Development/Production

Samuria Development

due to time Constraints im just going to Start Modeling my Samurai Straight away. I’m not going to create any Initial or developed designs on paper for 2 reasons main one being that I don’t personally find them to be beneficial of useful to me. at my current level of skill with in 3ds max I could draw detailed designs but not be able to create them with in 3ds im competent with my current abilities with in 3ds max to be able to create effective forms but I can’t replicate and certain or particular styles so I find it better and more time effective to just model and design from my head and the references images I have collated from my research stage. second reason being the time required to make these initial designs and developed as I am already behind I need to start production as soon as possible. I have an initial sketch of what I want my samurai to look like in my initial storyboards and described what I want him to look like in my initial research. some design changes I have made is that I planed to have longer clothes For my samurai but I have decided to shorten the length of his robes and sleeves on his top as I planed to use the cloth modifier to animate the wind rustling his clothes but due to time constraints I havent been able to research and develop the use of the cloth modifier to and acceptable level. and I belive that a shorter length of robe and sleeves will look better if it’s just going to be animated via a bone rig instead of the clothes modifier.

1st stage

I Started modeling the samurai by Creating the torso first I like to Start with the torso as a base and a point of reference for scale with the rest of the body and usually end up creating the head last. I start with a plane then align it with the zero coordinates so I can use the zero coordinates as the line of symmetry then I connect and deleted the left side and add a symmetry modifier so that the pivot of the object is also aligned at zero then working in the front view I start to add swift loops to define the silhouette of the torso. then I start to give it volume by selecting rows and pulling them back to give them shape, starting to define the shape of the pecs, ribcage abs, and Inguinal Crease

2nd Stage

I then added the arms keeping in mind the topology the edge loop of the pectoral muscles flow into the shoulders for correct deformations when animating. I then  started to define the muscle groups of the arms making creating exaggerated creases between the muscle groups to define the separate areas.

3rd Stage

I then added the neck and collar-bone area. these areas are exaggerated, inspired by my afro samurai research the characters had slightly elongated necks and deep Suprasternal notches. I then define the abdominal and pectoral muscles

4th Stage

I then Extended the arms and defined the forearms. and blocked out a rough shape of the pelvis and legs

5th Stage

I Created the hands separately starting from a box and then attached them later. These hands are more detailed from hands I have created in the past for my rigging and skinning 6 armed character and my virtual insanity and I decided to make them more detailed and interesting as I knew there would be some close up shots of the hands. I wanted to keep them sorta slim and slender exaggerating the dip you get between the finger bones. I initially tried to create finger nails by inserting the poly on the finger tips then extruding and pulling them out and it sort of worked but the shape was kinda off and when trying to get the correct shape the geometry just became to complex and dense and started to affect the turbosmooth modifier giving undesired results so I decided to just texture them in instead.

6th Stage

I then  added the feet and defined the knees and calves. at this point I wasnt set on what the length of what type of hakama I was going to create for the clothes but I knew it wouldn’t be any higher than the knees so I didn’t bother to define the thigh or pelvic area any thurther as it would covered by the characters clothes

6th Stage

I created the Geta(Traditional japanese wooden shoes) for the character

7th Stage

I started to create the  hakama(Traditional japanese trouser/robe) for the character

8th Stage

Hakama completed

9th Stage

As I decided that the cloth modifier was going to be unsuitable for the project due to time constraints I was unsure how the rigging of a robe type of clothing just using bones was going to deform if I was going to need to add additional bones for the animation of the robe. so I decided to make a test set of leg bones to see how it would deform. I just done  a rough skin and I found that the initial leg bones that  I would use for the rigg were suitable enough the deformations are not as bad as I would have expected so I don’t think I will need to add additional bones for the animation. the range of motion is moderate but it is more than enough for the animation as I don’t plan to have any crazy leg movements this simple bone rig will be sufficient

10th Stage

Created the kimono

11th stage

I started to create the head.working  in the front view I start with a plane then create the loops for the eyes and then work down into the nose and the mouth making sure to get the edge loops that surround the mouth and eyes to get the right topology for facial animation

12th stagethen I start to pull out the verts from the plane to start to give it volume

13th stage

further define the face and improve. the topology by running the mouth edge loops into the bridge of nose

14th stage

Finish the head and attach it to the body

15th stage

I created the second kimono with the one sleeve pulled out for the change of the characters clothing

16th stage

I then created the withered arm samurai mesh for the last phase of the animation sequence

17th stage

the 3 Samuria variant models together

18th stage

I forgot to add the ear when  creating the head. I started the ear by creating a new plane and creating the other and inner ear shapes then connected them together and then extruded the shapes out. then I attached it to the head.

19th stage

Created the katana

20th stage

I added an Edit poly on top of all the meshes to save the completed models so that I could just delete the edit poly if need then I deleted the polys that was going to be hidden by clothes to minimise clipping through the clothes as I will have meshes siting close together and when animated there will be a high chance of the base mesh clipping through the clothes

21 stage

after Setting up my rig and skinning my model I left the facial rig till last because it is the most complicated part. what I didn’t take into account was the use of the mirror mode in the skin modifier in all past models that I have used the model has had perfect symmetry and because I had deleted parts of  my mesh to avoid clipping when I was using the mirror mode to skin the face the rest of the mesh was trying to mirror to verts that did not exist causing the parts that are not symmetry to bind to different bones as the result you can see in the picture I then had to skin the whole mesh again starting from the face so I could use the symmetry mode as weighting the face is the most intensive time-consuming part of the skinning progress. then I skinned the rest of the model without the use of the skins symmetry this was a very time-consuming progress.

stage 22

once I finished skinning again for the second time I started testing the rigg for its range of motion and the deformations when I noticed a problem with the facial rig when you rotate the head up or down the bones in the facial rig start to rotate resulting in the second image. I had encountered this problem before when I tested a facial rig for the first time and I solved this problem on my own by messing about with the look at constraints motion tabs by changing the up nodes of the look at constraints from the world to the helpers they were looking at. so when I encounter this problem I was 100% sure that this was the same problem and I knew how to fix so I started to align the up node from the world but I wasn’t getting the results I was looking for the skin was even more distorted and I experimented by changing the axis of the source/upnode alignment still not getting the right answer. I then experiment by adding rotation constraints on the bones to stop them from rotating on their own but then I found that when I added the rotation constraints to the bone it messed up the stretchy bones they no longer stretched to follow the bone tip as seen in the third image. after this I decided to try to google my problem and couldnt find any decent sources for information but I did find a forum post (http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php?t-677451.html) and confirmed it was what I initially thought it was a problem with the up nodes and went back to experiment with the axis and finally found the correct combination.

normal state

Distorted state

broken Bone rig

As I had I identified with in my initial research I initially thought I was going to have to Create rig and skin 3  separate Characters Before I Started Production on my Samurai I had initaly done a google search on what the best work flow would be to create a character that has slight changes in geometry. my google search didn’t turn up anything useful so I asked on a 3D forum and didn’t get much help their either apart from some useful tips for when it came to Textuering. if you apply a UVW unwrap to all the objects that will share the same texture place when you unwrap them you can place them on top of each other so that it saves time and u don’t need to 3 separate textures. once I had finished fixing the skinning I started to experiment with what would be the best way to Duplicate my rig so I can start to skin the other meshes. initially I just copied the rigg across but this didn’t work as the rigg would not behave properly it was still linked some how to the original riggs ik’s. While experimenting with duplicating the rig I then realised that I wouldnt even need 3 separate riggs I would only  need the one Rigg and I would just skin the multiple meshes to the same rigg and hide the geometry when it isnt being used. I then started to experiment with the issue of having to skin the additional meshes to the rigg. I had seen in a tutorial the use of a skin wrap modifier and how it works is that it copies the weighting information of the already skinned mesh to its self. this worked to a degree but when the skinwrap copied the information and where the meshes were the same it messed up. I thought this would be okay and it would help cut down at least some of the work in skinning the whole mesh. because you can turn the skin wrap modifier into a normal skin modifier I then thought I would be able to manually fix the problem areas. but when I turned the skin wrap in a normal skin modifier it cause all the mesh to distort. so this method was un-usable. I then decided to try to copy and past the Skin modifier on to the new mesh this worked allot better than the skin wrap but was not perfect when I had copied it to the new mesh the area of influence each vert was effecting had increased slightly to the surrounding verts or some verts where the mesh’s geometry was different had connected to opposite bones on the other side of the mesh. this was my best solution I basically had to skin the entire mesh again but it was easier than starting from scratch particularly with skinning the face which is the most time-consuming part of the skinning process as I only had to remove some weights from each vert instead of starting from scratch. the rest of the body was pretty much like skinning from scratch but its easier to rigg the body as u can easily select edgeloops and apply the correct weights

23 Stage

I then UVW unwrapped and to save time and to keep it more efficient because I was unwrapping multiple meshes into one UVW map and then placing the identical meshes on top of each other to save texture space and keep it time efficient and consistent.

 

Notes

At this stage I stopped Production on the samurai all that was left was to texture him the uvw were ready and laid out for Texturing as I was already Two weeks Behind schedule this stage also put me behind by one week so at this stage in the project week 7 going into week 8 I wanted to change my focus onto other stages of the project as texturing isnt as important to me as the other aspects I decided to stop it at this stage and then come back to it a later date if need be due to time constraints.

 

Mid Development Evaluation

usually I would do an Evaluation of at the End of the whole Development/production stage But I Feel that after the Samurai production I am at a divisive point in this project. that my progress requires a sort of mid/way evaluation of my progress so far.

currently as it stands im at the mid-point in the of the Project at the End of week 7  and I am Currently 3 Weeks behind. the Project has suffered major Set backs and it is only more likely to increase. At this point in time I have Started to receive offers back from my choise of  university. and this has given me a new perspective on the project. my preferred choice has given me a conditional Choise of getting a merit on this project and Gcse Math Grade 4. I did not expect the requirement for Gcse Math Grade 4. when I applied for the course it did not mention the requirement or I failed to see it. if I want to get into my prefered choice I will have to get Gcse Math Grade 4. im not that confident in my maths so I will need to devote more time to maths revision taking more time away from what I can devote the Project. which is quite devastating seeing as I am already 3 weeks behind. its clear to me that I will not be able to achieve all that I set out to achieve and at the level of quality that I would have liked with this project. my Perspective and goals for this project has changed quite drastically. initially I set out for this Project to be a True test of my abilities and to push them to the limits Thats why I chose to attempt such a ambitious project I knew going into this project that it would be full on and require a lot of commitment and motivation. And I didn’t have any reason to initially doubt my ability to complete this project to its full potential as during this current year as I have been Highly motivated with my assignment work completing all of my assignments weeks before the due date and in one case completing the assignment before the brief even went live. spending a lot of my free time on independently researching new 3D techniques such as Facial rigging and other skills. this was also re-enforced by my tutor in the Evaluation of the concept as he believed what I proposed was Realistic and achievable and identified that this project will possibly be a candidate for student of the year award. and as such my goals and motivation for this project have changed from a “True test of my abilities and to push them to the limits” to what realistic can I salvage from this project to get the Best grade possibly while managing my time most effectively inline with my new Requirements that I have received from my university Offers. at This stage I  am going to have to cut my animation down And have it End at the point in which the The Dragon appears in front of the Samurai and I predict that the quality of the enviroment and textures will suffer as well. I have also lost a lot of motivation and passion for this project as I have come to the realisation that it will not be completed to the standard that I had initially projected which will undoubtedly effect how much my workflow going forward. going at this current time on my suggested Time schedule I am supposed to be one week into the enviroment Development. im going to move ahead and start production on my Second Character the Dragon and then I will assess again the progression of  the project and adjust my course of action accordingly.

 

Dragon Development

As with the Samurai im just going to Start Development Straight away due to the time constraints. from my initial Research and ideas about the Dragon development I have decided to go with the initial Design I sketched out in my moodboard/story board design of the dragon the more European style of Dragon the one that has 4 limbs with the wings integrated into the dragons arms rather than some of the dragon designs that our in my mood board where the dragons and 6 limbs 2 legs 2 arms and a set of wings and the asian serpent type of dragons that have no wings. I made the design choise mainly down to what I initially Envisioned the design for the dragon as I Feel that they are the more visually impressive looking dragons. and I chose the more visually appealing aproach over contextual that would be the Asian Style of Dragon that is often seen in asian/japanese culture.

 

1st stage

I started modeling the Dragon by Creating the torso first this has become my normal work flow when creating characters as I like to Start with the torso as a base and a point of reference for scale with the rest of the body and  end up creating the head last. I start with a plane than align it with the zero coordinates so I can use the zero coordinates as the line of symmetry then I connect and deleted the left side and add a symmetry modifier so that the pivot of the object is also aligned at zero then working in the front view I start to add swift loops to define the silhouette of the torso. then I start to give it volume by selecting rows and pulling them back to give them shape, I then started to define the neck and tail then extruded out some planes to create the start of the legs

2nd stageAt this Stage I am constantly Adjusting the Chest area and lower torso to get better proportions. I Refine the neck area and start to develop the tail. I further developed the legs

3rd stageAt this Stage I am still constantly Adjusting the Chest area and lower torso to get better proportions as it doesnt feel quite right to me I have made the chest cavity more pointy and elongated the midsection some more. I started to Develop the Arms keeping in mind the topology for correct animation deformation the topology is the same as I have used for my humanoid characters im not sure if it should be different for the dragon as it kinda has a different range of motion. we will see when it comes to rigging and skinning If I will have to potentially change the topology to achieve better animation deformations. I also clean up some of the topology on the Thighs which was quite difficult it could have been easier to fix if I had just added an edge loop as it runs all the way down into the side and legs but I feared that it topology  would become to dense in that area and when I turbo smooth it will have undesired  sharp edges. also further defining the neck and tail

4th stage At this stage I am slightly still Adjusting the Chest area and lower torso to get better proportions pointing the chest cavity slightly more and elongating the midsection slightly also. further developing the Hands of the dragon that will also be the skeletal structure for the wings

5th stageAt this stage I am finally happy with the Dragons proportions. I further defined the dragons legs starting to add detail adding spikes and claws. also further defining the tail of the dragon

6th stage

I start to further develop the dragon by adding detail to the legs and tail. I don’t know what there called but start to add the Section/scale plates

7th stageI continue the Section/scale plates detail up the torso and neck. I add additional detail to the tail adding spiked segments that run up the tail

8th stageI Add  the Section/scale plates to the Back of the dragon and Add the Wing membrane to the Dragons arms

9th stage i start development of the Dragon head. I Decided to box model this which is unusual for me as I usually start all my modeling from a plane. I created a box then added a symmetry modifier and then started to block out a rough shape of the head starting to form its snout and eye sockets.

10th stage Further defining the shape of the head developing the snout and the eye sockets changing the topology to start edge loops around the eyes.

11th stage Further defining the shape of the head developing the snout adding additional detail with a horn and creating a better shape of the nostrils and the eye sockets further defining the shape Creating the Main horns of the dragon

12th stageFurther defining the shape of the head I Started to develop the Lower Jaw. to get the initial shape I Selected the top Part of the dragons snout and duplicated it and flipped it up side down and placed it into position i then started to modify the geometry to remove the nostrils and fix up the topology.

13th stage

I then Started to Combine the Jaw to the rest of the Head and Added additional secondary horns to the head

14th stage

I finish the Development of the Head. I further defined the inside of the mouth, adding a tongue and teeth and added some more additional horns to the bottom of the jaw

15th stage

I then Connected th Head to the Body

16th stage

I then created the bone Rigg for the Dragon its basically the exact same rigg I use for the Samurai and my other humanoid characters just adapted to the dragon its only differences are the amount of extra bones and controllers needed to animate the tail and the neck. Due to time constraints I didn’t really have time to investigate rigs for animals as this is my first time creating a character that was not a humanoid. my initial biggest fear is about how the membrane webbing of the wings will deform and animate with just the bones I have created in with the finger bones of hands. After skinning my Dragon my initial Fears about the Wings membrane webbing not properly deforming was not realised the wings deformed better than I expected they work perfectly fine I think that additional bones would help for deformations particularly around the webbing around the torso and arms but as it stands now im happy with it and due to the time constraints I don’t think it would be and effective use of my time to implement this small factor to get a better degree of control when it comes to animating

17th stage

I then Uvw unwrapped the Dragon Ready for texturing. the same with the Samurai im going to leave the actual creation of the texture untill I have assessed what the next course of action will be

Notes

At this point in Week 10 I have completed the Dragon Production up to the point where it just needs to be textured. the production of the dragon was a lot faster than the samurai production i completed it within a week and 2 days 5 days less than the projected 2 week time scale I had set. I am currently 4 Weeks behind at this stage this has increased by an extra week since my last evaluation and this is because I took a week out of the project to finnish some out lying work like the Contextual and Progression unit. as these elements are required for me to complete the course I decided it would be better to do it now then leave it till the end and be pressed for time to complete these necessary project that if not completed I automatically fail the course. and as the project is already hit by delays getting it done now will help me get a better perspective of my time left and how to best use it effectively. with the Remaining time left of this weeks production im going to go back to revisit the Samurai texturing see how reasonable it will be to see if I can still get the Textures done within the remaining time left and also to start develop the environment to see if it will be possible to develop the environment to a suitable standard.

texture development

As a Test to see how feasible it would be to get the Texturing done I started to Texture the Samurai. I found that the Textuering wasnt going to really be feasible at this point in the production. I found that the texuering was going to be more time consuming than I had anticipated for the samurai the other characters and assets would not be as challenging. I found that lining up things like the facial feature and the hair-line was difficult due to the way it is pelted in the uvw map. it was a lot of minor adjustments based of my best estimates of where the textures line up with the uvw pelt mapping. I found this process major time-consuming as I had to keep saving the texture and then assessing how it looked in the view port. and this process was not very efficient as well as when you try to default just save your texture in Photoshop it doesnt save it as an image it default wants saves it as a Photoshop project document, so every time I saved it I had to manually change all the file settings every time. and it becomes very time-consuming proses when I made small changes and want to quickly see the results. I Developed the texture up to the point where I had got the base colours down and had started to add detail to the clothes trying to add shadows to simulate wrinkles and lining up the head textures. I was kind starting to work it needed more development I need to add more range of varying tones to make it more interesting. I knew going into the Project that the textures I created weren’t going to be the Best as this is the area I had the least experience with and my skills within Photoshop are lacking but to get the texture to a point where I would be happy with them would have required another 2 days probably. and this wouldnt be feasible in the current circumstances of the project. this decision to not go ahead with the textures is also a personal discretion I have with textures within 3D I would rather have no textures at all then bad textures. as at least if there no textures and its black and white it looks uniform then is miss match of textures and materials and this is just my personal preference.

enviroment development

 

after my experiment with the Texturing I decided to experiment developing the environment to see what would be possible within the remaining time. I blocked out a rough terrain of the environment and started to create an Asset for the environment before . stopped development and main concerns with the textureing is that there isnt enough time to properly develop the environment especially as the environment would have relied quite heavily on textures to make it work like the grass and trees would need to the textured with opacity maps etc. I would of definitely needed the 2 weeks I set out to be able to complete the environment which isnt feasible at this point in the project.

Development/Production Evaluation

The same with  My “secondary” research stage I Feel that my Development/Production stage Was Effective But was not as successful as I would have liked due to the time constraints. as with the research stage the project was still under time constraints issues which did not alow me to Develop all of the aspects of the project that I wanted to. I had potentially hoped to regain some time at this stage of the project but I didn’t the Amount of time I was behind schedule Increased with the added pressure of having to focus on other aspects than the project. at this point I am going to have to Reduce what im going to produce for my final piece. I had initially set out to make a full Animation for my Final piece but this wont be possible at this stage in the project my final piece will be more like a Developed Animatic of the Final animation. with the time left I do have the potential to make the full animation if I spend the rest of my time focused on the production and development but as I have spent so much time trying to catch up the documentation of evidence on my blog is lacking as I havent been keeping up to date with Uploads as I have been focused production. so with my remaining time I will get my blog in order to show the development of my project. then the remaining time I would like to get some Animations done as I spent a lot of time on the rigging and skinning and the implementation of the facial rigg it would be a shame if it doesnt get used in some way.

in terms of the Work I have produced in the Development/Production Stage was Effective as I dint get to produce every thing to the level of quality of work I wanted but the work I have produced is a Good representation of my practical abilities with in 3D that I am proud of. Particularly with my Characters the I Model skinned They are inline with all of my Past Level of Work which was at distinction level I believe the Samurai and Dragon are the best pieces of 3D work I have produced so far. They are of an appropriate Poly count for main characters All of my different Samurai meshes combined come to around 55k Polys and my dragon is 75k poly which is on the upper ends of acceptable for poly count for a main character. I ensured All my meshes have Proper Topology, it’s all Quads no n-gons. iI focused on the topology With animation in mind so all of the topology for the Characters are correct so that when I animate it will have proper Deformations. the Proportions of the Characters are good I spent a lot of time especially with the dragon ensuring them to be correct. the Riggs I created for the Character worked well they give a nice range of motion. some issues I had with the Samurai is the time it took to finish it the modeling portion of the character went a little over my projected time I set aside 2 weeks for the Production of the samurai and the idea was that the first week would be spent modeling and the second would be rigging skinning and textuering. the modeling portion went over into the second week by a couple of days so I was a little behind schedule and this is due to the fact of my workflow was not as efficient as I would have liked I had identified this as a potential issue in my initial research I was not sure what the best workflow was when creating a character that has slight changes to its geometry so when I was modeling. I did try to do some research to find out what was the best work flow to attempt this but I didn’t find any relevent information so I was just working from my initial assumption.  I was still working under the assumption that I was going to need 3 separate meshes for the animation it wasnt untill  I had rigged and skinned the first base mesh that I realised that I would only need the one rigg instead of 3 so some of the meshes that I had created for it weren’t needed any more leading it to not be and effective use of my time. As I mentioned  I think that the proportions for my character were good but I do have some issues with the proportion of the head I  think I extended the face a bit to far forward and this wasnt initially apparent to me till I started to Experiment with the textureing as its hard to gauge the proportions of the head with out stuff to reference it do like the eye brows of hair-line. but by the time I had discovered this it was too late to go back and change it as it had already been rigged and skinned. especially with the complexity of the facial rigg it would have been impossible to go back to it. another issue is that my samurai is bald due to not implementing texture he has no hair as I had initially intended to create the hair using opacity maps. The Dragon turned out a lot better than I had imagined I think the proportions are good and it looks very impressive and visually interesting but I do have issues with it. the scale horn plates particularly on the neck and back are not as sharp as I would have liked they are quite rounded due to the turbo smooth modifier but I had trouble trying to fix this problem as the solutions would just shift the problem I was hesitant when adding edge loops to make them sharper for two reasons. the first being that the Geometry will become to dense the poly count was already at the higher ends of the budget. the second being that when it came time to skin the dragon it would be very difficult tp select the certainty verts I needed to paint wights if there so close to each other which I did find challenging when I was skinning the dragon it required me to zoom in really close to the vert to select them often requiring me to change to wire frame mode to make sure im selecting the right verts and in wire frame mode it’s very easy to get lost as all the verts start to blend with the other existing verts. also the connection of the head to the body where they connect looks really bad there is a lot of increased geometry in this area where the number of edge loops of the neck did not match up with head making the transition of the head into the neck look really shoddy it’s not that noticeable but from a complete side on perspective is looks quite bad.