Character Dichotomy: Postmortem

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to talk about my last project and reflect on what went well and what didn't go as well.
I was meant to post this earlier but I have been very ill the past few days and I had no energy. All I did was to barely eat, sleep lots and whatch Feng Zhu tutorials in bed.

Anyway, I think this project has been very successful although I feel I could've managed a better character. Perhaps I should've spent more time concepting but I was kind of rushing trying to find a good duo. After I finished my final concept, almost everyone was doing their 3D models and it kind of put pressure on me to skip details and focuus on modelling only.

I did some sketches to see what my character could've looked like if I improved its silhouette and its overall feel.

All of this means that my time management was poor once again, or at least not as good as it should've been. I still have to find a workflow that allows me to produce good amounts of work in a short period of time.

I am also a little bit disappointed that I couldn't do an animation for this character. I know it was a stretch goal but still, I really wanted to learn how to create idle animations. It just makes your work look more professional.

Zbrush....I feel I could've pushed my model a lot further, I was being cautious. I am scared that if I try too many things I will get overwhelmed by the software but it is something I need to get better at.

It seems that every project I do punches me in the face while yelling to get better and that's all I can do. I have to keep going and keep pushing myself. I do not wish to be average by the end of my third year.
It's been very tough and it'll only get harder but that's how it is and I am happy to take on the challenge.

Well, with this project done and with my illness almost gone I have decided to dedicate my christmas holiday to revise my fundamental drawing skills! I recently bought an awesome book called how to draw by Scott Robertson and it is incredible to learn design fundamentals.


See you soon!

Leveling up

Hello! today is the last day of term and I couldn't be happier! I finished my dichotomy character project in time and it turned out quite well!

I feel like I am progressing on my 3D a lot faster than I did last year and so far I've been enjoying every project.

okay, let's go back to my dichotomous character:

Texturing was long but enjoyable at the same time. For this project I went back to use diffuse and specular maps instead of PBR. The reason for that is that I wanted to keep my character in 3DSmax since I don't know how to rig and animate in unreal and time was limited for this project.

Halfway through texturing I realised that I had an error in my UVs. The ear mesh was overlapping with the head one which meant that when I textured it, there was a  patch on the side of the head where there was no hair...At this point I didn't have enough time to go back and change my unwrapp, therefore I had to tweak the UVs once the texture was applied to the model. It looks okay now but the UVs seem a bit streched on that particular zone.

These are some of my final renders in 3Ds max. In the end I didn't have time to create an animation which would've been awesome...

I decided to put my mesh into marmoset just for fun and surprisingly it looked good!

I am very pleased with this project. It's so much better than my gladiator one! I feel that every project I do is better than the last one. Hopefully the tutors will like it as well!


With this project coming to a close, my Christmas holiday has officially begun! Time to wrap myself with thick layers of clothing and hibernate (and do some personal work from time to time).

See you soon!

Carla.

Last week of term!

Hello everyone! I can't wait for christmas holidays as I'll be able to have some time off from uni and focus on my own personal work.

The character project is coming along nicely, although I will run out of time to do what I initially had planed..

From the begining I knew I wanted to create a realistic character and fairly high poly. I did the basic mesh  in a few hours and then I started slowing down the process as I started paying attention to detail. The hands and the ears were the most difficult part. I almost spent a whole day modelling them!

For this project I did my concepting alongside my 3D, by the time I had my final concept I had to change my 3D model slightly. I had to make it more skinny and improve its clothes. I tried to capture his facial expression but it was quite hard. I also rigged the character because I wanted to animate at first. I added as many bones as possible and I even added a tail to avoid the 'skirt' to merge with the legs.

Once I unwrapped the model, I took it inot Zbrush and I refined it. I added wrinkles and folds to make it more realistic. I really enjoy using Zbrush but I still don't know how it properly works...I hope to learn some more over the christmas holidays.

Baking took some time, specially in terms of rendering my maps. I sat a whole morning wating for the renders. It was worth it though.

Right now I am finishing off the textures and hopefully, I'll have everything ready to go tomorrow!

As part of my visual studies module I made a wire armature for my character which helped me visualize the human form outside my computer. It was a nice distraction after spending days in front of a computer.

This is it for today, see you soon!