Lowpoly 2K mesh

Im not that great at rigging but slowly imrpoving...but ye its the 9K mesh thats finally rigged

Practice

27/01/2012 - Just some speed sculpts

 1 hour or something sculpt from a sketch and then used some anatomy book as ref, lot of stuff wrong with it..very generic but just tried to see how much I could do with limited time as i have group projects happening so I did not want to spend too long on this.

 

some concepts i did for the queens building project.

2012.

Bad Luck doesn’t begin to describe this holiday, but as always I was quite optimistic about the Christmas break especially because the summer holiday was quite a productive time for me so I was hoping for something similar this time. This all changed after the second week where all the progress I had made with my character work had corrupted and was back to square one; I say this but it was just my zbrush files that I had been working on. The file sizes for these are roughly about 800mb and this was mostly the reason why I didn’t have much iteration and also the fact that my Wacom tablet kept disconnecting after each save which made it rather annoying because I had to restart the computer each time this happened. In the end I paid the price for not taking that extra minute or so to save and restart as now I am back to the start. The character design has to be revised as I simply will not have the time to pack the same level of detail for the number of props in the time I have. I am going to have to simplify the details and this is pretty much going to be a 1 week project. I cannot believe this happened to me like 1 week before the deadline. I forgot to post screenshots of the zbrush sculpts as i went along and thought i'll do it once i finishedthe sculpt. Im definately doing it this time as i go along.

 

Plan

Day 1 – Quick think about character/base mesh/ start sculpting

Day 2/3 – Major sculpting and finish it (somehow)

Day 4 – Retopologising/ uving/possibly start texturing (highly optimistic I know)

Day 5 – Texturing

Day 6 – Finish texturing / start rigging and somehow finish it ..i don’t even know how to rig.

Day 7 – Do a second character (LOD)

Day 8 aka D’day – Finish everything.

 

ok, this is loose base mesh i put to gether but never used it because honestly I had a better base mesh that i used for my chacter but since i wont be able to pull that concept off due to the fact that the deadline is next week,I'm going for a slightly simpler one and this blockout gave me an alternative idea. It doesn't look as nice as the other one but at the moment I got to get on with the scultping so I'm going to import this over to zbrush andbuild base mesh in zbrush if necessary or use this to start sculpting.

I wish I sort of did this sort of thing with the other chacter and put progress stuff up but since i didnt I atelast want to do it this time so just incase something unfortunate happens I could atleast show progress shots.
I have been working on this character for about almost 2 days including today but the sculpting went much quicker than my last one because thers is literally no time to rethink anything and I sort of decided to focus on 3 major areas which is the jacket, trouser and a bag and of course. The sculpting WILL have to be completed by the end of tomorrow.
Looking back at the image now I can see that certain areas are looking quite flat which will need to be fixed by tomorrow and establish some weight, I think ive done that in some areas but it isnt consistent. To add to that I will need to add volume to various parts to stop it from looking flat.
The main thing I am slightly happy about is that the details are almost all asymmetrical because from speaking to the artist from creative assembly, one thing that he advised me not to do is symmetry in characters. However the overall silhouette is quite symmetrical which I hope to adress tomorrow; having said that the silhouette will not change dramatically because ideally I would like to add more props which I have decided against due to the time constraint.

update - 04/01/2012 - Face stuff and more

Face WIP - Today was one of the longest days, I spent majority fo the day sculpting, i made some significant ground on the torso which i will post tomorrow morning; I also did a majority of the face today which I need to round up soon but the face but was happy with the initial results. i will also have to reconsider the hair as i initially intented to use alpha cards for the hair but since this is turning out into a 1 week project I dont think I will have as much time so I'm thinking of just sculpting the hair. I can feel tomorrow is going to be an even longer day as I will have to try and complete the full sculpt of the jacket, trouser and bag.

update - 05/01/2012

Just woke up a while agao and pretty tired, ok not that tired. Ive been working on the jacket and trouser for the past 2 days and its been very tedious and muddy; fortunately I had taken quite a bit of reference which was very valuable but there are a few thing that I'd like to change such as the bag stap sort of drooping near the arm which will add more intrest but as things stand now I cannot take too much creative freedom as I will need to rig this model too. I am hoping to add a few more interesting detail here and there to make it fit to my brief a little more, the retopo/bake /texture is around the corner which is going to be very tough; for now im staying optimistic and hoping to finish the jacket and I will have to get onto the bag as soon as possible as that will be my major  prop and also finish the shoes. I WILL HAVE to finish the sculpting today or this character would not be finished in a week.

05/01/2012 - Updates V2

I have somehow finishedthe majority of the sculpt and it will soon be time to retopologise. There are still small areas that needs some attention but by the end of today i want to start on the retopo (fingers crossed)

07/01/2012 -
Its road to finishing the chacter is looking much steeper and i literally got 2 days left to finish and rig, at themoment I am retopologising the model and also simultaneously texturing it.Very Tired.

07/01/2012 - afternoon 14:45
Today is a crucial day, I have finally done the low poly retopo for the jacket and the trouser.

 This is the most tedious thing ever and managed to retain almost all of the sculpted detail. Now Imust finish the bag, boots and hands as soon as possible.

07/01/2012 - night -23:53

Ok, one and a half / 2 days left to finish this character ...need texturing and hands; baking done. Too tired, Need to sleep

 08/01/2012 -evening

I decided to do a quick colour idea and played around with a feeideas and decided to go for this. I wanted to try more ideas but i really need to start the texturing.

 I m thinking of using my jacket as ref for this and add some extra elements to it and i went for simple idea so it would have a good read. I decided to add a few orange highlights to compliment the colour from the jeans/trouser which is a very dark turquoise or some sort. The bag will have a slightly darker shade of grey compared to the jacket, however the jacket will also consist of dark grey/dark turquoise to add variation and interest.
I also need to pack all the maps and organise the uv in to 2 which is quite tedious so ill do that once I have done the initial blockout textures.

09/01/2012 - early morning

Finally put together some sort of texture blockout and it looks quite close to the painover i posted earlier, now down to the last day.

quickmax render - looks very blocky and there are a ton of issues with this but literally no time. Going to have to finalise this and tie up the textures as soon as I can and start on the low poly.

10/01/2012 - early morning

 

I have done a lot of tweaks in the past few hours and finalised most thing and its nearing completion. I will have to do an all nighterto bake this down to finish spec , a low detail mesh which I'm essentially going to bake it down from the high poly and also finish the documentation.

11/01/2012

i guess i should sum up...Sadly i was not able to rig or finish a low level of detail mesh within the last day so i'm pretty sure that I have lost a good chunk of marks. I cant believe the one project that i was looking forward to doing half a year ended up rushed and most of all half incomplete.

Evaluation

I am pleased about finishing the character within a week despite the fact that the character could have been optimised especially the topology as this character could have have been a 6k character. I was concerned whether I would be able to transfer all the details from the high poly to the low poly in 1 go without going back and forwards so I had a bit geometry to ensure teh cage covers everything without having to go too far out to fit details in. The textures could have been a lot better with no doubt but I went for something simple that would give a better read and i thought it looked ok. The character falls short in relating to the mortal engines book as my character peviously had leather jacket with props inspired by steampunk, so i guess this design gives a much more contemporary and clean look. This could have been avoided by adding extra detils like dirt and such but I simply ran out of time.
Overall I think its an ok model but I know I can do a lot better, lika a lot, also making this character has given me a good indication of how much time should be spent on each area and doing this in a limited time has given me good indications on workflows too, as I know for a fact that I would have approached things differently with my previous character and although it would had looked a lot better I dont think i would have learnt as much; especially because I was doing that previous character over such a long time compared to this one.

2012.

Bad Luck doesn’t begin to describe this holiday, but as always I was quite optimistic about the Christmas break especially because the summer holiday was quite a productive time for me so I was hoping for something similar this time. This all changed after the second week where all the progress I had made with my character work had corrupted and was back to square one; I say this but it was just my zbrush files that I had been working on. The file sizes for these are roughly about 300mb and this was mostly the reason why I didn’t have much iteration and also the fact that my Wacom tablet kept disconnecting after each save which made it rather annoying. In the end I paid the price for not taking that extra minute or so to save and restart as now I am back to the start. The character design has to be revised as I simply will not have the time to pack the same level of detail for the number of props in the time I have. I am going to have to simplify the details and this is pretty much going to be a 1 week project. I could not believe this happened to me like 1 week before the deadline.

Plan

Day 1 – Quick think about character/base mesh/ start sculpting

Day 2/3 – Major sculpting and finish it (somehow)

Day 4 – Retopologising/ uving/possibly start texturing (highly optimistic I know)

Day 5 – Texturing

Day 6 – Finish texturing / start rigging and somehow finish it ..i don’t even know how to rig.

Day 7 – Do a second character (LOD)

Day 8 aka D’day – Finish everything.

 

Game Engine

A game engine is a visual development tool which is used in developing video games ins “data driven manner.” These days games engine are typically developed by game developers to meet specific requirements that they would need in their project. 

  The game engine plays a vital role in bringing together the technology and Art; engines are becoming more and more user friendly so artists can take advantage to produce compelling content for games and at the same time the programmers are constantly enhancing the technology. One of the best examples is Dead Space. This gripping Sci-fi horror developed by EA was made specifically to compute a range of dynamic lights simultaneously so they introduced a deferred lighting system which changed the feel of the game in how areas are lit.

One of the most recently popular engines was the Cry engine which was made to develop their trophy game Crysis ( back in 2007)and this engine was to be able to run a game that will test the newest hardware from nvidia and set a new bench mark and real time graphics.

 

Game engines are constantly pushing the barrier in delivering real time content. This is solely because these engines are usually developed in-house and so they can tailor each engine to their specific needs so for example if a studio only does racing games then their focus would be different from a developer that develops a role playing game so they don’t have to incorporate technology they would not use and this will save a lot of time and also cost effective. It is cost effective mainly because I guess they own that technology where as if they had used an engine like unreal or Cry engine they would most definitely have to pay for the license. The downside is that this would mean that the developer will have to make their entire engine from scratch and would typically require large development cost so although it seems like a good idea to make your engine it isn’t very practical especially for a small developer or an indie game developer so they are better off using established engines such as the unreal engine. An established engine will usually have a good support team and tutorials to achieve the desired effects. Of course if you were developing the next anticipated Triple A title the chances are you would want to create your own engine


Sound in Games

Sound in Games was always part of the gaming experience as I still remember the 8 bit tune from Contra. Music in video games evolved in almost the same rate as the complexity of these games. Sounds in games from 90s often had a very distinctive beat and this was mostly due to the limitation of the 8 bit, however this meant composers really had to be specific with the notes as the tunes had to be simple yet memorable so it is no surprise that we can still remember the Supermario or the Zelda tune.

The Sound design plays and important role is setting the mood and convincing specific emoting through music, however sound design doesn’t have to be just about the background scores; its all the little things that makes the experience worthwhile such the subtle footsteps when walking or the rustling of the leaves in the wind, or the complete silence which makes your sit with discomfort or the satisfying sounds of firearms which makes each kill worthwhile.

The modern day sound design is much more complex and it is once again no surprise as it was only a matter of time that games caught up to their neighbours in the entertainment business; films.  Much like films games are becoming more and more immersive and consequently the production values are getting higher and higher which means one guy making up stories inside his bedroom in his free time doesn’t quite cut it! So everything is becoming more specialised so when it comes to sound design the game industry needs some hard labour from Hollywood and big budget composers such as Hans Zimmer for their Triple AAA titles.