Rooftop Project - Coming Soon

My Rooftop Project development will be posted here very soon. I might update my portfolio first with the final shots i have already taken.

I still need to make a video flythrough which i will make, put on my youtube account then embed on this blog.

My Portfolio

I joined a free portfolio making website allowing me to post my best work in a professional manner and showcase my current skills. The project limit is 5 and the picture limit is 35 for the free version which is enough really to show a persons work off to an employer. Few pictures of key quality, attention grabbing work is better than many pictures containing a mass amount of space filling work where it could get a bit boring. Im still not confident on the quality of my work. However, when out of university course time and project deadlines, i will personally improve my work to hopefully and potentially reach current industry standard. For the sake of this course, i will try to display my work and skills to the best of my ability. The link is below:

kanedainton.carbonmade.com/

I will add this to my side bar too and on my FMP blog, in the near future.

Outso Project - Character Design Dev 8 - Complete

I would say my character is complete but I am not completely happy with her as the hands need more work and the textures in terms of getting proper folds in the clothing, however I am not experienced with zbrush. I could have unwrapped the face a bit better and given more space in the UVs.

I am overall happy with my progress making characters even though it is not my desired specialty. At least she looks believable and hopefully close to the concept which is all I used to help me make her. I used a simple female blueprint and adjusted to body accordingly but it still isn’t perfect, just believable and I achieved making the body and facial features look female which I am happy with.

Total Triangle Count: Around 7900

Outso Project - Character Design Dev 7 - Rigging

I fully rigged my character using the basic vertex and envelope wrap methods to give my character a bit of life. I did manage to rig each finger, arm, leg, chest, back and certain clothing movements but I came across the common problem where, if she moves her head far back or forward enough, the chin distorts and stretches. I remember being taught how to fix this in year 1 but I forgot what to do. Otherwise it has been my personal best rigged yet.

Outso Project - Character Design Dev 6 - Texturing

I placed in a base colour on the UVs to get a quick result to begin with and show a finished product. Obviously any further detailing and adjustments to the textures will gradually improve the overall outcome. I think with me, the quality of my work shows with how much time i have spent on it and that would apply to everybody. Because i fell back with time as i had interest in the other projects, i dont think i spent enough time as i would have liked but i still made an effort to put in a few minor details.

Textures were hand painted using the colours from the concept. My normals are dire in terms of cloth folds so I would like to research further into making it look more convincing because it is very important. Finished model is below. I used normal default 3DS Max rendering and Xoliul Shader 2 to display my work.

Outso Project - Character Design Dev 5 - Unwrapping

Model was fully unwrapped quite fast and I am pleased with the outcome. I worked hard to use up as much space as possible for the more important body parts.

My main unwrapping method was to cut seams into the right places around the clothing, pelt map any rounded areas such as the hair, face, hat, top and bottoms to stretch them out. I used relax afterwards to fix up the over stretched polys making the UVs smooth and accurate when painted on which seems to work just fine. The seams i made for the jacket and bottoms were simply cut down her sides like clothes usually can be woven, so before this i separated them into those half and half smoothing groups and when unwrapping, i separated them to have their own space. I would just need to watch out when painting on the textures and make sure the colours are consistent. 

Outso Project - Character Design Dev 4 - Clothing, Hair, Extras, Cleaning up

I completed the body by attaching and welding the hands to the arms and head to the neck then cleaned up and perfected the final shape I wanted the body to be. The methods I used for creating clothes was simply selecting parts of the body such as the legs and waist together and chest and arms together for the shirt and trousers. I duplicated these parts of the mesh and added a shell modifier to them which automatically extrudes out to look like clothing then you need to delete the inside unseen verts and polys. I then added the extra details of frills in the arms and simple planes for the neck frills and red pin. The boots were modelled simply so I had no need to model feet on the body. I created the hat from a cut down sphere as shown in the concept so that I could avoid modelling and attaching the ears for her head because the hat has ear flaps anyway. Working around the head and fitted hat, I made the front streaks of her hair with curves planes and I separately made the bushy part of the hair behind the head, modelling from a cylinder. I made the small pouch to go on her simple waist belt I made, just to separate the body a bit colour wise. I thought the extra straps are unnecessary and I will just add folds in the clothing and the button details on the jacket to finish off ready for unwrapping.

Adding the clothing I realised I passed the 9000 tri budget but to fix this, I can delete unwanted body parts underneath the clothing because the clothes came from the body as it is and those can be rigged as the body. With some characters in games the clothes are a substitute for the body as their clothes do not change at all throughout the whole game so I will go with this to get back below the budget.

Outso Project - Character Design Dev 3 - Modelling Head

I didn't follow a tutorial as such for this but a more of a speed run-through video of box modelling the head. Pausing every second, I was able to see where to pull out points, add loops, cut in details like the nose, eyes and mouth. While working on this step by step, I learnt a lot about modelling the head and body in general and I began to feel more comfortable as I know where cuts should be placed and exactly how extra loops add extra smoothness and detail. Eye shape, the mouth and the nose can be adjusted to how I like if I want to change them later. Symmetry of course sped up workflow but it is needed to I can attach the half head to the half body, then I can add symmetry to that to carry on.

I made simple eyes from half cut sphere shapes to fit in the head and fit closely around the eyelids.

Outso Project - Character Design Dev 2 - Modelling Hands

A separate tutorial I followed to make a hand was quite detailed such as nails and so on but I ignored that as it cost too many tris for minute details on a character with a limited budget range. I box modelled the hand and fingers separately and attached and rearranged them to fit. Smaller details added were the bends in the fingers and raises in the knuckles and the chunkyness of the thumb on the palm and that is as far as I took it.

Outso Project - Character Design Dev 1 - Modelling Body

I have previously followed a couple of different tutorials on box modelling a body in general during my last 2 years on the course but I found one I was comfortable with. With this simple starting point, I was able build my desired body shape, add extra loops, cut in extra edge details and get proportions right with quick and easy changes. I found a simple realistic female body blueprint (reference link below) that I decided to follow while building in 3ds Max to get arm length, legs, curves, the neck and chest right, then I could alter them later if desired. I used symmetry down the middle of course which is recommended to speed work flow and get everything even.

Outso Project - Character Design

I was required to model and texture a female aviator character in 3DS Max based on the given concept with the brief. I decided to work closely to the concept to see if i could make her look convincing enough rather than create my own. Here is the concept painting: