I had a lot of fun, but also a lot of stress with this assignment.
I was able to build on my knowledge of 3D that I learnt last year, learning some more complex retopology and sculpting and further develop my texturing skills. I was able to understand the different principles of what makes a believable character and how to translate 2D concepts into a functional 3D mesh. I had a lot of fun learning some new software, Zbrush and Unreal Engine are going to be great assets in any future projects I have, and I got used to swapping between different software to create my character and his props. I can understand the importance of creating recyclable assets, so that each time I create a character I can save brushes or textures and be able to incorporate and adjust them for more ease in future projects, and was able to start my asset library in this assignment. I also gained a greater understanding of how different pipelines worked for different industries, how the games industry will prioritise using preloaded assets instead of using loads of high res texture maps to help with loading times, but VFX doesn’t need to worry about how intensely its texture/effects will be.
One of the best skills I developed over the course of this project was looking at reference and research. Coming into an idea and doing research of the time period, type of clothing, personality and actions, etc all really helped me develop a character that had life and personality. This then helped me plan ahead at certain stages so that future stages went more smoothly, and while not everything went perfect and my model still has some issues it it miles ahead of what I was able to develop last year and I can learn from the mistakes of this project for future ones. Looking at how other artist approach elements helped me understand and develop my own pipeline, I am very thankful for Peter Adamson coming in and giving me some feedback and showing me how to sculpting characters (seeing how many different passes and tweaks he did showed me it isn’t a small process that you get on the first try, it takes a lot of effort to create a well modelled character).
There are definitely some elements of my character I could go back and change, some of the topology has awkward flow, some of the sculpting looked a bit off and even my texturing isn’t great in some areas, but not everything is going to be perfect and I can just keep these changes in mind for how I can approach other characters. I am really happy with how my final renders turned out, and can see myself using unreal to develop more concept art and am looking forward to learning more about modelling for games in the next semester ! 🙂