002-04:00

Well, I hate drawing the side view. After drawing the front and back view, you get these quaint little drawings that look just fine. Then, you go and try to draw the side view and suddenly all those little angles and curves that seemed so simple on the front and back view are replaced with proportional hell. It's like putting your drawing through a meat grinder and trying to reassemble it. Then again, I guess that's why it's one of the more important drawings. Either way, it's done, or done-ish anyway. I need to add in the objects (staff, bag and dagger) but those will come later, or sooner. Also, still need to get some color studies in this weekend. What's that interactive art critique? Pishh, you're only what, 10% of the grade at most...

Model sheet part 4 - time for bed:

2009-09-26T02:58:00.004-04:00

Alright, final post of the morning? - It's time for bed. The front and back are now more or less done. I will return to work on the side tomorrow. Hopefully some color studies to follow...

Model sheet part 3 - Asymmetry:

2009-09-25T23:12:00.002-04:00

Well, after much consideration and switching back and forth, I decided to go with the crown that curves inwards. Also, I kept looking at the design and thinking how incredibly symmetrical it is. The lich is normally quite a powerful character, so one could conceivably be mostly symmetrical due to their almost regal status. That being said, I decided to change the draping of his scarf to add to the asymmetrical appeal. It's a subtle change, but I think it helps the design. As of now, I'm working on the rear orthographic view, hopefully I will have that done by later tonight..er, early this morning, rather...

Model sheet part 2 - battle of the hats:

2009-09-24T03:11:00.002-04:00

Well, I think I'm about to call it a night here (thank goodness for 2:00 PM classes). Before I go off to dream land though, I wanted to post this and see if I can't get any feedback on the design of the crowns. I'm leaning to the one on the right, but I want to get other opinions. Do tell...

-BS

2009-09-23T23:43:00.001-04:00

Well, based on consensus of the class, I have decided to go with lich version 2.0. In as much, I have been working on the model sheet, an essential ingredient for the entrée of character design. I am currently experiencing a footwear battle in trying to establish a proper shoe. Unfortunately, my previous loose sketch subversivly avoided that little detail. Ideas are welcome, as well as any other thoughts:

Character Idea #3:

2009-09-22T01:23:00.000-04:00

Alright, final post for this evening - er, morning. Oi, I have to get up in 6.5 hours. Well, this started out as some kind of wraith/necromancer thing, but turned into a lich again. Oh well, the tough part is going to be deciding which one to go with. I'm leaning towards the one on the left or the one in the middle. Comments/criticism welcome:

Character Idea #2.5:

2009-09-21T21:45:00.000-04:00

Well, this isn't exactly a new character idea, but I was kinda hooked on the lich thing, so I decided to try my hand at a redesign of him. Personally, I like this version much more than the first, it just feels more alive (well, not literally) but more original and flowing. I'm currently leaning towards the lich on the far left, but I like the bottom half of the middle sketch better. Comments/criticism welcome:

Character Idea #2:

2009-09-21T21:40:00.000-04:00

For the second character, I thought it would be fun to make a lich. I tried a few variations on this, but ended up with something similar to what I started with. After some consideration (and several hours of detailing a model sheet) I came to the realization that I wasn't very happy with the design. Either way, here's what I came up with:

Character Idea #1:

2009-09-21T21:23:00.000-04:00

Alright, here's the first character design that I came up with a few weeks ago. Comments, criticism welcome:

2009-09-21T21:05:00.003-04:00

By dictation of the class (and my compliance) this first project is going to be a combination of my first and third pitch. Basically, the project will focus heavily on the entire process of character creation:

1. I'll start with creating a detailed model sheet with a front, back, side, 3/4 view and head shots of the said character.

2. From there, I'll spend all my waking hours attempting to craft the most beautiful, detailed 3D model I have ever made in my entire life.

3. Finally, I'll concoct some illustrated portrait of the character in some environment/beauty shot.

Cheers,

BS

It begins:

2009-09-21T20:45:00.002-04:00

Well, it's been said that all things both good and bad must have a beginning. I'm not sure who said that, but I'm going to go ahead and agree with that statement. I like to consider the first post in a blog as a sort of 'christening.' This is the post that sets the stage for the rest of the adventure, be it good, bad, or mildly amusing to teenage girls. So, in the spirit of keeping things alive, I'm going to start fresh by saying a few things about my current project, Studio I.

Fortunately, most of my classmates either agreed with me or didn't complain when I said I wanted to do character design. Chances are, I'm probably aiming for the stars, but then again, I'm sure somebody out there said you should aim high.

Anyway, here is a summary of my initial 3 pitches to the class:

Pitch #1:

Create one highly detailed character model

Try for 2 character models, but scale back if necessary

- Model should correspond to industry standards and serve as something that could potentially land a job
- Model will be around 10,000 triangles
- normal map, spec map, spec color map, ambient map, glow map and diffuse maps.
- Normal map will be created using a hi-res version of the model in Zbrush

Pitch #2:

Create 4 hand-painted stylized character designs.

-Models will be stylized and targeted at specific companies:

- Hand-painted texture style
- Exaggerated proportions
- Low-poly < 5,000 triangles

Pitch #3:

Concept $ illustrated 3 characters

- Full models sheets for each character
- Fully illustrated portraits of the three characters in environments

More to come...

Cheers,

BS