Week 9

This week, I stared modelling my flower character. I stared by modelling the basic shape of the head and petal by using 2 spheres. I kept the mesh quite low poly in the beginning until I got the proportions right.

After I finished the head shape, I increased the resolution of the face and started sculpting the facial features using the draw and smooth tools. In my initial design, I didn’t draw a nose on the flowers face, however, once sculpted I felt it looked a little too flat. I still wanted the face resemble the centre of a daisy, so I only sculpted a small nose and used a rabbit face as a reference so it wouldn’t be as prominent as a human nose.

I created the bottom eyelids the same way I created them on my elephant model. I created 2 cylinders and grouped them with the head mesh and smoothed the edges out after increasing and setting the resolution.

After I was happy with the head shape, I moved onto the stem/body of the flower. I found this more difficult that I thought I would as when I tried to bend the cylinder, the faces stretched too much making it too difficult to sculpt into the shape I wanted. Instead of using one cylinder, I tried again and used 2 to create the angle at the top of the stem I was hoping for. It also meant the majority of the stem was perfectly straight the way I wanted to be. I smoothed out where both cylinders met and grouped the stem with the head so there wouldn’t be a harsh connection between the two and it would look more like an actual daisy.

However, as they were in the same group and so close together, when I tried to smooth them, they would merge into each other. Instead of having them in the same group, I made each arm separate. I began smoothing them; however, I didn’t like how rounded the arms became at the end as I wanted them to be similar to the stem and have a blunt end. I recreated them and was finally happy with the model.

I decided once everything was imported into Maya would create the pot as I know how to create a flowerpot in Maya from watching Alec’s cactus tutorials. I will also duplicate the petals in Maya once they are retopologized which we are learning how to do next week.

Week 8

This week, I continued to practice in blender by creating an Elephant head while following Henry’s tutorial in class. I used more sculpting tools this week, including the grab and snake tool. I created 3 spheres, one for the head and 2 for the ears, and grouped them together. I also created a cylinder for the nose and the lower eyelids to make it look like he was smiling. I feel as though the cheeks could be a bit fuller to exaggerate his expression a little more. I also found the trunk hard to create. I had to keep smoothing the mesh and resetting the polycount as the faces on the trunk were becoming very stretched and difficult to work with. I am, however, happy with how to the ears turned out and feel he looks very cute regardless of the changes that could be made.

I also started concept designs for the cute character assessment this week. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to create, so I started thinking about my favourite characters in film, including Gizmo from the Gremlins, Toothless from How to train your dragon and Baby Groot from Guardians of the galaxy.

I then had the idea of creating a model based on a childhood memory of playing he loves me, he loves me not by picking the petals off daisies. I drew 2 different concepts, one where she picks the he loves me petal, and one where she picks the he loves me not petal. I knew I wanted to stick with this idea and created another concept with the two different outcomes in the same pot.

After these concepts, I decided I wanted to add another element to the model to create a small story. Instead of her picking the last petal and ending up with the he loves me petal, I drew another petal on the top of the flowers head, making it look like she forgot one. To make this clearer, I designed another character in the background (the bee) to make it look like he is about to break the bad news to her.

References

After talking to Henry, we decided the design was a bit too simple, so instead of having a bee in the background, I started to design a garden gnome. I love the small gnomes in Gnomeo and Juliet and knew immediately I wanted to use them as a reference. I also used south park characters as a reference as I wanted to give the gnome a very round and squished body shape.

Final references:

Storyboard, Animatic and Previs

Storyboard:

I felt that my character’s expressions were an important part of this animation. He goes from feeling scared to sad to angry to happy in such a short period of time. In the beginning of my storyboard, I have a close up of the character, to show his intentions through his expression. He wants to scare this worm. He tries to, which we see with a long shot of the two characters. A close up of the worm then shows he is unphased by the skull boy. He gets scared and hides himself in his petals. However, seeing the other monsters scaring a creature gives him the courage to scare the worm. Last semester, I feel as though I took too long as I was trying to make it too detailed. I wish I had time to go back and complete this one, however, I think I’m making progress in terms of the time I took on each panel. We ended up going with Jorja’s storyboard as we felt her panels told the story well.

Originally, we had the monster scaring montage in the beginning of the storyboard. However, after receiving feedback, both us and our tutors agreed that it would make more sense to have the montage in the middle of the animation, as after seeing them scare, this gives the small monster the courage to scare the worm. If we had kept the montage in the beginning, it might have been confusing to the viewer why he gained the courage.

Jorja’s Storyboard:

As a reference, I used an image from one of my favourite tv shows when I was younger. I remembered a shot from the bloopers of Teen Wolf where the main character appears mysteriously from behind a wall. I felt this would be a light-hearted way to as a bit of tension to the animation.

Reference:

Animatic:

Our group decided to do an animatic each to see which direction we wanted to go for our previs. I began mine by creating shots 1-3 and Jasmin a couple more than me. However, we were both then told to only do a section of the animatic each to save time. As Jasmin had completed more of her animatic than me, I decided to finish the rest of the animatic. I included my shots into one version of the animatic and Jasmin’s in another to give the group options on how we wanted the animation to look. There were a couple of shots of Jasmin’s (6 and 7) that I had to edit based on our feedback and changes we wanted to make in the group. I feel that both of our animatic drawings work well together and it is easy to tell what is happening on screen. To create the final shot, I traced Jorja’s final storyboard image and moved the third monster’s arm to show that he is giving the small monster a pat on the back.

 

Previs

When it came to making the Previs, I asked if I could create scene 1 as I felt doing that scene would make me more familiar with my character as I would be animating him more than anyone else. I started by creating a simple headstone shape using a squashed and stretched cube. I then created a simple form of my character with a head and 2 petal shapes as his body. I also used the sweep mesh tool to create the worm.

I’ve had never made a Previs video before, so I felt it quite strange to not make the characters and their movements too detailed. I created a simple jump and stretched and rotated my character t show him scaring the worm and stretched him again when the worm scares him before he hides behind the grave. So the camera shots didn’t become too confusing during the Previs when everything was put together, I kept my scene to a long shot. This also shows the actions of both characters. As they happen in such a short period of time, any camera changes might have been too chaotic to watch on screen.

Unfortunately, after we finished our Previs, we received feedback from our tutors and were instructed to change our Previs back to our original storyboard idea where we have the scare montage at the start of the animation. As this put us behind, Jasmin used the environment her and Cloe had made for our animation along with what we had modelled of our characters so far to create a new Previs.

Week 7

This week I was introduced to blender. I found it a little scary to use at first as I am now used to using Maya and felt the change in layout would make the transition between the two difficult. I learned how to create mesh’s by pressing shift + A, how to freeze transformations by pressing CTRL + A, how to sculpt and change polycount by pressing shift + R then CTRL + A to set, creating a smoother object when sculpting. The first thing I created was an alien with 4 legs and large eyes. I found it very enjoyable to create and think I will find it more enjoyable to create mesh’s in blender than Maya. The body of the alien is all one mesh and they eyes are separate.

Week 6 – Assessment 1 Hand-in

This week, I finished my Day of the Dead wizard staff. At the beginning of the week, as instructed by Mike during our one on one assessment support meeting, I deleted the bottom faces of my skull so I could build a separate jaw, making the model more realistic, like an actual human head. I then extruded the edges towards the centre and merged the vertices to the centre to create the bottom of the skull.

I used B to move some edges and faces once I had extruded the edges as the bottom wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked it to be. I didn’t want to completely smooth out the skull at this point in case any changes to the shape needed to be made. Once I smoothed out the bottom, I moved onto the jaw.

I started off with a cube and changed its shape to be longer and narrower. I then extruded the outer faces to create an angle for each side of the jaw. I created more edges using the multi-cut tool and extruded a small area at the back to create the connecting parts of the jaw. I then bevelled the edges and continued to alter the shape of the jaw until it was a similar shape to my reference. At first, I made the jaw much too wide, so I had to match it to be a similar width to the bottom of the skull head.

Once I had the desired shape, I moved onto the teeth. Mike had showed me how to create teeth using smooth preview and the duplicate special tool. Using the duplicate special tool meant that I only needed to UV map one of the teeth and the textures applied to that tooth would be applied to the others of the same shape. I created 2 different teeth shapes, a flatter shape for the front teeth and a larger shape for the molars.

Once I had completed the teeth, I smoothed out the whole model by going to modify, concert and smooth mesh to preview polygons.

After I finished the skull, I moved onto the flowers. I created the flower petals the same way I created the teeth, by using smooth preview and the duplicate special tool. So that I could add different colours to the flowers, I pressed shift and made duplications of the flower so there were 3 different flowers, then used the duplicate special tool on two of the flowers, so I could create 1 red flower, two yellow and three orange.

I found creating the bone handle more difficult that I thought I would, as I couldn’t get the round shapes at the top and bottom to look how I wanted them to. Though using the multicut tool and ‘B’ to create a smooth mesh blend I was able to create a shape that I am happy with.

I placed the flowers on the vine and created thorns and stems for my flowers. considering that at the start of this year I had never attempted 3D work, I am very proud of the model I created. Once finished, I exported my model to substance painter.

I found substance painter a little difficult to use, as I haven’t had much practice using it before this assessment. I knew the colours I wanted to use for my model, so I started by applying solid colours by using fill layers and black masks. Once I started painting on more detail, I found random shiny spots appearing on my skull and petals. When I repainted the areas, they seemed to disappear, then reappear after a while. I managed to paint over them, and they didn’t reappear when it was time to export my textures to sketchfab. I later realised I forgot to bake the mesh as soon as I imported my model to Substance painter, and I think this is the reason why the textures didn’t apply properly when I was painting. Regardless, I am happy with the finished result and will now remember to bake the mesh as soon as I import my model.

Week 6

This week instead of lectures, we had a one on one support session with our tutors where we were given advice on how to improve our assessment 1 models. I showed Mike my most recent skull and petal models. He showed me how to smooth my skull a different way than simply using the smooth tool, as using the smooth option created polygons with more than 4 sides, which can make animating a model difficult and must be avoided. He told me that selecting the object in object mode and pressing 3 on my keyboard with show a smoothed preview of the object. Then by going to modify, then convert and finally smooth mesh preview to polygons, this smooths the mesh, ensuring only 4 sided polygons are present on the object.

I am happy that I saved my smoothed and unsmoothed model on two different files, as I was able to go back and edit the unsmoothed version, fixing the errors I made previously when smoothing they eyes of my skull.

He also taught me how to create teeth using this method, and how to duplicate them so what was done to one tooth is done to all. This will save much time when I am ready to add texture to my model. To do this I go to Edit, then duplicate special settings and change the geometry type from copy to instance. Once this is changed, when I press CTRL + shift + D, the selected object will be duplicated.

Assessment 1 200 Word Reflection

I am extremely happy with my progress throughout this semester. In January, I had never used Maya before or any form of modelling/3D animation software. I was very worried at the beginning of this assessment as I wasn’t confident in my skills. Now, I feel as though I have exceeded my expectations. Everything I learned in the weeks prior to this assessment helped me immensely when modelling my Wizard Staff, and I was able to apply this knowledge to fit my own design. I am happy with how the texturing came out on my assessment submission, however, I think I need some more practice using substance painter, as I wasn’t as comfortable using it as I am using Maya. I have learned many of the basics, but I still feel as though I have a lot to learn in that area. Overall, I am extremely proud of what I have achieved this semester so far. I found it more stressful than last semester as many aspects of this module were completely new to me, but now that I have learned these new skills, I am excited to see what else I am capable of in the coming weeks.

Assessment 1

My model too a little longer than I was expecting, however, I still managed to finish texturing and rendering with time to spare. I am very happy with how my assessment turned out and I feel as though even though I used tools and techniques that I have used over the course of this semester, which helped develop my skills and made me much more comfortable using Maya, I learned a lot of new techniques though modelling the skull, which was something I was completely new to. Using sketchfab was also a lot of fun, as i was able to play around with the backgrounds and light settings to make the layout of my model stand out even more.

(1) Day of the Dead Staff – 3D model by asmlong (@asmlong) [ea93622] (sketchfab.com)

Week 5 – Assessment 1 Development

This week, I began modelling my staff for assessment 1. As the skull is the hardest part of the staff and was something I had never attempted before, I decided to begin with it so I would have longer to work on it than the other elements. I used the skull model to get the shape of this skull. I started by modelling the shape of the whole head first, then, I began the eyes. To create the sunken in eye sockets, I extruded the rough shape of the right eye inwards, then added dimensions to the sunken in portion and bevelled the edge of the socket. I also moved the vertices of the socket to try and give it a rounder look, however, I wasn’t happy with the shape of the socket or the whole skull. I didn’t know how to proceed with this model, so I thought as I wasn’t too far into modelling it would be better to start over than trying to continue with this object.

After restarting, I created the skull shape using a cube and smooth tool, the same as before, and modelled a jaw shape before moving onto the eyes. I extruded the socket inwards again and used the multi-cut tool to add 2 edges to each socket which I could manipulate to give the socket a rounder look.

I wasn’t sure if I should model the jaw separately or as part of the skull, so I reconnected the gaps in the skull until I can talk to Mike in my assessment 1 support meeting. I then modelled the nose by using the multi-cut tool to add more divisions to that area which allowed me to create the sunken in heart shape.

I then bevelled the edges of both eyes and the nose. I also smoothed them out and saved the smoothed model under a different file so I could go back in case I needed to make changes to the eyes and nose.

I also created a flower petal trial where I squashed, stretched out and smoothed a cube, then moved and rotated the top of the object using the B shortcut, giving a smoother petal shape.