Pantene "because he's worth it"

Todays foray into the wonderful world of character design has been dedicated to getting the hair right. I have completely remodeled the hair which wasn't exactly had as its just plains but i think its starting to work better now, and all I need to work on is texture.

Here's the before pics...



And the after.....




And heres an update of the texture for the head, I've darkened the beard and added the hair (obviously)

face painting

So today has been dedicated to getting my character to have a face. Due to the fact that I can't find some decent enough images of Danny Trejo to create the face texture with I decided that i would use my own face. So I dragged out the camera andbroke the lens with my ugly mug, I then started to rip the images apart to get them to fit onto my uvw template.

Heres a few images to show the outcome so far.

Hang on its not christmas why am i unwrapping stuff

So the modelling portion of the project is over and so begins the next phase TEXTURING.

To start with I need to unwrap the model to the sppecific regions laid out in Epics uvw template so that my model will work in game, I have already done a basic unwrap on my model when I took it into Zbrush so now its just refining that unwrap (or starting all over again which seems the easier option).

At college today I completed the unwrap for the head, hat and face mask which was pretty simple i have also begun to unwrap the arm which is proving a little more tricky, but with a little perserveerance I hope to have the unwrap finished for next week when I can begin to texture.

Heres my unwrap for the head ready to be scrutinized.....


to give a hint at what your looking at the top area is the head itself with the hair unwrapped to that section, the 2 circles are the eyeballs, next to that is the face mask and in the bottom right is the hat.

displaying the model

So with a few days left to get the model handed in i have started to think about displaying the model. I've knocked together an image containing wireframe and rendered images thats will be my main display peice, I will also do some renders of the character that show off the model to the best of my abilities.

heres the collage pic

Adding some finer details

After going into college friday and talking to Dean I feel like the modelling process is starting to come to a natural conclusion, I only really need to model a few smaller details and have spent some time this morning adding some of those details.

I have modelled a strap around the arm that holds the knife in place aswell as a throwing knife to go around the waist band, for now i have duplicated the throwing knife but when it comes to unwrapping I will delete all but 1 and then once its unwrapped I will duplicate it over again.

piccy time....

Accessories make the man

So 1st week back in college and other than having a model with triangles the outlook on the quadded model was positive.

I have brought my model into a file containing the Unreal skeleton and only had to make a few minor changes to have them match up quite nicely.




I have also spent the past few days modelling the accessories to go with the character, some of these will always be a part of the model such as the knives on his arm and leg and the holster and revolver on the hip, but the hat and face mask I am hoping to bring in as seperate objects that will allow the player to choose to have them on or off.
Having the hat and face mask as seperates also allows the player to choose them for the other Unreal characters so you could have Malcom wearing a stetson.








I have also plotted out some colour onto the triangulated model (which is the only 1 fully unwrapped) its only different coloured materials no photoshop work as of yet but it is enough to give an impression of the final look.

TRIANGLES of DOOOOOOOOM

ok so with working in zbrush and whatever somehow my model has become triangulated, luckilly i have a copy of the model that is still in quads but thats quite old now in comparison to the tri version. i will begin working on the quad model now but will bring the triangulated one into college monday.

heres a pic or 2 of the triangles

faces of death

Ok so i have hunted down danny trejo and skinned him well not really but thats what it looks like on the texture sheet....

i have however taken the only front on shot of danny that i could find that would fit (kinda) cut the eyes and stuff out and repositioned them to fit my unwrap and clone brushed some skin to hide the joins then cloned some skin over the rest of the head. I KNOW that i have gone too far ahead on this and i should really be modeling the accessories such as spurs, hat, bandana, weapons and such but that didnt seam as fun todaybut anyway my head is textured now so nuh.

i need to redo bits and work some definition into the bits that are just cloned all over the place from his cheek.

piccy time

long time no see

So after a few weeks of BT cutting off my connection new years day comes along and they have turned it back on, no idea why cause i've already booked the virgin engineer to come and install thier service on the 7th and told BT they can suck my $%^& if they want thier money for a service i never recived for the 3 months they want paying for.

but anyway while i'm getting free internet i guess i should do a quick update on where my character stands.....

Zbrush is hard work its simple enough to play with but alot harder to get decent resultsbut i've been perserveering over the xmas period and the results for the clothing are starting to work the face on the other hand i'm starting to think that maybe i should use the nvidia tool and create a normal map for this project and then do some practice off my own back to get the face right or build a face from scratch and bake the normals onto a very basic base mesh. Well anyways heres an image of my Zbrush work.

CLICK THE IMAGE TO SEE IT IN FULL RESOLUTION


Other than a bit of Zbrush i haven't done a great deal of modelling i have however started to look into texturing mainly on the hair as thats a pretty important part of my character, as you may have noticed in the zbrush image the hair gets some funky distortion when you up the sub division count so i have done the normal map with the nvidia filter.

The work flow getting the hair to this point was i laid a basic brown as a base colour then i used a 1 pixel brush with a low opacity to scribble on some black then with a larger brush put some highlights and lowlights to create the diffuse map. The normal map i created by desaturating the diffuse adjusting the brightness and contrast then inverted it before playing with the brightness some more and finally put it through the nvidia filter to create a normal map.

I have used opacity on the hair which i created by desaturating inverting and playing with the brightness and contrast then i used a low opactity brush to feather the ends of the hair so it didn't end at a solid line.
over all i think the result is starting to work i do need to continue to work on it though, anyways heres some pics and dont comment on the face texture that was just me playing around.





well hope you all had a good christmas and will see you all in college and i'll update again if BT keep me connected.