Second Semester Ahoy!

This is my first blog of my second semester! I'm going to be continuing low poly modeling, although I do intend to work more in Zbrush as well in my free time and perhaps add a project at the end of the semester. I'll be splitting up my projects in the following order:

My first project is going to be this low poly mage character I designed last semester (name still pending). I was intending to sculpt him, but I couldn't help going back to low poly modeling. I started modeling and texturing him over the summer to get a head start so I want to finish him in the next couple of weeks (a month at the latest). Last time my poly count was under 3 tris but for this character I'm going to be a bit more lenient and say under 10k tris. Currently he is at 6540, but I will be adding some more props in the scene later on, such as a book and some ice magic alphas.

Original concept art

Colored concept art

Orthos

Torso shot

Full body shot

My next project is going to be making assets for a strategy game! I am working with a programmer (Sebastien Hutt ❤︎) outside of this class and hopefully once we get a working demo I can do a playtest during class. The assets will include characters, weapons, props, and the GUI. I will be doing small animation as well, like walk cycles and attack / hit animations. The models and textures won't be nearly as complicated as my mage character since we are going for a minimalist style so I hope to be done with the majority of our assets within two months.

The game (placeholder name is Game Jelly until we think of something else) is a turned based strategy game. It's something of a mixture between Fire Emblem (for its stats, classes, map style) and Valkyria Chronicles (for its movement, battle system). Below are some of the WIPs we have right now. I'll post more of our progress once I'm done with my mage.

Basic concept art of GUI and character design

Start game

Moving causes Move meter to drop

When Move meter is depleted, you cannot move the unit further

Melee attack

You Died

Final Blog

This semester I spent the majority of my time creating a low poly hand painted character that I've named Flower Knight. I designed her and created orthos in Photoshop, modeled, UVed, rigged, and posed her in Maya, textured her in 3D Coat, and exported her to Sketchfab. I've learned so much with this project and I had a lot of fun working on her!

Tri count - 3,454
Verts - 1,993
Textures - One 2k map (diffuse and opacity only)

 

Flower Knight by Kristen on Sketchfab

Below is my major progress leading up to this point:

Orthos

Palette experiment

Basic mesh

Finalized mesh

Mesh including spear and shield

UVs

Textures 1.0

Textures 2.0

Textures 3.0

Texture close up

Texture back

Texture armor close up

Spear

Shield

Finalized mesh with texture and flat lighting

Finalized mesh with wireframe

Finalized mesh with pose and rig

During the last few weeks of the semester I began learning Zbrush! I'm still working on the basics but I'm excited to continue with it over summer and next semester!

Week 13 - Zbrush Sculpting

I'm still going through the interface of Zbrush. I've learned the basic gist of dynamesh, which seems super helpful since I was having so many issues last week with polarized ends of my mesh! I've also gone through more of the tutorials explaining new brushes, tool settings, etc. I decided to make a skull to practice what I've learned.

For some reason, I can't wrap my head around creating holes in meshes using a cylinder and dynamesh. I've looked at Pixologic's explanation of it, but I must be missing something because it doesn't work. I'll come back to it, but for now I just wanted to see how I'd fare creating a skull. For my first real attempt at a sculpt (I don't count last week haha) I don't think it turned out half bad!

Reference:

Next I'm going to begin sculpting - you guessed it - rocks! Here is a great rock reference I'm going to be using from Sketchfab by Phil Nolan. It's a 3D scanned model and being able to move the model I find is a great way to study (since perspective can be tricky when sculpting!).

Rock Video by philnolan3d on Sketchfab

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