Monday 1 July 2013

fmp

Hey,...finally an update on fmp


I think the the project in general went quite well although I had some serious concerns over some of the quality of work. The beginning phase of the project i was quite confident as I was working from a pre-existing concept so I was quick to start the modelling process an immediately started the high poly for my first character ( big-guy). i started testing out various workflows and techniques to get finer result so i spent a week or two just exploring this fully knowing that I will be able to catch up; which i did.

So what happened?

The sculpting of clothes gave a unique challenge as each time I finish sculpting major areas, I also gained more insight on it and this meant that i could see some of the things that i did wrong which I will now have to fix. I was also getting crits on how to improve which also meant that i would have to revisit areas of the model which i thought i had completely finished; it almost felt as if I was taking 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Once I was out of this phase the rest of the model went quite smoothly, however the going back and forth took almost majority of the  fmp.

Also I had some crits from the guest character artists that gave demo and useful tips  on improving which essentially meant that I had to revisit some of the sculpts again to redo some of the folds, as I learnt a lot from them.  So all of this meant that I now have less time to spend on the rest of the process and meant that I wasn't able to give as much attention as I could have otherwise. On a positive note since the sculpt was quite detailed I was able to bake additional maps to assist the texturing process which was crucial to finishing the project in time. However i later discovered new techniques which I could not attempt entirely due to the fact that I was very short of time. Since I used 2 texture maps for each character; if I were to redo all the character’s spec and gloss map that would mean to do 12 textures which was not possible in the short space of time so also some of the maps were ok, I think there are many things which i would change for me next character ( workflow wise)

So could this have been avoided?

Well, personally i felt that i was glad that I took a slightly longer road to learn some of this.This was mainly because I would have to resolve this issue at some point which was to learn to how to make clothing and folds; I also learnt how to efficiently sculpt faster as there were many flaws with the workflow i was previously using. It is also worth mentioning that since this process was very tedious it was all the more reason to attempt it while i’m still in university as the environment provided a committed atmosphere to push through the work while getting useful crits and encouragement from peers

To sum up I think I learned a lot of industry techniques and also what my personal weak points are so i can work on improving them. Although I am slightly disappointed that i didn't do some extra work which i originally planned..(sets/small environment for character) I am still content that the fmp challenged me and has mostly been a learning experience more than on showcasing work. Honestly I think the work at best is average and honestly I think I can do a lot better next character.