Animation Strategies – Week 3

This week we were given some models to texture in accordance with a chosen art style, along with some tutorials. I decided to try the photoshop filter texture methods in the tutorial, as well as the gradient colour maps so I would know how to use them in the future.

This is the textured tree

I was trying to match the art style of Valkyria Chronicles, though I think the lines would be best added in unreal as a shader.

 

Professional Practice – Week 1 Homework

Task 1: 

https://gamejobs.co/Junior-Games-Artist-at-Kwalee-1231 

  • Understanding of art fundamentals
  • Skills in using unity
  • Team-player
  • Willingness to try new disciplines (UI/VFX/Animation, etc)

Task 2:

Carys Lewis – Junior 3D artist

I researched a 3D artist, Carys Lewis, who is based in the south of the UK and has been working in the industry for approximately 2-3 years.

Linkedin | Carys Lewis

Website | Carys Lewis

Instagram | Carys Lewis

Showreel

CV 

Career journey –

Went to Northumbria university to do an animation BA, graduated with first class honours and was class representative in third year

Modelling for VFX course – technicolour Academy – June-July 2022

Did freelance work for little inventors – https://www.littleinventors.org/makers/carys-lewis/

Then became an animator and illustrator in Eluceo for 6 months

Went back to freelance but as a character artist for 1 year

Got a full time position as a junior 3D artist in Marmalade Games Studio, where she’s worked for 3 months

3D Literacy – Assignment 2 Overview Post

Sketchfab Link

Blog Posts in Order

Introduction to Blender

3D Literacy Assignment 2 – Concepts

3D Concept Sketches

Blocking out the model

Model Sculpting Progress – Details and Face

Model Sculpting Progress – Hands and Feet

Model Sculpting Progress – Hair

Model Sculpting Progress – Clothes and Details

Retopology

Posing and Texturing the Model

3D Literacy – Assignment 2 – Reflection (200 words)

This Semester – Reflection

3D Literacy – Assignment 2 – Reflection (200 words)

I really enjoyed working on this assignment for the limited time that I was able to due to moving house and having no time. Despite the short amount of time I had to do the project, I was pretty happy with the concept and the model itself. (Definitely not the technical side though) I am quite disappointed that I wasn’t able to do everything I wanted to, and I’ll probably do it for myself at a later date for peace of mind.

I think the model itself was great and I was really happy with it, and the texturing wasn’t that bad, especially given how little time i had left myself for texturing. However, when it came to the retopology I thought I was doing well with it, until it came to posing and nothing worked the way I wanted it to. Clearly, I need more practice in this. I wish I’d had more time to fix the things as I’m frustrated that’s how I had to leave it.

In terms of progress over the semester, I think my modelling skills have really improved and I believe it’s clear that’s where my skillset lies at the moment in terms of 3D. I need to practice more with texturing, as I still don’t fully understand how to do all the things I want to do

Posing and Texturing the Model

I ran out of time really badly, and even though I got it all textured, I’m having a lot of issues with uploading it to sketchfab as it has 2 UV maps somehow and sketchfab will only seem to let me display one of them, so I figured I’d upload what it’s meant to look like here.

I’ll look into it more afterwards but I need to hand in this assignment so.

Sketchfab I don’t understand you

Retopology

Exporting problems

I had a ton of problems with exporting the FBX file from Blender as every time it would do it, everything would deform, scale or move around, even though I had applied the transformations, and it took me about an hour to fix it. I redid the hair parts without needing the control, using one of the other bevel options instead and it seemed to help. I also made some other changes and eventually, it worked, so although I still don’t really know what I did to fix it, I’m very happy it worked!!

Then when I tried to import it, Maya basically said no and wouldn’t let me open any FBX files. So I had to look up about that and found a very short video that fixed it for me.

Retopology Attempts

I definitely made a mistake with the timing here. I assumed it would take an alright amount of time to retopology the model, but it took wayyy longer than I thought it was going to and resulted in a lot of panic from me as I realised I was going to have way less time for the other parts I still need to do, like rigging, posing and texturing.

I also think I made it way harder for myself than necessary as I had combined most of the meshes to try and get it to export properly, and I had a really hard time trying to do the retopology for the body underneath the clothing, before realising I could just select and separate it. I also ended up deleting and completely redoing the body mesh multiple times. Essentially this took me ages and it was frustrating, however, I didn’t actually mind the process that much aside from the panic over time.

I completely forgot to take screenshots of my progress, so I’m just opening the different save files I made as I went along to try and find progress to screenshot.

I started with the face and then moved on to the hair block part.

Then the body, which was certainly an interesting process, as I mentioned before I redid it a lot. The hands were pure pain to finish. Also the part deleted near the bottom of the legs is because you can’t see it through the boots so it was a waste of faces.

The finished retopology

 

 

Model Sculpting Progress – Clothes and Details

Skirt

I started with the skirt, as it’s underneath the cape thing. I was a little lost on how to start modelling clothes at the beginning, as I overthink everything and started wondering if I was meant to sculpt them on the base or make a new object and fit it onto the base. I ended up going with the latter option, though I still don’t know if that was the right decision.

I watched a video on how to make a frilly skirt and used the basic process to make the skirt.

Boots

I was really having issues with making the boots, as I don’t fully understand Blender and how to do the same things I can do in Maya. And I really wanted to force myself to learn it by making the majority of it in a blender. Though due to the issues I was having and the running out of time part, I ended up using the base part of the feet as the shoes and using a cylinder with deleted end faces to make the other part of the boot. Also extruding the rim of it. The smooth mesh thing definitely makes them look a little weird when viewed directly in front view.

Cape

I was really unsure of whether or not to model the cape yet, as I’m worried that when I pose her it will absolutely wreck the cape. However  I decided to just give it a go, and I can manipulate the vertices to reshape it for the pose if it goes terribly wrong.

Shoulder Armour and decoration

I ended up just using a cube for the shoulder armour and adding loops and extrusions to it, to make it the shape I needed, and then manipulating the faces and vertices to shape it more accurately.

The rope decoration thing is a curve done in Blender, which I definitely prefer the curve tool in Maya to.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the way the model is looking at the minute! 😀 Though I’m very worried about my remaining time.

After importing to Maya

After I finished retopolgising Melanie in Maya, I remembered I had included a shield in the design so I made one up, trying to keep the faces pretty low as well, since I’m more focused on the model looking good.