i have legs yay

So todays work has been on finalising the base model by giving him legs and feet next up is the accesories.

pics....

body popping and hand me downs

It's blog time again and today has been a productive day.

1st at college today I began to work in zbrush some more defining more of the face and its coming along nicely I'll put some pics up when I feel like things are at a stage where I can start to show it off.

After lunch I began to work on the body again and connected the arms and head to the torso i must say a big thank you to Jake and Dean for helping me to work out where togo with the edgeloops, Now that I have that area done I have started to look into hand modelling (and no I dont mean like Joey in friends although I do expect that my efforthas a twin somewhere) my 1st attempt went horribly wrong and was deleted my 2nd attempt however managed to take some shape however it's rather flat and needs alot of work (yes Dean that means I'm bugging you all day tomorrow)

Once the hands are done I shall move on to the legs and will hopefully have a finished base model ready for when we go back after christmas and can start thinking about maybe taking the whole model into zbrush getting me a few million polys and a really nice normal map.

Anyways here's todays images....

like a stylist

So todays foray into character modelling has been dedicated to creating the hair. I'm not happy with the result and will be talking to my tutor tomorrow about how I can make it better.

Well here's some pics.

playing around

So today i have mainly been playing around with zbrush as the character i want to produce should have a rough and rugged face and the the best way i can think to do this is with textures and normal mapping.

The head model that i have made so far is clocking in at 1300 polys so i know i need to lose some detail in the base mesh but anyway. I unwrapped and exported the base mesh as a .obj and imported to zbrush where i started to play with the form of the face adding a deeper brow more of a pronounced chin and some general wear and tear on the face. this took the base mesh up to a staggering 31,750 polys. I then took the 1300 poly base mesh and the high poly mesh into XNORMAL a program that creates normal maps from a combination of the base and high poly meshs that normal map is then placed into the base meshes material maps which should give a more detailed look than the actual model contains.

And heres some piccys....

Before normal mapping


And after


And an image of the progression from base mesh to finished high poly model.

getting a back on the head

OK SO I HATE CHARACTER MODELING LOL.....

Well I don't HATE it so much as dislike, heads are fiddely and awkward enviroment assests are so much easier to visulize and create.

But anyway I've got the head to a point where I feel I might actually be able to say its about done, the back of the head is a little messy but it works lol.

So its image o'clock

facial reconstruction

I have spent most of today trying to get the mouth to work and in doing so I have had to delete and rebuild sections so many times now that I have lost count. I managed to get the nose looking ok although I do feel I need to make the nostrils a bit more substancial all in all though its been a good days modelling.

So on with the pics

Modelling day 3

So a new day a new bit of modelling I started on the face today. I think I've just about got the edge loops right I need to speak to dean about how I would go about the lips as I can see that being a pain in the arse, I also need to finish the nose and the rest of the head but its going quite well I think.

And here's some pics



Here's a couple with the front blueprint slapped on so you can get the basic idea of what he'd look like if he was the star of a black and white movie



And a couple with the edgeloops



And this final image has nothing to do with my character its a 3d scan of my unborn son taken today.

Modeling day 2

Just a quick post today,

During college I didn't get to do much as we were having a tutorial on head modeling, but I did however start to model the arm. My original build was really messy and thanks to Dean showing me how to tidy it up it's looking a hell of a lot better.

So heres some pics and a I've included one with the edgeloops so you can scrutinize them.

The modelling begins

Today was a pretty good day, I've started to model stuff beginning with the chest.
most of what ive done is pretty rough because I've never tried modelling a human before but i think its starting to look pretty good, I have had to make some creative changes to the blueprints as I go mainly a few small things such as the back was a complete guestimate as I didn't have the fore thought to draw my side blueprints without the arm to make it easier to model (will remember for next time). After college i spent a bit more time on the chest I alsodone the basics for the back, so now the maintorso section is around 50% complete i just need to make some cuts into it and extrude out the piping of the vests neck and sleaves.

I have been taking notes as to which parts will be made in true 3d and which will be faked with a normal map.

Heres todays images.....

The UT skeleton

So I've been doing some reading about getting characters into unreal and found that with the method we shall be using which is to use the current ut animation skeletons I will have to make my model fit that opposed to making the skeleton fit my model, so I decided I better check it out before modelling anything.

I downloaded the ut3 character model for a basic male character this model was as with all ut characters very chunky which gave me a fright to start with as my character is quite slim and doesn't wear bulky armour but after deleting all the mesh leaving only the animation skeleton I took a screen grab and in photoshop scaled it up uniformly as to not alter the actual proportions of the image, I then overlaid it on my blueprints so I could see it the knee, elbow, shoulder and hip joints as well as the head fitted within the proportions of my character and well what can I say other than it did :D

obviously once built I will need to adjust the positioning of the models limbs to fit the skeleton but scal wise everything seams to line up rather nicely.

here's an image to show how it fits.

Blueprints

So ive spent the best part of today doing my blueprints for my character (see above) i guess i better give a quick rundown of how i got to this point.

1./ I started with a blueprint template given to me by Dean my tutor.


2./ I then sketched over the top of that to get the general look of my character.


3./ I then overlayed a picture of the face i wanted to use.


4./ I then began to draw my outline on a new layer with all 3 of the images above having various levels of opacity until i had finished and wala 1 blueprint ready to model (he says with fingers crossed)

Finished design

Ok so finished the character design for now i may go back to it and re-do the shadowing as i'm not that happy with it but here ya go.

And here we have the finished design of my character next step is creating the blueprints, designing weapons and thinking about his characteristics and backstory hope you like

Getting things together

After the past few days of sketching out ideas and using my old friend google i have decided upon a look that i will try and reproduce for my character, if you look at the character sheet in my last post the 3 lil men on the end of the top row i have taken aspects from each of these to create 1 character.

I'm still using danny trejo as my main influence but now i feel i have a look that he can be dressed up in.

Heres an image i sketched out on top of a blueprint template to give myself an idea of colour and detail.


and heres another image i have started in photoshop to use towards the final design (so far this image is only a block out of colour with an outline)


once i have this image finalised i will begin to put together blueprints so monday i can begin modelling the face.

A little R&D goes a long way

Its research time in Stocko mansion and the helper monkeys are scurrying about finding images that would be of use. but while they are doing that I have been sketching out some ideas, my 1st step was to produce some silhouettes which I began doing in class, by the end of the day I had produced 7-8 small images that were all very similar as I had an idea in my head of what I wanted to have as a character.

The next day in class Mr 2 had produced a really nice page of stick men that he shared with the class to help us draw our silhouettes at the same size and in proportion across the entire page instead of a mess of scribbles that would become unclear. I took that sheet home and began to sketch out more silhouettes this time thinking about the type of people you see in the general wild west movie (or YMCA video) but the tiny sketches are helping me to think more liberally about what my character will look like instead of having a 1st idea and sticking with it.



As you can see theirs a variety within the characters however a few of them are pretty simular my favorite at the moment is the indian with the guy on the end of the top row a close second.

I have already kind of decided that my characters face will be based upon Danny Trejo for people that don't know te name he's the badass mexican in every movie that has a badass mexican in to name a few of the movies I'm talking about he was the guy with the throing knives in Desperado, the crazy rapist/murderer with the tatoo in Con air he also played the crazy uncle in spy kids. Can you picture him now? if not here he is

so now your thinking OHHHHH HIM yeah he's cool well if you have seen any images of his new movie Machette thats the look that 1st attracted me to making him my character

So now it's a case of finding the look for him that is original (so bang goes the idea of making him in machette) however it has to fit into the cowboy theme of my level with some elements of the future.

The start of something

So its time to start module 3 which is character modelling. We've been told that we need to make our characters fit in with the timeline of our levels so I have to create a cowboy themed character.

When we were 1st told about the character brief my 1st idea was a Clint Eastwood styled character the rough grizzled hombre that rides the plains alone finding trouble where ever he goes, but after talking to Stas and Dean I was reminded that our characters need to be from the future, they are visitors to the era of our levels and thier look must reflect that so although my character needs to look lie he belongs in 1840's america he must still have an air of 5120's galactic bounty hunter.

with all that information its time to start reseaching and designing.