I am ready to pelt!!!

At last I am happy with the mesh of the character and I am ready to pelt and adjust his pose to fit more his natural stance for a one legged creature with a cane.

The first step will be to pelt him using some very helpful tools that speed up the process no end, the aim will be to get no overlapping UV's to make the detail work in Mud go much smoother. Before i take it into Mud I will also make slight adjustments to the stance so that I can concentrate on the right pressure areas on the skin.

Anyway here are some renders and a silhouette check, as you can see I added a cane which i quickly concepted in Mud and then build a mesh acrordingly.

And the body...

Same entry as before but with the full complete body etc, I have made a few errors on my way to getting to this point but I am happy with the results so far. By doing this mesh I have learnt a new technique which suits my style and work flow more, also by making these errors the next model will not suffer the same issues and thus speed up my work flow.




The complete mesh including assets is nearly done with just the cane (wooden and simple), limbs for the pack (to go inside) and teddy bear on a noose (I will dupe and adjust fro more than one). All these items will be low poly and quickly made with all the work being done by the Normal map that I will bake out.

Something little....

Ok here we have a low poly render of the head that is now complete as far as a mesh goes, the head has more polys than other parts but that is only natural as the head is the focal point for the character. I now need to attach it back to the body and make a couple of quick adjustment and model the base mesh for the cane and I am ready to lay out the UV map before completing the sculpt to bake out the Normals and Occlusion, I am also going to bake out a displacement map for a high detailed render separate from the game mesh (well I hope!)

A change of flow...

I have been searching for a way to free up the creativity within the otherwise technical routine of modeling and after some research have discovered retopolgy and the benefits that it can bring. After some research I chucked my unfinished model into Mud and proceeded to sculpt without first laying out the UV'sk, ironicly after everything that has been said over the last few years this is quite alright and will not inpeed the creation of my model. When I got the model upto a resonable level I then imported the mesh as a reffernce in a topology software (there area few!!) and started to build up a mesh over the refference that i can later slit and layout before baking in the normal information and then taking back into Mud for detailing, whilst this pipeline may seem broken to me this frees me up from overly technical time spent in 3D application and returns me to a more artistic workflow :)

A few more tweaks...

The main body figure of the Shambler is nearing completion, all that is left to do is a little work on the head and the hair horns followed by stitching him together and sawing off his leg bellow the knee. before taking it into Mud I will use the sculpt geo tool to even out the polys and remove that symetrical look in order to give him a more organic look and feel. Oh yeah and split the UV's out into a nice texture map :)

Oh NO!! Duplicated faces!!

Ok just a quick blah as I move ever nearer a good base mesh to start sculpting...duplicated faces! A nightmare to any 3D artist and one I found myself facing, it required me to face a huge amount appearing from no where (well I must have hit something but....) and they all needed removing! In fact I had to go to some extremes to do this, initialy I thought I would have to go throught the who model deleting one at a time (chore!!) but I decided to go looking for a faster alternative and i found one not on the web but in my own head thanks again knowledge built up last term. Yes it took an hour to rectify but it would have taken me a lot longer to delete them individually and even longer to have gone back a save or two!!!

The moral of this story is keep an eye on your poly count and if it suddenly jumps up...question it!!

Stumbling on...

Well not so much stumbling as coughing, not progressed much due to feeling rather rough. Here I have just checked the silhouette to make sure the overall shape is progressing, the legs still need to be worked on and I need to decide if I an going to elongate his fingers.

The aim is to have the complete base mesh, including assets completed by the 19th ready to UV with sculpting starting on the 22nd or 23rd.

So far I have had no hick ups or issues and my understanding of Maya technically has improved a little more, just wish I could shake this yuck feeling and return to full speed....

Shambler base...

The base mesh is starting to come together and all that blood, sweat and tears during the research part of FMPA really has paid off as my modeling speed has improved and all those mistakes that I made whilst making the female model allow me to achieve with out the swearing!!

Not much further to go on this mesh, just need to do the hands and define his shape in accordance with the concepts before I set about building the back pack, so far so good and i am happy with the way the model is progressing :)