Soft Blue - Final Review

06/05/22 - Week 17

Now that I have finished my projects I will review them over and see where I went wrong, could have improved or what I am pleased with and proud of. 

This is the third and final character I created for my FMP. This character was supposed to be the most stylised which is not something I've tried too much with 3D in general. I mainly chose this concept as the other two were more fitting what I'd set out to find, and this one was much more to my own stylistic interest and aesthetic. I did find that some people were more against this concept and artist than the previous two but I was very inspired and excited by this concept specifically. I think because of this I am a bit bias towards it.

Concept by bergamotik 1137:

This was probably the hardest of the 3 sculpts, purely because there was so much to tackle overall. I also tried much harder to perfect the sculpt especially in the face. Spending some extra time on this character was really beneficial as personally I think that the sculpt turned out the best and most accurate to the concept. I still think there is areas that could be refined but I did end up having to move on, one of these reasons being the sculpted hair which I am probably the least happy with as I wanted it to look more like the concept, which is much thinner and natural looking. I used the same method from first term which I'm not too happy with in general so hopefully once I learn a bit more about sculpted hair I can improve on my methods. For speed purposes, I think it works.

As for retopping, I think this character is retopped best on the body but this also was the highest poly character mainly because of the wings. Looking back on this project now I am a bit confused why I chose to make the wings not planes. I understand that on the concept it sort of has this effect but I don't think it was worth all the effort I went through to make the wings look right when I could have just baked on the details. The wings have a lot of tris to them to make them look smooth, so overall they are just a bit wasteful. Originally I also wanted to try to make a shader for the wings which would have been much easier and acheiveable with a plane rather than an object with thickness. It also provides some obstruction to the clothing and causes clipping sometimes as it needs so much space that wasn't really achievable with the way the character design is. This is probably the only major thing I would change about this project. Apart from that and a few more loops around the crotch area, I think the retop is to the best of my abilities.

I think texturing for this character is the best out of the 3 too, I really paid attention to the style of the artist and tried to replicate that in my texturing. Eventually I got the hang of this and it ended up making my work give the stylised look it needs. This particularly succeeds in the face where there was a lot of colour variation in the concept and I had fun hand painting all of this in. This brings me to hand painting which is not something I have really explored before, but doing some of this in painter was really fun and it makes me want to perhaps learn 3dcoat or understand hand painting more and maybe try to further this skill. I'm super happy with the texturing on this character overall.

Rigging and skinning took a bit longer for this project, as again there was just a lot to deal with and decide what was going where to make it look the best that it could. I also made the same mistake as the first character with not thinking carefully about what topology to delete and ended up having to use some more time with having to deal with planes that weren't easily accessible as you couldn't see them. I ended up also having to revise the retop a couple times whilst animating as the pose was quite hunched over and it meant that I had some problems in the waist area since there was a lot going on there. The animation in the end I think is the best out of the 3 and I think it really brings the character to life, it looks the most natural and professional as I didn't have the restriction of keeping the character on the ground. I used unreal to get round the issue of not being able to move the pelvis, so she moved up and down like she was floating.

 When lighting this character I didn't want to have too many harsh lights as I wanted to replicate the softness of the concept which I think I managed to achieve by creating a more consistent, ambient light coloured light. I also chose to create the plinth from a different concept from the same artist which I think works very well for the presentation overall.

Overall, apart from some structural issues, I really like this character and I think it's the best out of the three. I'm unsure if this is purely because the aesthetic is much more me or if it is because in the end this is the character that I kept visiting last, meaning that I was building skill with each process and this would always be the best result. I planned more time for this character as I went along as I found that it was taking me a while to tackle all the individual parts which I'm glad I realised and deciding to replan around this character is probably what caused it not to fail as I think if I had any less time on anything it would look rushed. With more time I would love to have tried to improve the wings and some issues I can see such as sizing differences in the petals and the way the petals work overall, but I think with the time we were given I'm really pleased with this character.

This concludes my third and final FMP character project.

The Boatswain - Final Review

 06/05/22 - Week 17

Now that I have finished my projects I will review them over and see where I went wrong, could have improved or what I am pleased with and proud of. 

The Boatswain was the second project that I started in my FMP. I wanted this character to be a bit more stylised and have a bit more complications in it considering the simplicity of the first. This concept really fit the bill, I was also a fan of the style used by the artist and was hoping to replicate it. It also produced the challenge of weapons which is not something I've necessarily approached properly before.

Concept by Venus Bambisa:

I think this is probably my least favourite of the 3 projects simply because I don't think I hit the mark with the sculpt. Proportionally and stylistically, it is wrong. I did purposefully change the length of the trouser sag because it would cause many issues with rigging but this must have thrown me off with the proportions, I noticed this when comparing the placements of the guns and belts on the body. I think this sort of throws off the design features of the concept and I am not happy with the outcome as much as I could have been even though the changes that needed to be made is just a slight lengthening of the legs and enlargement of the boots, or boot cuffs. Similarly to the first project, I also needed to try to get a better representation of the style especially on the face, I tried much harder with this sculpt to get the style as accurate as possible but I still feel I missed the mark slightly. 

I did end up having to rush the weapons a bit too which is a shame, I didn't enjoy creating them too much but I learnt a lot about stylised weapons in general and my approach next time would be very different and with a lot more care in it.

Overall, I did feel that my sculpting skills were getting a bit better and the quality did improve, I just needed to apply this better.

Retopping went alright for this character though I do think in some places I could have evened out the topology a bit better like the trousers and some places on the face. I also had to figure out how to retop the weapons which I ended up redoing as I went very low at first, some of the parts were a bit hard to understand where to place loops and I definitely could improve on weapon topology as I think the outcome looks a bit messy.

The textures on this project were also something that I struggled with, at first I took an approach like the previous project which wasn't right as I wanted to replicate the style of the concept. I learnt about hand painting, replicating style and painting in lighting in my third project so I ended up revisiting this one. I am really glad I did this as before I think it looked even less like the concept, so I feel I was able to push this one slightly and give it some improvements. Even so, I think if I had the time to redo all the texturing I would have as it is just so far off how I wanted it to look and far off the concept itself.

Rigging and skinning in this project didn't go too badly but it definitely wasn't as smooth in the animation process. I found 3ds Max quite annoying to animate with especially because I couldn't figure out how to move the pelvis around apart from rotation which severely limited me and made me unable to have the classic idle pose so I had to get a bit more creative. I didn't want to spend too long on the animations so I tried my best here but I think this one probably looks the worst out of the 3. I also struggled with the pose as the one on the concept was in a quite extreme position. which caused some high deformation on the left arm since I haven't added twist bones to my rig. I am hoping it doesn't take away from my character. Again, I would like to get more into rigging and understand it more as I found it quite fun to bring my characters to life.

For lighting and presentation, I did end up changing the lighting a bit from the concept as I thought it was a bit flat and dark so adding a second back light and slightly changing its position really helped to make the character stand out a bit more. Realising that this character was a bit weak, I also created a toon line shader which I think helped this character a lot to be both emphasized and look more professional, so I am very happy with how this turned out even though the shader isn't the most optimized as that wasn't really what I was looking into.

I also made the decision not to create a proper plinth for this character as I think the set up I've created works well and is much more comparable to the concept. I thought having planks or something of the like would look tacky and not work as well.

Overall, there's a lot I would change with this project and I'm the least happy with it's outcome. I would have liked to improve more on it if I had the time but again, I would want to start over on the whole thing and try to improve from scratch which just wasn't possible in the time that was available. Time wise, I think I gave myself enough for this character but I didn't really have time to go back and fix things such as the gun topology and texturing, this had to be rushed or I had to work long hours to try to fit it in, so definitely more time for error needed to be given.

I feel I have learnt a lot with this project including in Zbrush, understanding texturing and stylised characters so it was a very good experience to have and I think it made it easier to get through my final character. I tried my best on this project and even though it didn't come out exactly how I wanted it I am still happy with it in some ways and I can see the progress and lessons that it gave me.

This concludes my second FMP character project.

Nia - Final Review

 06/05/22 - Week 17

Now that I have finished my projects I will review them over and see where I went wrong, could have improved or what I am pleased with and proud of. 

Nia was the first character I approached with this project, I chose the concept as the design was able to be implemented into 3D with an understanding that I already had, it also has good aesthetic quality and also presented some challenges such as hair cards. I wanted to create a semi-realistic character to compare with the more stylised ones I had chosen and this fit that.

Concept by Jonatan Anjos:

To first assess the overall success of the sculpt, I think I did well in some areas such as the clothing and overall body structure. This is not quite achieved in the facial structure and there's definitely some work that needs doing here to improve the similarities. I did try hard to get the face right but in the end I didn't seem to have been able to capture it exactly how I wanted it. This being the first character of the project that I sculpted, I see problems with it and some of those do lie in the addition of the unnecessary mesh top that I could have just created on the skin.

Moving onto retop and texturing, I think this is probably where the project succeeds the most, I think the retop is clean and deformation wise it isn't too bad. The texturing I think really reflects the character and I tried to mirror more classic stylised texturing. It perhaps doesn't have the exact same style as the original concept but I think the style works with the character well. I did still struggle with texturing concepts like adding the implication of dirt into the textures and getting some of the roughness completely thought out but this is something that I am actively learning and understanding more as I go along.

I also attempted hair cards with this character which is not something I've experimented with before. They are definitely not the best or most complete but I think they do elevate the character model as a whole and work with the more semi-realism aspect that I was aiming for, since sculpted hair would be a bit more on the stylized side. I am a bit disappointed that I wasn't able to learn more Maya during this process but it was very interesting and eye opening to learn the basics of hair cards and the process of both creating and placing them. There's definitely a lot of room for improvement here but I think the result is good for my first attempt at them. I am also pleased with the way the hair turned out in engine with the emissive placed on it, though I do wish that I was able to replicate the many different colours in the hair as seen in the concept. 

As for rigging and animation this project probably went the smoothest, purely for the reason that the character is the simplest. Whilst animating I also was able to spend a bit longer on it as I was quite quick in the rigging process. The animation, though a bit armature really brings the character to life so I am pleased with how it turned out. I think I would like to explore animating a bit further as it's something I ended up enjoying quite a bit.

Presentation on this character was a bit fiddly but I eventually got the lighting to somewhat reflect what I was seeing in the concept. I am most happy with the assets in this project as I was able to make some time to create the crows, which I decided to have instead of the cape as I didn't have enough time to create both. I think the assets in this scene really helped to add context and make the project look much more finished.

This is probably the project that I have the least to comment on, I think most things I did look reasonable for the time given and the only way I could have really improved on it was to go back and resculpt the whole thing and recreate parts that I am unhappy with currently and the new things I've learnt. I think I planned my time well and did give myself the best amount of time I could have for this character, sometimes perhaps too much, only perhaps some more in detail planning and notes could have helped me to realize problems before encountering them or creating irreversible mistakes.

Overall, I think I did well on this project, though it's quite simplistic and I don't have too much to comment about I really enjoyed it and learnt a lot especially for my other 2 characters. To do better I needed to revisit areas if I had the time, add more details and a higher level of quality and give more foresight in the form of planning. I am proud of my first attempt at hair cards and I'm excited to improve on these and learn further hopefully soon.

This concludes my first FMP character project.

Nia, Boatswain & Blue - Rigging and Skinning

 18-22/04/22 - Week 15

This week I managed to rig all 3 characters. Unfortunately, I fell ill with covid at the end of last week so it did effect me this week and slowed me down. Thankfully, rigging and skinning didn't take as long as I thought it would for each character, so it balanced itself out time wise.

I first started with Nia, this was probably the easiest of the 3 to rig since she has a much more basic design that is tight fit. However, I did come across some issues one of them being my lack of thought into what to delete from each character - wasted tris - which ended up effecting me for another character as well. I think overall something that has effected me in all my projects is lack of forethinking which is where things like wasted planes really show up and make me use more of my time trying to fix these problems.

In the end it wasn't too problematic and I managed to get through rigging this character with relative ease by using a couple of extreme poses to try to get the best rigging I could. I then roughly put her into the position in the concept to get an idea of if my rigging was going correctly and where to adjust. In the end I ended up with the pose below:

Next, I started on the boatswain. He didn't really have much of a problem with planes that I didn't delete since the base of his character is probably even simpler than Nia's. I used the same process mentioned to work through the skinning process. Though what did trip me up was the belts and also the sagging on the pants. The belts took a while to get through and I ended up changing where they were rigged too a couple times but in the end I managed to get it looking decent. I also used a prop bone for the first time on the guns which was interesting but made things a lot easier for the guns that I planned to move with the hands. The trousers where a bit of an issue and I was trying to balance things between the thigh bones and the pelvis but eventually I got the hang of how weighted it should be to each of these parts.

This was the pose that I've settled with for the moment:

Finally, I moved on to Blue. As expected, this did take me the longest as she is the most complex. This is also where the problem about faces that I didn't think to delete became problematic as things like the neck had two layers that was really hard to access, and trying to see through the mesh when there is so much going on is really difficult. This also happened with the skirt and the shorts even though I couldn't really delete anything here to help cope with this anyway.

I added ponytail bones here, I ended up using 7 on each side as my previous project I tried to minimise on the bones and it created a very clunky look. I then also added extra bones for the wings which I also haven't included before but these were very simple to deal with and made skinning the wings very easy. Lastly, I also included a prop bone for the bells since they are attached to the hand.

I struggled with the skirt and parts hanging from the body a little bit since I wasn't sure where I wanted to rig it too but in the end I settled with mainly the pelvis, but had to do some small adjustments on the parts that touched the body. I also had to mess around with the bodice too as I had a very similar problem. 

Here's her pose:

Overall, I'm really happy with the rigs that I managed to create this week and I think it's going to be a good base for my animations next week, though obviously its pretty easy to adjust if I need to.

My plan for next week is pretty similar to this weeks, around 1.5 days per character for both morph targets and animation which I plan to do all by hand. I haven't animated before so it'll be interesting but hopefully I'll get a good result.

Nia, Boatswain & Blue - Engine

 13-15/04/22 - Week 14

To finish this week off, I have just been in engine and creating some basic lighting setups and also some plinths for a couple of my characters.

I didn't tweak Nia's lighting all that much but I did add a small base for her to stand on and some of the feathers. I decided to approach these plinths by mirroring what's in the concepts or something of the like, so Nia's was quite simple. I still want to add the crows in which I unfortunately didn't manage to make progress on this week.

As for the boatswain, I'm still considering my options with the plinth as he doesn't have one in the concept, though he does have a graphic behind him and a shadow in front - so I am hoping to have something of the like in this presentation. As for lighting, I wanted to keep it quite simplistic and not too colourful alike the concept. Looking at this screenshot now I am thinking it may benefit from a stronger rim light possibly on both sides, so perhaps I need to stray a bit from the original concept here for presentation purposes.

For blue, I found a concept by the same artist that had a fairy-like feel and tried to take inspiration from the ground included there. I think this really ties in nicely with my character as its very foresty and I like how the colours don't take anything away from her. As for the lighting, I again realised it wasn't too contrast-y or had much colour in it at all. This makes me think with these two characters I will be using quite a bit of post process to play with the contrast and saturation to try to get the effect I want. Again, looking at this now it would definitely benefit from either a rim light or a visible main light source.

Moving on to next week, I need to start implementing the poses and animations for my characters so this will mean rigging. I am a bit concerned with rigging especially for Blue since she is quite complicated, so I have left the whole week for rigging. That means about 1.5 days per character.

Blue - Texturing

 04-12/04/22 - Week 13

This week I worked through my final character to try to finish the main textures for all 3 characters.

I planned a day to finish off some of the retopping and uv mapping that I had left to do for this character, but it ended up cutting into much of my time and I didn't finish getting everything ready until halfway through Tuesday losing a bit of time there. I wanted to really improve on what I was saying last week and really reflect the style of the concept into my texturing work.

I think I succeeded much better this week, I used the shadow and highlights much more efficiently from the concept for this character and also really tried to understand the shading techniques the artist uses. This was really beneficial, as I started to use the sketchy shading that the artist uses in my textures my model was looking accurate and also aesthetically pleasing. I did struggle a bit with keeping up with all the different layers I was using in painter and how this was effecting my roughness overall, but eventually I got a bit more used to it.

I also used a lot of metallic in my textures to make a shiny effect for things like the horns and hair which really helped the piece to come to life a bit more. This was supported by the highlights that produced a fake sheen that helped a lot with the material reads. I also think this technique sort of covered up the fact there was not much ware and tare where there usually would be, as the lines add a lot of texture to the piece without actually doing so.

In the end though, this method did take me a while as I was basically hand painting each asset and this character has a lot of assets so I ended up cutting into my time quite a lot and my plan ended up being thrown out the window as I had to continue texturing into the next week which was rather frustrating as I now won't have enough time to do certain things such as the crows for Nia, even so I do intend to find time for these.

Overall, a much more successful week or so, where I am a lot happier with the outcome of my texturing. I think if I get time I want to revisit the Boatswain and try to implement the skills that I built here to try to improve the textures there. I don't have too much of a plan for the next few days, I just want to get all 3 characters in engine properly and add some details such as the plinth or asset they will be standing on.

Boatswain - Texturing

 28-01/03-04/22 - Week 12

This week I have completed the textures for my second character.

For this one I took a bit of a different approach since the style of the concept is quite stylised and I wanted to show that more in my texturing. I tried to apply shadow and light in the areas that the concept does to try to improve the overall accuracy and likeness.

I ended up struggling with this quite a bit and had a lot of passes to get the effect I wanted, looking back on it now I just needed to go in strong from the start instead of trying to make it still look blended and soft which isn't really like the style I'm following at all. I think in the end I started to take a similar approach that I did to my previous character.

I also was struggling a bit with the amount of roughness variation and ware to add to my character, I struggle with this as a whole for stylised pieces as I find that dirt is usually either very obvious or not at all present and I found the latter in this concept even though in reality you could imagine that the clothing and accessories would be much more worn. I tried to get a good balance here but I think I have been thrown quite off path with this character, I could try to improve this but with the time left I need to first get the more major aspects out the way before going back over this for another pass.

Probably the part I am most happy with is the skin since I feel I managed to achieve a good roughness to produce a quite accurate look.

I did try to get a bit more dirt in on the guns and looked through a lot of reference for stylised weaponary and how they include ware, I found that most of it was placed in during sculpting, such as scratches, so I definitely will keep this in mind next time. I think I didn't really think about this as the weapons appear so clean on the concept. Adding a little bit of dulling on the barrel of the gun helped it look a bit more natural I feel.

I think texturing this character has really made me aware of the lack of likeness that I have achieved on this project, I don't think my sculpt is as strong as the other two and texturing has not helped this as much as I would have wanted, so I am overall a bit disappointed. 

My plan for next week is similar, just work through the week and get the textures done as I go: