The month in summary

I have not posted over here in quite a while, I have been posting but most of the activity is over on the group blog. More often than not I can't be bothered to repeat myself after posting over there so I guess I'll just sum up everything that's going down in a post here.

The last post I made was before I even started the head for the Hitman so as you can see in the screenshot from above and over at the group blog he was finished a little while ago.

Since then I have been working on my dissertation and doing some research into my next jobs for Whack'd.

I started researching blend shapes but put that on hold since Ferhan seems to be taking the lead on that, I may need to help him get some expressions sorted out but on the technical side he's got it covered.

We also need to start getting this texturing done and it falls to me to try and texture the characters I built, and since I don't know much about texturing I have been researching unwrapping UV's and simple texturing. I'm also planning to look a little at bump mapping but after talking to Sam about it I'm feeling sceptical.

http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/3d-art/how-to-uv-a-character-model-in-maya-2009/

http://www.dreamflyght.com/characters/MayaTutorial/WrittenTutorial.htm

Here are some links to fairly simple if not long winded tutorials I have found to help me out, with any luck I can crack on testing out the methods over the next couple of days and I'll have something more to show.

The Final Battle

Woah been a while since I posted on my individual blog. Once blogger gets through uploading images to the team blog I can never be bothered to repeat it over here. Hell I'm in a decent mood though so lets do this.

Since last I emerged from my hovel I have finished the Target model, and did it by the end of the week like I said I would. I have since moved on to the `Final Battle` which is the model for the Hitman. I figured this was gonna be the hardest of all these mopes but fortunately it is so far going smoothly. Still plenty of time for it to cock up ey?

Oh you want me to reflect on these two models? whatever you say chief. The target model came together fairly nicely in the end. I am not quite satisfied with the hair and the fact that I could not get the shirt to have a little overhang over the boxer shorts. Still I needed to move on and judging by Ferhans rig so far it should work out pretty good. He's having a heck of a time painting weights, I would like to help him out but I don't know the first thing about painting weights. Hopefully we can get it so the shoulders and chest deform properly.

Hitman as I said is going smoothly so far. I managed to sort out his suit jacket today, I thought this would be a really daunting thing to do but it worked out pretty nicely. The upper part is connected to the rest of the torso while the lower part I extruded out and shaped so that we can have it billow in the wind or something. I can't really reflect too much on this since it isn't finished yet.

Now I believe I earnt myself a cup of tea.

Until next time weary travellers.

Memo for me, myself and I

Just a list of stuff I need to finish up on the Target model before the end of the week and before I move onto the Hitman. This is just for me so I don't forget, If I write it down I'll lose the paper.

-Hair (Finish it, add quiff)
-Face (Just one more general tidy up, Try and fix anything that doesn't look quite right, bits that are pinching)
-Put the head on his body
-Shirt (Crease as best I can in maya, overhang)

-If I really need to take it into zBrush and see what I can do (I don't want to though)

- One final check before I pass it on to Ferhan or Dan to rig and get started on the Hitman.

Resolutions

Merry new year. First post of 2010, simply because it's the first time I've had anything worth posting since my last update. Work has been slack over these last couple weeks. I could blame it on the season and holidays or whatever but that's all bull**** cos at the end of the day it's on me.

Despite my recent lack of work ethic I don't feel too bad, Christmas was alright and New Years past by without too much fuss. I've been doing some work over the last 2 days as well and making some progress which is good. I kept saying I would have the target dusted by the time we went back but since that's monday it's looking doubtful. Been having troubles with it, but it's not far off so it should just take a few more days work, which is good.

No doubt I'll be more productive on the Hitman since we'll be back at coolege and unable to avoid work.

Anyway so some screenies of the model, it's going ok, for some reason the head won't mirror properly so that's why it isn't. Also the eyelids are a son of a bitch to do, it is a much more accomplished face than I have modelled before though and will hopefully be friendly for our resident riggers and animators. Managed to keep it all quads so hopefully it won't pose any problems.

Left to do...

-Solve the mystery of the faulty mirror tool

-Give him some proper hair

-Make the shirt, with collar and all.

-give him a neck...duh

that's pretty much all that's left for this guy, I think I can probably avoid zBrush altogether with this guy, although if I can't crease his shirt a little in maya then I will ship him over briefly.

Heads up

Well I won't lie, I've been stuffing my face with turkey and playing chrono trigger on the DS. Thinking little about work, but hell, it's christmas right.

Well today I got back to it, trying to ease my way back in. So here's a screenie on the head for the target that I left unfinished a while back, it's coming together nicely, should be animation friendly too, which is what we want.

Infinito

Finally finished the Ninja, he has eyes and eyelids too. I didn't give him pupils since the origional drawings didn't have any. makes them look more evil.

The eylids are a little shaky, I used nurbs but we don't need to play around with them too much so should be ok. Try and do better on the next two which are gonna involve some facial animation.

the target is already underway so he shouldn't take as long since I won't need to dick about in zBrush for ages.

I posted details over at the team blog but this is the final level of detail. 40k polys and it runs fine. Anymore and we are gonna be breaking out the fire extiguishers on our hard drives.

I'm going to sneak in as much detail as I can on low poly in zBrush export it back to maya and smooth that bitch out to get the same result as above.

Ok well personal notes on the process. Might as well get this out of the way now. Overall this has been a bittersweet experience for me. I think it's an improvement on character models I've done before and I worked a lot faster and picked up some cool tricks. However knowing that if I figured out the retopology and zBrush a little better I could make something even better leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Hmm perhaps that's last nights curry.

In any case I'm pretty happy with myself, I think I've upped my game and I'll step it up more going into the next 2 character models. As for these new enemies I'm not looking forward to the facial modelling and the clothes but I might as well meet these enemies head on. Doing this over the christmas break means we are in a good position in term 2 as well so the pressure isn't too much for my fragile sanity.

I hope the rest of the guys feel the same way about the model or I'm going to look a bit silly.