Taerar: Rage Drake Sculpt

Portfolio 3 Update

Well, as the second portfolio piece winds to a close, I figured I should update this with a better schedule for what's left of the semester.

Two things are left to do aside from Capstone work: Mental Ray Thesis and Taerar the Rage Drake.

As for the Mental Ray Thesis, I decided to go for something more specific and will be concentrating on Skin. And as for Taerar, I will be focusing on getting a high resolution sculpt.

So here is a schedule for when I will have things done:

Taerar Rage Drake Sculpt

• Friday July 13 (OMG)- Sketches and Concept
• Saturday July 14- Orthographics
• Tuesday July 17- Blocked In Model in Maya
• Saturday July 21- Muscles and Anatomy in Zbrush
• Saturday July 28- Detail and Armor
• Sunday July 29- Pose
• Monday July 30- Polish and Resculpt
• Tuesday July31- Composite with Brynn to achieve concept

Mental Ray Subsurface Skin Thesis

• Sunday July 15- Bring Brynn back into Maya
• Ignore hair? Or bring in hair?
• Monday July 16- Export out Poly Paint into actual Texture files. Composite into one image
• Tuesday July 17- Bake out sculpt into Normal Map. Composite into one image.
• Saturday July 21- Research and Test materials
• Sunday July 22- Compile Presentation

Brynn Ardell Complete!

I realize I have been spelling Brynn's last name wrong the entire time. Shame on me!

So it was a little silly of me to forget to post this up on my blog, and I have been neglecting to update my blog on Brynn's progress as the last couple days have been a hellstorm, but I figure I should put it up now.

You can see Brynn's finished product below! Things I learned from this project: Fibermesh. ZappLink, Noise maker, Materials and shaders...well Zbrush in general. I expect my next project to be even more of a learning experience!

As always, concept and design is by the awesome artist Lauren Hanchin. Expect to see the dragon here as my third portfolio piece!

Brynn Ardell: Sculpt Update

I'm a bit overdue for an update on Brynn. We're entering our final phase for Plushy Knight that I've kinda put her on hold for a while now. I'm devoting my entire week to her now though! LET'S DO THIS. Below, you can see Brynn's sculpt which is pretty much complete minus a few adjustments here and there. Haven't worked so extensively in Zbrush before. I'm starting to get used to it's funky controls and it's unconventional workflow.

Stuff still left to do: Fibermesh Fur on fur flap and Fibermesh for her mop of hair. Oh and textures. This will be my first time really texturing in Zbrush!

 

 

Brynn Base Model Progress

I've been pretty busy lately working on Cinematics as well as Brynn, but I've made some decent progress the last couple of days. As always, I have to thank Nick for providing me with the base to create the head. Currently, all that's really missing is her hair. A WIP skull cap is there currently. I'm thinking I might need to go re topo that skull cap to better fit Brynn's messy ponytail. Otherwise all of her assets have been modeled! You can see her model in maya below!

I've also gotten around to UVing her too. I'll need to make another map for her normals but the hard part's already done.

 

Plushy Knight: Playground Cinematic

My first portfolio piece is done, but there are still plenty of cinematics left to do. Here is the next cinematic that I'm working on. The Playground Cinematic

It's still WIP but it's close to being finished, minus a couple camera iterations or polish animation.

Brynn Ardele Orthographics

So as I'm finishing up my first portfolio piece, I decided to start working on my second project.

Brynn Ardele! A full fledged monk martial artist from a small temple at Gilderhall. Her weapons are her fists, which are often compared to battle axes. Occasionally flaming, occasionally flying, always exploding, Brynn's a force to be reckoned with. She's a commission from a close friend of mine. For me, Brynn will be a practice on realism and hi-res models, both of which I don't have enough of in my portfolio. Focus on cloth, proportions and the like.

I worked with my friend, who came up with the design, and created orthographics for Brynn, which you can see below.

Memory Tree: Animation Complete

Here is an animation complete version of the Memory Tree Cinematic. Currently, animation is finished. Apex cloth was added to little Gemma and there are plans to add them older Gemma. Assets in the scene are placeholder for now, including lights and materials.

Enjoy!

Memory Tree: Body Language Complete

Just completed the Body Language for the cinematic. At this point, a majority of the work is finished, all that's left is the facial language and adjusting values with the APEX cloth. :D

Memory Tree: Second Animation Pass, Part 1

It's far from complete but the Memory Tree has about half of it's animation fleshed out with body language. There were a couple of camera changes as per request.

The last couple of weeks have been rather overwhelming. Seeing how my first portfolio piece and my tasks for Plushy Knight coincided, I have been doing nothing but working on PK. I moved onto the fleshing out the animation a couple of days ago, working my way through the four memory sequences and, out of no where, I found myself stuck on the tire swing animation.

Two things came to my attention then. Gemma needed IK/FK switching if I wanted her hands to stay on the rope of the tire swing. I had never done IK/FK switch before and had only just learned the theory behind it. This would be my first time applying it in practice. I figured I should write a script in case incidents like this would happen in the future.

So my work on the cinematic came to a grinding halt the last couple of days. The issue wasn't making the IK/FK switch for Gemma, it was turning it onto an automated script that I could use across characters.

I am no tech artist. My script probably won't work on anyone else's rig except my own, but a great majority of PK's rigs are mine anyway. Currently it generates the two skeletons (FK, IK) for the main skeleton to bind to, creates the IK handles for the IK arms, connects everything to their respective controllers and then generates set driven keys for the FK IK blend. This does require some adjustments to my original rig which I planned on adding to my script but I had already done those adjustments by hand so it never really made it in. I had already spent two days trying to get this rig to work anyway so I figured I better not waste any more time on this.

All so Gemma's hands can stay on the tire swing. :[

On the other hand, I learned about the 'substitute' command. When used in conjunction with the rename command it mimics maya's Search and Replace Name command which is nice since the searchReplaceNames command doesn't seem to work.

Memory Tree First Animation Pass

Here is the first Memory Tree Animation Pass. Currently all characters are jumping from main poses and not a whole lot is fleshed in but it's the bare minimum in order to get a good feel for the cinematic.

Little Gemma Model

After talking with Tammy for a bit, I realized that Little Gemma couldn't be a squashed, disproportionate version of Older Gemma. So with her help (she came up with the design and tweaked the model to fit) Little Gemma was redone.

Shown below are just some quick renders. I intended to do them in viewport but the transparency issues turned her into something quite horrid. I also did some tests with apex cloth which is currently applied to her scarf and dress. Still needs a lot of tweaking but really, I better get to animating soon! D:

Tee Hee! *dimple*

Maya Hair Tests

My first attempts at using Maya Hair. Just attempting to style it proved hard. I went through and manually moved the CVs for each curve and it still isn't looking like the Hair I envisioned Gemma to have. Still, the dynamics for it were fun to play with.

Before this I had a mullet!

Loreal. Because I'm worth it.

Memory Tree First Camera Pass

So this is a bit overdue, but I finally got a camera pass of my storyboard. Maya Playblasts don't seem to support trax sounds so there is no audio yet. Also it seemed to render out of my camera shot so there might be some clipping issues that won't be there in the actual renders.

Thesis: Mental Ray Materials

I have to say, my knowledge of mental ray materials is pretty meager at best. I've only recently begun to dabble in skin shading and even then it was only brushing the surface. In truth, rendering in general has been a gray area for me. So researching mental ray materials and their usage in rendering was my first thought when picking a thesis.

There is a vast amount of things one can do with mental ray but I'm going to concentrate on characters. So sub-surface scatter (using maya's fast skin) as well as cloth, anything to showcase a character best in any kind of lighting.

The project that would benefit most would be Brynn. I have thought about applying this to Taerar as well but see as he'll be the first creature I'll ever do, I wanted to focus on it's sculpt. However, I do plan on compositing them both into one image (that awesome concept) so perhaps there will still be room for that.

Brynn Ardele of the Auburn Fist

My final portfolio piece is, as expected, a character. And she was requested from a dear friend last semester but I, sadly, could not commit. This time I'm planning ahead. Her request is a realistic sculpt of her character, Brynn Ardele of the Auburn Fist. A monk trainee delusioned into greatness as well as fists with flaming tendencies. My intentions here are to create a full character, fully textured and posed, similar to Mirician which I made during the Spring 2012 semester.

Below are some concept images and sketches provided by my friend.

Shades of Grey: Grey Polish

On second thought, lets go for something else... ARCHIVED!

I did a bit of thinking on what piece I wanted to polish and my mind constantly went back to the first portfolio piece I did while here at FIEA: Grey. It was a character I was quite fond of as his design (done by the awesome Vincent Angerosa). I had done the character in four days. Not sure how I did it but it's obvious he could use a bit more love.

Aside from a few anatomical tweaks, Grey seriously needs a Zbrush sculpt. The one he has right now is so minimal it's hardly noticable. I also want to flesh out his hair with more hair cards.

Shown below was his state at the end of Fall 2011.

Plushy Knight: The Memory Tree Storyboard

Seeing how Plushy Knight is finally moving on to the story stage of development, I figured this would be the best time for me to get my hands wet with cinematics. As such, I chose the climax of the game as my piece: The Memory Tree.

Still fresh in the planning phase though,

Spring 2012: Mircian

My first portfolio piece done in the Spring Semester 2012. 

Her name is Mirician Strongheart, a psion born with telepathic powers. She uses her doll, Comma, as an orb implement in order to augment her powers.

 

Spring 2012: Plusy Knight Animation Cycles

My last portfolio piece for the Spring 2012 semester. My focus here was to create loopable animation cycles that could be seen in game. I took several animation cycles from my capstone game, Plushy Knight, and polished them to 100%. I wanted to make sure that I nailed the basics (the walk and the run animations) before I jumped into something more stylized (the stalk and emerge).

Spring 2012: Female Tribal Head

My second portfolio piece for the Spring 2012 semester. It was a collaboration project which consisted of modelers, animators and tech artists. My job was as a modeler. I worked with Vincent Angerosa who developed the concept and orthographics and created the model. 

Summer 2012 Portfolio Outline

UPDATED WITH SCHEDULE

1. Plushy Knight: Memory Tree Cinematic

• Storyboard Iteration as necessary 
• Camera Work with Characters Air-planing around
• Little Gemma  Model
• Still needs textures... when will I do that? o__O
• Body Language (5/29)
• Facial Animation (6/2)
• Polish (6/4)
• Render (6/10)

2. Newcomer! Brynn Ardele of the Auburn Fist

• Model Sheet / Orthographics (6/12)
• Base Model (6/17)
• UV and Prep for Zbrush (6/19)
• Zbrush Sculpt- Take my time here (6/26)
• Texture- Probably will do in conjunction with the sculpt (7/3)
• Shader- if time permits (7/6)
• Render (7/8)

3. Newcomer! Taerar the Rage Drake

• Concept and Sketches (7/11)
• Zbrush Block In (7/14)
• Muscles and Anatomy (7/21)
• Detail and Skin (7/28)
• Pose (7/29)
• Polish (7/30)
• Composite (7/31)