Week 12 - Presentation + Zbrush Sculpting

I'm done with low poly modeling now! I've uploaded my project to Sketchfab, Polycount, and ArtStation. Here are the links:

Sketchfab: https://skfb.ly/NC9J

Flower Knight by Kristen on Sketchfab

Polycount: http://polycount.com/discussion/167939/sketchbook-kristen-malone

ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/artist/kristenmalone

I got some feedback on Polycount and from my peers regarding my Flower Knight! I received some pleasant critique on things such as my color choices (which I completely agree with, it's not my strongest area) and design choices (wanted me to stick with a flower style rather than using a variety of flowers), but overall most of the comments towards it have been positive so I'm happy ^^

I presented my project to CAGD 398 (Game Asset) on Wednesday. It went pretty well and I got a couple questions, which was cool! I saw a couple of people opening up 3D Coat when I was discussing it so I hope I was able to encourage the students in the class to give it a try. A lot of them are in classes like 330 right now so I think it's a good opportunity for them to learn about these programs early on (I wish I had!).

And now I've moved on to Zbrush! This week was mostly spent watching Zbrush tutorials by Michael Pavlovich. I'm trying to get accustomed to the interface, making shortcut lists and experimenting with the tools.

Zbrush intro playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzopwqcFevYqrk_0MKIaUwrWYILzYsp6

A silly thing I made in Zbrush trying to get accustomed to the tools.
Kamonohashikamo!

Zbrush shortcut list 

Week 11 - End of Low Poly Modeling and Beginning of Zbrush Sculpting

For days I've fought with my model trying to get the animation to export correctly. I attempted many different approaches. I tried the Maya 2016 Game Exporter plug-in as suggested in class, however every time I went to export my fbx through Game Exporter I received a fatal error and Maya crashed. I thought I'd try again on a lab computer next time I was on a lab computer and decided to move on to alternative routes. I did even more research and exported a variety of ways, messing with a variety of FBX export settings and Bake Simulation settings. Lots of checking and unchecking boxes. Each time I tested it, something went wrong: the body animated but the armor / gear / eyes didn't, the armor animated but the body didn't, everything animated but the body was distorted, the body was the correct proportion but nothing animated. After hours upon hours of doing this, I decided I needed to move on. While I'm pretty disappointed I was unable to show off the rig + animation I made, I just can't dwell on this one problem for much longer because I need to move onto my next project. Also, I think this is slowly driving me insane. I'll definitely return to this project if I can figure out some sort of solution.

I did post my issue to CGC on Facebook. I got some responses, but unfortunately they were recommendations I had already tried. I might bring the issue to Sketchfab forums to get some more insight.

Now that I've completed my project, it's time to move on to Zbrush! I have lots of Zbrush tutorials to watch (thanks Karissa) and I'll have some shots of me experimenting with it by next update!

Because there wasn't a lot of visible work to show, here are some screencaps I took of my frustrating battle with my project. Behold the horror:

One of my FBXs in MotionBuilder. It never looked like this in Sketchfab. A mystery

My most frequent error. Despite looking it up, I have no idea how to resolve it

Oh my

Lots of iterations

Week 10 - Low Poly Modeling Update #9

I'm almost done! -fanfare-

So essentially all of this week was dedicated to rigging and animation with just a little bit of texture touch up in the legs. So much time was spent on trial and error, especially with exporting my final project into Sketchfab. I assumed once I got the rig complete, the rest would be smooth sailing. Animating took a while, however wasn't too tough. My biggest headache without a doubt was exporting my animation to Sketchfab. 90% of the times I've tried exporting her, her blend shapes came along for the ride. When I tinkered with some settings, I was able to isolate her, however her body was nowhere to be seen! I've scoured forums trying to figure out what FBX settings / bake animation techniques I need to change, however so far I haven't found anything. In the meantime, I've posted a quick playblast I made of the animation. Any advice would be MUCH appreciated!

Sketchfab dilemma: https://skfb.ly/Nnz9

Model + Complete rig

What

WHAT

My textures are there now at least?

Week 9 - Low Poly Modeling Update #8

The rig is almost done! The majority of work I have left is the blend shapes and weight mapping. Of course, both of those are time consuming but they will be done by Monday! Once the rig has been completed, I will just need to constrain her armor to her body and animate her idle pose. I brought her texture into Maya to check for stretching. I was nervous about my diffuse map going into Maya because 3D Coat is PBR-based and previously I've had a lot of issues importing Substance maps. I'm not sure what was different with exporting my textures from 3D Coat (as I am PBR ignorant), but I'm actually really stoked how well the textures look in Maya.

I'm looking into the process of uploading my projects to Sketchfab. I was able to get a Pro account by making an account with my CSU Chico email. Good stuff! Since my knight is incomplete, I want to test out Sketchfab by uploading my old finished projects. They do need a bit of touching up, which I'm in the middle of doing. We'll see how it goes!

I uploaded my work onto Polycount for critiques and comments! I went to the Digital Sketchbook forum because I found it to be a more suitable place to post WIPs. I wanted to upload my work to the popular forum for low poly, however there is a 1k tri limit so my model wouldn't fit the requirements. 

Here is a link:

http://polycount.com/discussion/167939/sketchbook-kristen-malone#latest

Current Rig

Textured mesh in Maya

Wireframe in Maya

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