Summer Cyborg Project: Creating the High Poly

I sent my low poly version into Mudbox,and spent a good few days remembering how to use everything, but after a refresher, I was soon adding the detail I had been looking forward to seeing on my model. I created the entirety of my high poly model in Mudbox, as I found it the best tool at my disposal for achieving what I wanted to achieve. I did attempt to use quad draw in Maya to create some initial detail, but I couldn't create anything that looked anywhere near as good as Mudbox, so I stuck with that. I really love how the high poly looks, and I expected a lot of the detail to be lost when I transferred the maps to the low poly, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much the low poly looked like the high poly after the transfer.

With my low poly now showing the detail of the high poly, I could approach the final stage, which would be the texturing. Oh boy.

Summer Cyborg Project: Initial Modelling

With my modelling references complete, I could finally get started on the 3D part of the project. Using the tutorial to inform my process, I created the body in separate chunks and joined them together. This was a method I found incredibly helpful and streamlined, and it is likely how I will model all my characters from now on, when it is appropriate. I began with the body, extruding and shaping a cylinder to fit my reference, and quickly began work on the leg.

After creating the basic shape for the body, arm and leg, I mirrored the geometry to create a basic block shape which I could begin to refine and tweak to the shape of the references.

After this, I turned my attention to the more complex structures of the body, namely the feet, hands and eventually head. The feet were quite a challenge as I really wanted to nail the form of the foot rather than making a generic shoe shape. By rotating edge loops, I managed to get create an edge flow which mimicked the organic flow of the foot, whilst maintaining the rigidity of the boot shape. The hands were actually more straightforward; whilst in my assessment model I steered away from modelling individual fingers, I figured it was time to tackle that fear if I wanted to make the robotic hands look convincing, and elaborate. So with a few extrusions I had myself some fingers, and all it took was a some inward extrusions to create the bionic look I wanted.

Then it came to the head. Oh boy the head. I've never tackled anything as complex as the human head, but I really wanted to nail the shape and form this time, as my assessment piece makes me a little bit sick every time I look at the shape of the head now. So this time I followed my reference, built the topology outwards from the eyes, and tried to nail the proportions; and honestly, I'm really happy with what I ended up with. I built the entire shape from scratch, with the exception of the ear which I imported in because I'm really not ready to torture myself that much just yet (attaching the separate component to the head mesh was hell enough), and in terms of the reference, it couldn't match up any better. Topology wise, I think it would be suitable for animation, granted I'd need to subdivide it a little, but I'm really happy with the overall edge flow. I did find however, that I needed to subdivide the top of the head into oblivion to get the desired smoothness, but that's a minor issue, I think.

And with that, my base mesh was complete. A few minor tweaks here and there and a few corrections later, and I had my final low poly mesh that I would later use for my final model, sitting at a tidy 8000 tris (mainly because I'd misread the project brief and thought 10,000 was the limit -_-), but oh well, no use in wasting tris where they're not needed.

Summer Cyborg Project: Setting the Scene

Summer Cyborg Project: Concept

Our project for the summer was to concept and model a cyborg character for a third person sci fi game. After spending a couple of months winding down from the last term, I set about starting to come up with some ideas for a character. Being someone who writes a lot, and someone who has this fleshed out world that I've been working on for a while, I found that this cyborg character would be a potentially perfect fit for such a world. As a result, I knew exactly the sort of aesthetic I was going for, and the kind of backstory he would have. I went for a dirty, scrappy sci fi aesthetic, as it reflects the ruined and polluted world I had in mind. The rest of the character background fell into place and I soon had an outline of what I was connecting, and how he should look. I set about creating some silhouettes to test out what would be the most interesting form for the character, and let my imagination run free with body shapes and sizes.

I landed on number 3 eventually since the shape resonated with me the most as a heroic protagonist. I was fond of the others, however some struck me as either too robotic, or too 'boss battle' like; maybe I'll save them for later. Once I had my silhouette picked out, I used it to inform the next stage of the concepting and began work on the final image, and then, the front and side views. The front and side views were particularly helpful during the concept stages, as I began to get a grasp pf what he looked like from other angles.

I went with the more defined line style for my front and side view as I knew it would be the most helpful during modelling; obviously I was still bothered about the overall aesthetic but the front and side view were more for my benefit when modelling, and I designed them to be more functional than 'pretty'. The pretty rendered concept would soon follow however...

With my final version drawn and finished, I then set about finalising the details about the character and setting the scene for my character pitch.

Summer Art Part II: Personal Work

As well as Lego art work, I've been carrying my sketchpad around and drawing daily. As well as sketching traditionally with pen and ink, I've been doing some digital sketches to keep my Photoshop muscles warm til next term. Here are a few.

Summer Art Part I : Lego Work

Over the summer, I've been doing a fair bit of Lego art work in my personal time, to promote the upcoming game Lego Marvel's Avengers on Twitter. Other than Marvel art work, I've also been drawing other Lego characters for my own enjoyment so I'll collect them all here.