Week 8 - Low Poly Modeling Update #7

Finally.

Finallyyyy textures are done! Maybe I'll go back to it and touch up some details before submitting my final project, but for now I'm going to call it because I really want to get this done so I can move on to Zbrush. You may notice the flowers on the spear are not alpha'ed yet, but I've already made the alpha texture and I'm going to see how Sketchfab imports alpha maps. If I'm having trouble, I believe there is a way to do it in 3D Coat so I'm not too concerned right now. I'm rather happy on how this came out considering this is my first time making a character like this. I'd love to revisit hand painted textures again in the future because I had loads of fun with it. I'm definitely going to with my future mage character I designed, see my first post if you're interested!

Now I'm putting all of my attention on rigging her! I've made some good progress with the rig (controls all done except for center of gravity, skeleton done, legs bend and stretch properly, all current controls are constrained to the proper joints, etc) and all I have to do now is get the FK/IK controls working on the arms, apply blend shapes and facial rigging, bind the skin to the skeleton, and constrain the armor to the body. I want to have it done by next update (I certainly hope so because it's due for 432 haha). One thing I need to do before binding the skin is add some inner mouth geometry because of the project requirements for blend shapes. It shouldn't be too taxing poly-wise, but we'll see how it goes!

Week 7 - Low Poly Modeling Update #6

Happy to say I've made good progress on my knight this week. The knight herself has completed textures (yay!), all that's left is to finish up her spear and shield.

I discovered the menu within 3D Coat to move paint layers back and forth between 3D Coat and Photoshop. After initially going about it the wrong way (and losing a lot of work to 3D Coat crashing, fun!), I found the best method to do this. In 3D Coat, you'll want to go to Edit > Sync Layers with Ext. Editor, which defaults to Photoshop. After you do some work and save the .psd the layers will automatically transfer to 3D Coat, which is super neat! I did this one paint layer at a time due to some weird errors I had (layers exported rotated despite me rotating back to the original orientation prior to saving, mesh saving with 90% of the mesh being transparent, etc). Unfortunately, there is not a crazy amount of documentation for 3D Coat so the best thing to do is save often and in lots of increments. Every now and then I ran into a strange bug that had me stumped, but reloading the file usually fixed it. 3D Coat also (sometimes) allows the user to save their work before crashing so that's kinda cool. Downside, when I re-opened the file the next day. all the paint layers became majorly distorted so I had to go back to a previous save anyway. Ergh (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ 

All that aside, textures almost done whoo!

You might also notice she is no longer cross-eyed! I fixed the UVs within Maya and re-imported the mesh into 3D Coat. I also altered her base mesh a little, most notably I resized her pauldrons. I'm in Rigging this semester and got the OK to use my knight for my biped rig assignment! I'm stoked about this because I want to finish her ASAP and this allows me to kill two birds with one stone. I had to add some extra edge loops around her neck / wrists / armpits / ankles because she's low poly and there were concerns about bending, but it didn't bring up my poly count by that much (3204 as of now) so I'm alright with that.

More next week! Adios!

Week 6 - Low Poly Modeling Update #5

Less pink, more strawberry lemonade.

I wasn't able to complete all of the texturing this week like I wanted due to my course workload, but progress is progress! Good thing Spring Break is coming up, I want to work on it a lot more then.

I added the basic golden trim around the armor to make the armor colors pop and began some detailed shading on the breastplate. I'm pretty happy with how the colors are turning out! I also might need to mess with the UVs within Maya since somehow they got a little wonky in 3D Coat. I don't know if this is because I used an old file when I imported into 3D Coat or because I tried altering the UVs within 3D Coat and may have messed some stuff up. I'm certain I had everything lined up before I went into 3D Coat but when I checked the UVs again they were slightly off centered. It's not too obvious on the body, but more so on her eyeballs (ilu beautiful cross-eyed knight girl).

I also took a break from 3D Coat on a day when I didn't have a tablet and constructed a basic skeleton in Maya. I might make myself some rigging tools to make the animation progress easier since I'm lacking in the animation department. Any advice from animators is welcome!

Over Spring Break, I'd like to have texturing done (for real this time). Since texturing seems to be the bulk of what I have left to do, I hope to be completed with my project by the week after break!

Derp

Until next time! Á plus tard~
-Kristen

Week 5 - Low Poly Modeling Update #4

So pink（゜◇゜）

This week, I dabbled some more in 3D Coat. I've decided on the knight's color palette and added the base colors. There will be golden trim going along the armor so it's not so devastatingly pink, but I'm going to add that later. I've also added some details to the face and body. Still a work in progress!

My post from last week shows my character in 3D Coat, but I hadn't really researched the interface or functionality of the program. When I was just messing around, I found I was having a hard time painting efficiently since the edges kept bleeding over each other. However, after browsing some tutorials, I discovered the function of painting in wireframe view which really helped with painting accuracy and the paint padding setting within the preferences. I also found out I could import my Photoshop custom brushes into 3D Coat, which is a really nice feature for hand-painted textures.

I hope to be done with texturing by next week so I can bring her back into Maya for rigging. I will then give her a simple idle animation and upload her to Sketchfab. Unfortunately, it looks like this project will take me longer than Spring Break, my intended deadline, but the end is in sight! gogogo

That's all for now! Toodles~

-Kristen Malone