545 work completed.

So I've gone through and rendered out my turn table. I'm going to sit and take a short break from my work until I've recovered from graduation. Then I'll go back through and try to rework the things that still need fixing, adding more character, etc. But here is the turn table of my work for this semester.

mostly finished...

Alright... morning before my presentation in 330.  Okay this project is now on the verge of being done.  For where I am in the class this may have to be called good but I will need to fix a few things if I want this be a truly polished piece.  The main things that are wrong are the vines need to be practically reworked because the UVs are not working right and the texture is not good right now.  However they are so small its kinda hard to tell unless you are up close looking at them.  Most of my time went into texturing the face but the hair also needs more coordination in order to make it look like it lines up with the scalp better.  The hair texture could also still use some work, but not nearly as badly as the vines.  But I got like 19 texture maps created and working.    Anyway, without further ado... here are the textures.  Turn table still to come.

Progress

I've been focusing a little more on this project this last week.  I got through some other projects and now have more time to put into it.  I got the body connected and the major issues I was having solved.  I got vines and hair done and everything is UV'd I've even brought everything in and been doing some sculpting.  I had some coloring done but mudbox crashed and I lost it so I plan to redo it tomorrow.

otherwise, heres the images...

Oh yeah.  I still need to fix some things with the clothes because right now they just look like they are hanging without anything to hold them up... And she still doesn't have a name...

*sigh*

Okay, so I've got geometry working for the head that I am mostly pleased with.  Still needs some tweaking and a mouth bag.  May add teeth and a tongue but I'll think about those a little later.  Theres a different issue to deal with.

 thats this.....

This is the second time this has happened.... I don't know why but I save the file bring it home and now polys are missing, random vertices are merged together and geometry seems to have been moved at random around the model...  I'm gonna be working on this before I get any of the clothes I said I was gonna get done, done...

Lizard Woman Head

So I've been sculpting what I want for the head so far and now I'm in the middle of re-topologizing.  This week was not a good week for getting stuff done.  I'm gonna have to work a little harder this weekend and next week.  I plan to have it all assembled and maybe working on vines and clothes next week.  Maybe even completely UV'd.  Hopefully.

Lizard woman update.

So I've done a fair about of modeling.  Gotten the hand mostly done.  the foot is getting there.  The body needs some geometry evened out.  As for the head I guess I'm going to be a little different direction as far as work flow goes from what I'm used to.  I'm gonna create it in mudbox and then re-topologize it.  I'd like to get a bunch of stuff done this weekend as I've pretty much settled on my clothes.  Still have to work on the weapons though.  Also I don't have a name or even a title.  I feel like to give her more personality I should come up with a name or better title but I've come up short so far so I've just been calling her lizard woman.  

Project Concepts

OK, this is late. I am aware of this. I honestly had stuff to post yesterday but I had more computer issues and lost a bunch of it. I swear this semester is going to turn into the tale of computer issues... but anyway, I've hashed out what I want for the body. Hands, feet and whatnot have been drawn out.  I've decided to create this character almost exclusively pulling off the reptilian woman instead of combining parts with the alien.  I adapted the body a little bit and pulled from human proportions and ideas from Avatar plus anatomy from monkeys and lizards for the hands and feet, in order to come to where I am now.


Next I needed to tackle what I wanted for clothes.  I'll leave the weapon for a little later but for now as per request from my professor I have pulled out several different ideas for her attire on a single template sheet.  I imagined this character as more of a jungle inhabitant that might be regularly running through the trees and or whatnot, I got rid of the draping clothes from before and tried to get something not overly sexual while not being too heavy laden.  I also wanted a sense of something that might give an impression of some level of protection.



This is not the first time I've drawn some of these, so I've had other ideas that have been scrapped.  As of now I am currently leaning towards the first one in this line of four.  For right now I'll stick with that and start modeling the body and leave the clothes for a little later so I can finalize them next week, along with her weapons.

Beginning of New Project Concept

So GDC is over and I've got to get back into the process of working on projects for 545. I'm behind schedule already so I'm going to have to really crank something out however with how much I reworked the past two projects I'm not so worried.

I'm still going to be following the line of work where I'll be working with old things I've done.  For this project I'll be taking parts of some concepts I've done for a previous class I've taken.  These are the concepts I did for APCG 117 concept design and story boarding.

I learned from GDC that my work has potential but I need a little more character put into my projects and I could do that by making a more complicated project with more little details.  Also I was told I should work on human characters to show more accurate proportions.  So my thought is to extrapolate off these concepts and possibly combine them by creating tools or armor of some sort for the character to use.  I also wanted to create a character that might be usable in a scene with my other two creatures.  I haven't done the concept drawing for it yet but I'll get on that ASAP.

I seem to be having computer issues though, so that may slow me down.  I'm trying to get that done as fast as I can but I'm hoping it wont stop me for too much longer.

Croc done... for now...

OK.... I'm going to have to declare the project done.  For the moment.  Its about 2 weeks after when I was supposed to have it done but I've got to get other things done and finished.  There are polish details that I've been having trouble with.  I've been going back and forth with how to texture and paint the head and while I've got something... it doesn't seem quite right.  Also, per suggestion I've tried tiling my UVs so I can increase the resolution for the head.  However whenever I try to do this it bogs down my computer so much with attribute transfers and the like that I end up having to shut down mudbox.  SO, for now, I'm going to call it good where it is because I can get some workable renders out of it, and I'll come back to it later in the semester if I have time.  Definitly after the semester if I don't get to it by then.  I'm also trying to get things done for GDC so my focus is scattered.

Croc Getting Close to Done

So I had a little set back last week with all that was going on.  I got sick and didn't get much done in the way of sculpting and texturing.  However I've come back and pushed on through and gotten most of what needs to be done done.  I lost a little bit of work before doing this post due to a mudbox crash however it isn't much and can be made back up very quickly.  Here is an update on the sculpting itself.  I left the color out cause its a little easier to see, considering I've done some sculpting in response to the way I was painting.

 And the painting I've done.

I've brought things in maya for some test rendering because I've also done an eye texture that doesn't show up here.  The eye texture needs a lot more work though and have some tweaking around to do with bump values but that shouldn't prove to be much of an issue.  One things I'm not liking is they colors show up in renders.  Its bothering me a bit so I may have to tweak colors in side of photoshop to get them the way I want.  More all around photos to come as I get more done.  Otherwise its time for bed.

Croc Sculpt tests

I've finished a most or all the base mesh fixes I needed to.  This includes some UVing, tweaks to the ridges and some geometry in the eye.  I've also added some geometry for a second lid that crocodiles have so they can see underwater.

I've now gone into mudbox to play with texturing and mostly played with stencils to see out things might look.  There are something I do and do like.  I'll have to continue with some playing but its become clear that the stencils will be better used for setting up a template to follow so I can go in a refine what I do and don't like.  Another thing that has become clear is how much work I have to go.... lots.

Crocodile progress and looking forward.

I've been working on geometry on my Crocodile and have changed a few things, added a few things and still have some stuff to finish up.  First off as you can see from the picture below there are a lot rectangular faces and no loops around the mouth.  

I've gone in and evened out the geometry for better results while sculpting and added the loops for the mouth for better deformations.  I've also added some geometry in the mouth and ridges along the back along the tail.  After talking to Frank I was convinced that I should add geometry for those larger ridges (not on the tail) as opposed to sculpting them in.  Next I'll have to mirror what I've done, fix the UV's create eye geometry and then I'll continue on to the laborious task of texturing and sculpting.  I'm thinking this is going to be one of the tougher texture jobs I'll have to do...

Cat Finished

Alright... I got all the problems worked out for renders and now the main issue is the amount of time it takes to get the renders done.  I've got this basic one finished and I've been batch rendering for a demo real since Sunday.  Now I'm going to continue with the Crocodile.

Done... Almost...

From my last post I've changed my direction of fur to armor plated skin, kinda like that of a rhinoceros.  I would have posted earlier but I got sucked into getting the new direction fleshed out.  I may decided to revisit the idea of some fur in the future but right now, based on my schedule and what Frank has said, I need to focus on the feasibly attainable things I am already familiar with.

As of right now this project is supposed to be finished.  I've been doing some heavy texturing and sculpting and gotten it pretty much finished for where I want it in regards to color and specularity and surface details.  After talking with Frank I changed some things with geometry structure, particularly in the head. I've also created different eye geometry and a texture for a more realistic looking eye.  However I'm having issues with rendering in Maya and getting results to come out the same as in Mudbox.  

As shown in the last image the bumping is turning out pixilated and blocky.  I am researching and going over better mudbox to maya work flow tutorials to work out those issues.  It seems like I'm going to have to run over a little bit on time.  Probably just for the weekend though as I'm mainly going to be focusing on rendering and maybe a little bit of polish and tweaking that I see fit.  As soon as thats done, hopefully by Tuesday, I'll be moving on to my next project, the crocodile.  

Overall in terms of working hours, I haven't been keeping close track of how much work I've put in so far.  Partially because I have started and stopped working on the project in between classes and doing other class work.  I can say I've put in a few late nights in the labs and at home which if I estimate those late nights by themselves would probably be 24 hours of work.  Other times between classes I would probably estimate between 16 and 18 hours.  Meaning I'm running between 40 and 42 hours of work so far.  assuming my estimates are correct of course...

Starting Texturing Woes

I'm having some issues trying to decide how to texture this current project.  So I decided to re-look at my original idea of this character.   I figured I do this to revisit some of the ideas and reasons for why one texture might work better than another.  I played with painting colors in mudbox but it didn't feel like I was going exactly where I wanted for the creature.

When I first approached this character I felt like combining a bunch of elements from things that I was particularly interested in.  I felt like creating some sort of a marine cat like creature hence the tail.  At the time I was also interested in creature designs from the movie Avatar.  So I took some influence from the Thanator in particular the almost armor plated and very well defined musculature.

However I didn't want to take too much from the Thanator and make a completely alien so I compromised for a thick leather plating like back and a stronger wider body structure.  This is also why I took reference from real cats like lions, leopards, and panthers.  I chose these three is because the hair on lionesses, leopards and panthers shows more form.  Also I was still interested in a more tree like jungle cat as that is also somewhat like the Thanator again.  A similar environment to consider would be like around the Amazon river.

This gave me an idea coloring along with looking at how marine mammals and big cats are colored.  As a lot of cats are colored for camouflage I decided to use the color of the silt in the amazon and basic patterns from tigers and leopards as well as darker coloring on the top side and lighter coloring on the bottom.  For the back plating looked at some rhino skin references to get a better idea for how to texture the back plating.

However my problem now is to decide whether I want to add fur or not.  I have done some playing with basic fur attributes and they done look horrible but they aren't refined enough for what I want.  If I decide on using fur its going to require further research into much more advanced fur techniques.  

Other problems I've having is transferring work back and for between Mudbox and Maya.  Whenever I bring texture back from mudbox as extracted textures the bump maps change and lose definition and the painting layers wont export as one flattened file despite selecting options telling it to do so.  I'll have to do some searching to solve these issues.

Beginning Sculpting Ventures

I've gone ahead and ventured into playing with some sculpting.  Part of this venture was to get used to Mudbox again and the other part was to be looking at musculature and how to I want to do the details.  Part of the research I've done for editing on the geometry has come in handy so here are the references I've gone and found.  More in depth sculpts to come.

Cat Geometry Update

I've been working on trying to get my first revisited piece back up to speed in order to progress forward. I've been working with my cat model and noticed that there were a number of issues in respect to unnecessary geometry definitions, unwanted 5 sided faces, 6 pole vertices and a little more geometry needed in the neck. I had to go back to an older lower rez version of my model to fix those issues.  For awhile I was worrying about trying to get geometry to flow with musculature but this project is going to be geared a little bit more towards animation modeling so I'm leaving the geometry as is so I can sculpt in muscle and other details.  I  completed re-UVing the model.

I also changed a couple things in the in order to make the creature appear to possibly have a more accurate bone structure. Most notably changes were in the shoulders and the hips, though I raised geometry a little bit in the toes as well.  As is I'm going to progress forward with sculpting and texturing unless something comes to my attention in the geometry that needs more revisiting.

UPDATE:
 After talking with frank more I've done more editing on the geometry.  Which also caused me to redo the UV's.  The way I've arrange the new UVs actually groups like body parts together.  Hopefully this is the last time I have to UV.

Wednesday the 30th

My original idea was to try and work on rigging as my main area of focus for APCG 545.  However the point was made that I don't have much of a base in this area yet.  So after thinking about what I wanted to do and talking with Frank, I have come to a the decision of focusing on character model creation.  Since I had wanted to work on rigging before, what I would really like to work towards is creating good looking models with proper geometry that could possibly be rigged and animated.  

As to the scope of my projects for this class, I am looking at revisiting two old projects that are a fair ways along and creating one completely new project.  The two projects I would revisit are two animal character creations that I have started on my own time and gotten past modeling and UV's but they are lacking textures.  They could probably still use a little geometry work but I don't think that will take much time at all.  I still need to think about what my character creation will be for the new project but the inspirations I have in mind are bipedal humanoid.

For my personal style each project will probably be leaning more towards realistic though maybe not trying to achieve a true realism.  One of the projects I would revisit is a Cat like creations of my own.  I used reference to real cats and fictional alien cat creations as my inspiration.  Here are some photos of my work so far including my original concept creation and a venture into sculpting.  

The other project is a more realistic Crocodile animal creation for which I have used photos for reference and a Frank Frazetta photo for original inspiration   I have included some research photos I already had for texturing use below.  I had the thought that I might texture this piece differently from a real crocodile but trying to maintain an easily recognized creature.  

As for a time line I was figuring I would spend 3 weeks on each revisited piece and 8 weeks on the new piece to give me some leeway before the end of the semester.  This would also hopefully that I have time before the end of the semester to wrap up a presentation and a polishing touches on everything.

General Goals	Deadline
Finish 1st revisited project	Thursday, February 21st
Finish 2nd revisited project	Thursday, March 14th
Finish new project	Thursday, May 9th
Presentation polished and finished	Wednesday, May 22nd