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.