3D Class Week 10 Creating A Medium Complexity Character Part 01 GameRes Model and UV's

This week we began a project that will continue for the next few weeks. Instead of the low complexity of the fish we had to model last time, this time we had to model an existing design of a medium complexity character.

I followed the tutorials for modeling the character and creating the UVs. Here is my version:

After that, we had to create accessories for our character. As I am want to do whenever given even the slightest chance, I of course had to take this opportunity to make the starfish guy super cute. I awakened the pretty, pretty starfish girl that was lying just below the surface. Honestly, I'm sure if she could speak, she'd thank me for helping her shine like she was meant to.

On my model, I add a two-tiered skirt with an elastic waistband and a giant bow.

Total work time: 8 hours

2D Class Week 09 Shape Language

This week was a continuation of the Tim Burton-style Wizard of Oz project. This time we had to do shape analyses to come up with effective designs for our characters and environments.

For this part of the project, I teamed up with Melissa to work on the Witch and the flying monkeys. 

First we had a group meeting all together to decide on a direction. After that, Melissa and I created shape analysis sheets based on reference images to help us come up with final designs.

I took care of the sheet for the Witch.

Here are the designs we created together.

For the witch, we focused on a lot of angles, triangles, shapes that go from larger to very skinny, and angular curls.

For the monkey, we focused on large round shapes and mixing larger shapes, such as the head and arms and body, with smaller shapes, such as the legs.

Then I went on to create the proxy model for the Witch. I started by creating front, back, and side reference images in order to accurately recreate her design in a 3D space.

Then I created the proxy model made mostly of larger shapes.

And here it is in Unreal next to the Unreal mannequin for scale

3D Class Week 09 Create a Simple Organic Model

This week's assignment was to take a design for an organic model, create a game res mesh in maya, sculpt a hi res mesh in ZBrush, paint textures in Substance, and then finally import it into Unreal.

This was a particularly difficult assignment for me and I faced many setbacks and issues throughout the process. I originally started with the shark design before switching over to one of the fish.

I began by sculpting my low res model in Maya.

Then I took this mesh and imported it into ZBrush in order to sculpt a high res mesh with fine details

Then I attempted to bring both meshes into Substance Painter to paint my textures. However, I found many issues at this stage. Because my high res mesh didn't match my low res mesh well enough, I had quite a few troubles baking. After wrestling with Maya, Substance, Zbrush, and faulty UVs for a few hours, I eventually started painting my textures.

However, it was only after I finished that I realized the textures I creating in Substance weren't compatible with Unreal. So, it was back to Substance to start over for me. Before that, I took the opportunity to go back into Maya and rework my low res model a bit. I ended up with this:

I went back to Substance and redid the baking process and my textures.

Finally I imported my mesh and textures into Unreal and created my material to show off the final model.

Total work time: Around 14 hours (including the shark I originally started on)

12/12/16

As of today, I have done some changes to this fish model.

First, I went back to Maya to properly retopologize the low res version of the fish

And here is a nicer shot of the high poly version

Then I took it back into substance where I baked the hi poly version onto the new version and made some minor tweaks to the texture

2D Class Week 08 Artist Discovery

This week was the beginning of a longer group project. Over the course of the next few weeks, we will be combining a character from The Wizard of Oz with the art style of Tim Burton and creating and image together as a group.

Our team's character is The Wicked Witch of the West and her Flying Monkeys. We began by pooling images in a group Pinterest board. From there we each selected images we thought could go towards creating our redesigned characters and used them to make our individual mood boards.

Our group's pinterest can be found here

Here are some examples of a few of the images I found:

Here are my mood boards for the Witch and for the environment.

3D Class Working in a Game Engine With Final Prop

This week we finished off the cannon by exporting the textures we made last week and pushed off the mesh and textures into Unreal.

I started by exporting the textures from Substance Painter for Unreal 4

Then I imported the textures into Unreal and created a new material to set them up

I created a material instance to change different parameters

 Here is a view of two meshes with different material instances

And here is the final mesh

Total work time: 2 hours

3D Class Week 07 Bake Maps and Digital Painting for a Prop

This week I got to try out Substance Painter for the first time. For our assignment, we had to continue with the cannon project by taking the model into Substance Painter and using the various tools to create a nice texture on it.

I decided I wanted to make my cannon look old and battered, so I started by looking up reference images of old cannons. I found images such as this:

and this:

And here is my model:

I tried to replicate things such as the rust, mold, dirt along the bottom, and verdigris dripping down from the top.

3D Class Week 8 In Class

On Tuesday 10/11, we had a bit of a "Spook Off" competition. In the spirit of the upcoming holiday, all of the artists in class competed to try and make spooky models in ZBrush. Here is my model below:

Work time: 1 hour 50 minutes

2D Tim Burton-style Wizard of Oz Team

Team Witch (feat. The Flying Monkeys):

Tiffany Brodie

Hezekiah Olopade

Melissa Almirall

Chelsea Ziu

Samuel Moss

Francisco Romero

2D Class Week 07 Basic Lighting

This week, we had to take a photograph of an object that utilizes a three point lighting setup and recreate it as a drawing in Photoshop. For my object, I chose a toy Princess Peach.

My first step was to convert this image to black and white whithin Photoshop to more easily see the black and white values.

Then I made a quick sketch to get the basic shapes down before making a clean lineart layer.

Then I put down my base colors.

Then I added shading and highlights.

Once the object was finished, I moved on to making a background and a cast shadow.

Finally I cleaned up the image and added some finishing touches.

After that, I went ahead and added some colors on top as a layer set to Color.

Total work time: about 6 hours