3D Week 09 – Assignment 3: part 4

Hello!

This is the final update on the final assignment of the 3D1 course. I’m really pleased with how it turned out, and by comparing this with my first assignment (the sci-fi crate) I can tell that I have really learnt a few tricks. The modelling is so much faster and the final mesh is much more optimized. The texture is more appealing (and more fun to create) as it is hand drawn instead of using photos from the internet.

Well, here is how the final character turned out in UDK:

  

Here is how the diffuse look like:

And the specular:

And the Normal:

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And that’s it for the first 3D course. This course has been the most interesting and fun so far form me. Everything has been new, and the learning curve has been going straight up. It feels like every week a hundred of new things was though out and that’s really cool.

Until next time; Take care!

-Lui

3D Week 08 – Assignment 03: part 3

Hello there!

This post is just a visual update on the Assignment 3.

Here is how the final body mesh looks:

And some details:

Here is how far from the concept silhouette I have modelled. Notice that the front pose concept art is not symmetrical and therefor the differ on the left side:

And last a comparison side by side with the turn around:

As you can see I have tried to stay as much as I can to the original silhouette, and then added some more interesting lines to it. My client (Seamus) is totally cool with this and he says that he likes how the final mesh turned out, And so do I.

That’s it! CYA!

-Lui

3D week 08 – Facial modelling

Hello!

This week has been about modelling faces. We talked about different methods of creating facial meshes and theoretical about edge-flow and topology for facial projects.

One faster and simpler ways of convert real life object to digital 3D meshes is by scanning them by simply photograph the object from all the right, necessary and different angles. The photos need to cover all of the faces, edges and angles that you want to have on your 3D mesh later on.

When all photos are taken, upload them on to your computer and open them in a 3D scanning program. We used the Autodesk 123D Catch as it is a great program that will scan your photos for free. What the program does is that it takes all of your photos and arranges them in a 3D space which then creates a 3D mesh of the photographed object. It also gives you a texture map for your object created from the photos as well.

At the motion capture studio in school we took photos of our own faces for converting them to 3D meshes by using the scanning technique just described. Unfortunately the process did not work for me as my photos was a bit blurry so they did not transform in to a correct mesh of my face (my head was all distorted and only half of my face did make it to the mesh, so I could not really work with it) so I had to use an already existing scan of a face for the anatomy parts of this week.

The anatomy of a face is rather simple actually. The key parts for the edge-flow grow from the mouth and eyes areas and meet across the nose and on the chin. Around the eyes the edge-flow goes around in circles then meets like a mask that connects both of the eyes (I have only modelled half of the face as it can be mirrored, so you’ll have to imagine the other half of the mesh being identical). For the mouth it gets modelled the same way as for the basic eye edge-flow, that is circles around the mouth, and then reaches out to meet up with the rest of the mesh.

Here you can see the edge-flow for the eyes and the mouth:

Here you can see the edge-flow of the face and how it connects the two parts:

Note: the software used here is a trial of 3d-Coat.

After reading the article on ‘Photogrammetry’ in ‘The Vanishing of Ethan Carter’ I can only say “wow!” these guys really knows how to use photo-scanning as the tool for what it is, and they also really have the time and skills to do it. When we were making our models from photo scanning we used about 9 images for the process (only for the face) while they were using everything from 26 photos up to hundreds or even thousands of photos which resulted in that they got a much higher quality mesh of the object.

Also when we were creating our objects we did it from a living creature (lol. yes I am still alive ;p), and as they state in the article it’s really hard to capture moving objects:

“Photogrammetry gets confused by moving subjects. If you want to scan human face, even tiny head/facial muscles movement between photos means errors in scan and lots of manual cleanup and resculpting.”

But with the right set up, the right settings and the right equipment a perfect shot of a moving object is still possible. So I won’t give up on this technique, it actually really cool and I want to try it out for more complex objects with even more shots trying to capture that perfect  mesh of a real life object.

And that’s it for this post, CYA in the next one!

-Lui

3D week 07 – Anatomy

Hello

This week we have been talking a lot about anatomy and how important it is to know how the body works in movement and muscles and so on to create realistic models and drawings.

This is my basic skill level of drawing “correct” anatomy humans:

Note: the sketch on the left is from today, the right one is a few weeks old and the small one is a few years old, just to see the progress.

 

I know that I can accomplish pretty “correct” volume in my body sketches, and that I can do a pretty good main body. The upper legs and arms also often turn out okay but when it comes to feet and hands I start to struggle pretty bad. Hands and feet are known for being generally hard to draw and I think my problems are based in their complex shapes and many moving parts and joints.

I also struggle with the face anatomy. I know where to place the parts that a face contains but they don’t turn out that great anyway so often I don’t paint them at all (yeah, that’s the way to get better at stuff ;p).

We brought up our sketches in class to get feedback from our colleagues, and over all they sad pretty much what I already have said; they thought that the base body look ok but that I need to go over the fundamentals of the anatomy for the outer parts of the human body to fix those things that do not turn out correct. And well, I can’t do other than agree, I know my flaws but I tend to work around them instead of fixing them, which results in never getting better at them.

To fix my flaws I think I do need a bit reading on the anatomy of the human body. I do know some of the tricks like “how many heads fit in a body” and such but I think it would be great to know all of them. Fully understanding the human anatomy will hopefully fix those proportions problems I have and result in a better drawing or model. For the smaller parts like hands, feet and face I think I, in addition to the reading, just need some more focused training and those parts will be no problem.

All my life my 2D artwork has been oriented towards the perspective type of drawings like environments, cars, cities, landscapes etc. And as my drawings have been focusing on those types, the drawings of character have fallen into shadow. I know I cannot draw soft surfaces like flesh or textile as good as I can draw a house or a car and that is not so good. So my plan is to from now on spend more time on drawing biological and characteristic subjects, reading and practise to increase my anatomy knowledge and skills.

First of I would like to get the face right, as that often is the part of the picture that people look at first. If that part is incorrect they won’t keep on looking on the rest of the picture. Second I would move on to the hands and feet’s, as they are so hard to master. And last of I would improve my overall anatomy skills to get a correct drawing and after that just move on to learning drawing hair and clothes.

That’s it for this post!

-Lui

3D Week 07 – Assignment 3: part 2

Hi!

This is just a really quick visual update post on the assignment 3 showing my work in progress of the base mesh and the edge flow. At this point I have really sticked to the original concept when modelling, but as I have some troubles with the turnaround I received from Seamus I will do some remodelling, mostly on the sillhouette to get a more appealing resoult. I will also redo some of the topology so it will become a mesh that is better suited for animation.

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Well take care!                                                                                        

-Lui

3D week 06 – Assignment 3: part 2

Hi

This is the first post out of three about our final assignment for this course. The assignment is to model and texture a character-concept made by another student in our class.  The concept I was given is made by Seamus Newman.

All I was given by Seamus is a turnaround of the character, with no background or story at all. No information about what type of game he is suited in or what his purpose is (all that pre-production information you need to know to be able to make the concept you is being asked to do).

So this blog was supposed to be about what type of character I’m going to make, but as I know nothing about him other than what he look like in the ”turn-around” I’ll have to guess his background.

Well here’s the turnaround I received.

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The character has a much defined cartoon style. His body is way out of proportion whit his thin and long legs compared to his upper body that is more muscular and/or takes up more volume. The head is very small and the details on this turnaround doesn’t give away much of how the facial area looks. First I thought the whole head was just an eye (which would have been really cool actually) but I had to ask my client if this was true, and it wasn’t. The face is an actual mask where the black spot in the middle is some kind of hole so that the character can see (it’s not his eye/eyes, and you should not be able to see them either. I can imagine it being some kind of thin textile for the character to see through, like on many of those mask people wear for Halloween to see).

And here comes the guessing part about whom and what he is. By looking at the action pose he seems pretty passive I would say. He just stands straight up without any intends of aggressiveness.  The armour gives away that this person (or alien or animal or anything, I don’t really know) needs protection from others, and as he also have a weapon he can harm other individuals. And by that I assume that this person is someone that the player would interact with (possible being the character the player play as, but I don’t think so) during a play-session.

By these statements I can think that the player will have to interact with this character in some way, probably within a mission of some kind. I imagine this character as some kind of guardian (mainly based on by looking at his gear and his attitude) that will protect something, maybe a gate to a path, or a treasure. It would be something of value for sure and the player won’t be able to pass him if the player won’t do what the guardian asks for. I don’t see him going into battle with the player, rather just blocking him or her so that a pass isn’t possible without giving the guardian some sort of exchange, like money or some artefact etc.

For completing this assignment I would like to have a close-up of the facial area, so that I can understand how the mask works and functions (as I now, with the materials handed to me, even can’t tell the difference between a mask and an eye). I would also like to know about all the background facts for this character so that I can understand the concept further. Right now everything I can do is to guess how things should be and why they should be like that, so this is something that would be greatly helpful.

One risk with this project can be to stay within this art-style that the concept is drawn in. I guess I’ll have to go away from the proportions of the character a bit to actually make him physical possible, as right now his body won’t really function. One other risk is more of a personal problem as I’m not so good with edge-flow. I can make the volumes right and correct but as this is a character that will be made with animation being possible I really need to focus on how the edge-loops and the edge-flows should be done. Also (with experience from assignment 2) I need to spend some time on the textures to accomplish that cartoony look that this character has. Other than that I think it will be okay.

This post is a little shorter than it would have been but as I haven’t received anything other than the turnaround this is all I can write for now. I can do an update to this post when I get more information from Seamus about this concept but right now this will have to do.

So that’s it for this week. See you soon!

-Lui

3D week 06 – Assignment 3: part 1

Hi everybody!

This week we started to work on our assignment 3, which will be a humanoid character (it doesn’t have to be a human but as long as it has two arms, two legs, a head etc. it’s okay).

When creating a character first of you will do a concept of what kind of character it is. Like if it is a human or a monster or whatever, if it is male or female, if it’s young, old etc. a kind of background check so here we go for my character.

Obviously my character concept is inspired from the Pokémon Squirtle. Squirtle lives in a world that is populated with humans and fantasy animals. The animals/Pokémon’s have different ability’s according to elements such as earth, metal, air, fire, water etc. Squirtle is a water type Pokémon so he would live near water or in water. According to the Anime I would say that the world takes place in current time. The people in this world have “smart devices” and a pretty high standard technology very well comparable to what we have in our world in present time.

About gender and age, my Squirtle is a male in his younger teenage years. Compared to human age he would then be around 13-14 years old boy. The differentness between a female Squirtle and a male Squirtle can’t really be spot and they are unisex in their appearance so there is really no definition for the genders. Squirtle is like a koala in size, around 70- 80 centimetres in height and weights 10 to 15 kilos. His skin is of amphibian type, scale and dry skin that is.

The Humans are the leaders in this society while the Pokémon’s are more like pets to them. The wild Pokémon’s often want to stay free and not being captured by humans so whenever they are being approached by a human they often stay aggressive and defensive, and will fight for their freedom. The Pokémon’s doesn’t seem to mind though once they have been caught by a human (if this isn’t Stockholm syndrome then what is? and no one seem to think it is weird lol). The captured Pokémon’s often becomes best friend with the human that caught them so once the dramatic kidnapping is over everything is very peaceful and happy. My character is still a free Squirtle though.

The economy for humans would be something compared to what we use such as coins and bills. The Pokémon’s use more of a trade form in their economy. They trade food or objects for food and objects so the Pokémon’s don’t use an actual currency when performing trades.

Well I guess that’s it for the background of my character. So here’s the turn around the model should be made from made by me using illustrator.

 

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But as in this assignment we’re not going to make our own characters I’m not going to model my own Squirtle. The guy who is making my concept is named Alexander Westerdahl (you can find his blog here if you want to follow up this project or just check out his work, which I think you should as he is a great 3D artist). I am going to make a concept from Seamus Newman (blog here, and you should really check him out aswell) which I will blog about next.

And until then; take care!

-Lui

3D Week 06 – Assignment 2: part 3

Hi everybody!

This is the final update on the Assignment 2, just to show everyone how it turned out.

Tris count: 993

Texture size: 1024 * 1024

 

Hey ho, let’s go!

These are screenshots of the dagger/knife in UDK:

This is how it looks in 3DS max:

This is how the diffuse map looks like:

And this is how the specular map turned out:

And this is the normal map:

That’s it! Moving on to the assignment 3. See ya’ there!

-Lui

3D Week 05 – Assignment 2: part 2

Hello!

This post is just a visual update of the assignment 2 for the 3D1 course. The screenshots is from my second attempt on this model as the first one was kind of sloppy done.

The new model has a total poly-count of 536, and a tris-count of 997. The first model had a poly-count of 799 and a tris-count of 1509, so there is a lot less of polygons in this version and this one is much more optimised. When I was making the first one I did work on it aiming at a much higher resolution on the topology than this version. But as the knife is a rather small object, there is no need to go as high as I did then. Then I did also change the shape a bit more and exaggerated the edge-flow to make the cartoony art-style more obvious.

As I did change the model I did also need to redo the UV layout. Here is how it looks (the red area to the left). The image also shows the knife with the UV-checker on to show so that there is very little distortion both on the top and the bottom of the model.

That’s it for this Update. There will be one more post on the assignment 2 next week.

Cya!

-Lui

3D week 05 – Assignment 1: part 4

Hello!

This is the final post about my crate and my first assignment in 3D graphics 1.

A 3D model often consists of at least four parts. The mesh which is the actual 3D model, the diffuse map which is the texture that holds all the colours, the specular map which tells the secularity of  different parts of the object, and last the normal map which contains information making details look realistic and not like “stickers”.

A diffuse map is basically a 2D image that gets wrapped around the mesh to give it the basic pixel colour from the bitmap used. A good diffuse map is made without a directional light as those are made whit the specular and normal maps. It should only have the basic ambient occlusion by getting darker in cracks and deeper areas. When working on your diffuse map you mostly work with the saturation levels and “raw” colours.

The Specular map is like the diffuse map a 2D image wrapped around the mesh, but instead of containing the colours for your object the specular map is a grey scale of how shiny your object is. The brighter the value, the higher specular the surface gets. In real life, one of the first thing the human eye notice is the secularity of a material, sometimes even before the colour of it. So to get the secular map right is really important to make a legit model. For example if you’re making smooth metal that is shiny you want to use a bright value to simulate that glossy surface, but if you’re making a dull surface like textile you will make it much darker as textile reflect almost no light at all. Take a look at your clothes and you will see that almost no light from other objects gets reflected from them, but for a mirror (a very smooth metal surface) almost all you can see is light already reflected from other materials.

The normal map is used to give your mesh a much higher resolution look than it actual has. A normal map replace what otherwise would have used a lot of more polygons. You should use the normal map whenever you want details on your model that is not interfering with the silhouette too much. What the normal map actually does is faking light and shadows on your mesh creating an illusion of that higher poly mesh for a much lower performance cost. Interactive normal maps can be used for creating effects when interacting with them, for example if you shoot at a wall the normal map will change so that the hole doesn’t look flat by getting proper shadows.

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This is how my final crate turned out. I’m pretty satisfied with it as it’s my first model ever, and it even got a diffuse map on it. I have only played around with 3D modelling a very few times before and most of the time I had no clue of what I was doing. So this is my first finished 3D asset and I think it turned OK. (the image is rendered in UDK)

 

And this is how my Diffuse turned out (you can check my latest post about how I did this):

 

This is my normal map:

And this is how my specular map turned out:

Hope you enjoyed reading!

-Lui