Assignment 2: Organic Modelling

This assignment tasked us with creating an organic character model under the theme of ‘cute’, as homage to last year’s Pictoplasma competition. It mustn’t exceed 40000 polygons, but there should be thought into how the character is presented; through context like environment, posing, expressions etc.

Linked with the assignment were some examples and I found myself coming up with many different character ideas: a cute greenland shark, a frogfish, a snail or even one of my own older character designs (in particular, a parasaurolophus). In the end, I decided I would attempt to make a millipede a cute character.

Research

I wanted to do a millipede as I recently got some pet ivory millipedes, and I think they’re adorable! Having the millipedes would help with making the model, as I could have a first hand reference when modelling my character. Of course, I would have to stylise the millipede in the concept art as I’m sure not everybody would think an anatomically correct, realistic millipede model counts as a cute character!

These are images of my own millipedes, from as many angles as I could get including the legs, but as they are quite active getting a clear shot of the face for reference would be difficult, so I made some reference boards of close up shots to help. I knew the legs could cause problems, as they may look creepy and ruin the model, so I would have to modify these a lot. This is the same for the antenna and  mandible, I would have to be careful with how I present these aspects of the millipede.

Reference Sheets

These research/reference boards were mostly for studying the millipedes face, personally I think their real faces are very cute as they are and I didn’t want to change that much about them. Possibly just make them more rounded, shorten and thicken the antenna and simplify the legs and body segments.

This reference board is mostly for style inspiration, these soft toy versions of isopods seemed like a perfect reference for making an otherwise creepy looking insect into something very cute and simple. I liked the legs especially in these plush isopods, the flat semi-circle legs are a great replacement for long pointed legs. This board also has a high quality image of an ivory millipede’s colours and pattern, the same type I have and the same type I wanted to create in 3D model form.

Finally, before I began creating concept art I wanted to study diagrams of millipedes and other arthropods so I could be sure of what all I had to include for it to be recognisable, and what could be cut in the concept art so that the model isn’t so creepy. This diagram isn’t fully correct to the type of millipede I wanted to make, as typically the head is under the ‘column’, or first tergite (seen in one of the soft toy versions and all closeups) which is something I may want to show in my own model, I think this ‘hood’ adds to the cuteness.

Inspirations

As soon as I saw this Oddish model from the cute character examples provided with the assignment details I was inspired by the 2D linework effect, which I assume is using grease pencil. I found a very helpful video on how to use grease pencil manually, and how to apply grease pencil to mesh just from the convert option in Blender 2.9. I tried this on my mesh as a test, but due to the high poly count the whole mesh was black! I would have to experiment with this later once the retopology is done.

I think this model of a caterpillar creature is very cute also, I especially like the leg shapes and the overall child’s toy look of the model. I liked the way the segments are made here also, and thought I could do something similar if I wanted using clay strips in blender sculpt mode.

When trying to find other millipede or centipede models as inspiration for my own model, this model was one of the most popular. I still personally think this life-like mesh is cute, but for my own I wanted a very cutesy and soft model. I really like how the tergites are made here, it’s very realistic. My own idea for the tergites were for them to be more randomly shaped and flow with the model’s pose but one way I could achieve a similar look to this one’s segments would be to mask off where I wanted dips to be, and inflate or use clay strips in the blender sculpt mode to raise the shell. I also used this model as reference for my model’s face; The top part of the head especially with the cute curvature of the mouth.

Concept Art

Making the concept art was a difficult process of how to present pieces of arthropod anatomy as cute. Firstly, I decided I wanted the body shorter than millipedes usually are, and the trunk would be thick with fewer segments. I didn’t want the segments to be very visible, either just subtle dents sculpted in the trunk or I would paint shadows in substance painter. The legs would also have to change from hundreds of sharp points to fewer, larger semi-circles. Making these features rounder and chubbier definitely helped with making an insect a cute character.

The face was also difficult, I wanted the eyes to be more animal like, spheres actually on the face instead of the typical insect eyes. The overall head shape would be large and give the model a more ‘chibi’ style. The 2 faces drawn at the bottom have a much more pronounced shape, but I actually liked the facial shape on the main concept drawing more. The mandibles have been changed out for a kind of chin, under the jowl shapes. Making the face like this made the concept art more puppy like, which in turn helps it seem cuter! The 2 antenna on the jowls would not have a labrum, but would be more like whiskers but thinner at the base, and thicker and rounder at the ends in a long, soft teardrop shape. To mirror this I also thought about making the eyes teardrop shaped, as this looks more innocent, or even closed eyes as if sleeping, but I preferred the circular eyes.

I was also excited about the idea of making a 2D or flat plane for the environment, with some flat blades of grass to contrast the 3D model and in turn focus attention in it, and to also give the scene a kind of old 3D video game style, I was especially inspired by Rayman 2 and the first 3D Zelda games. I was also thinking about adding some simple 2D twinkle animations with the blender grease pencil, for added cuteness, but I didn’t think it would work with having to import and export the model through multiple programs. One other way I could make the stars would be just to model them and have them static.

Model Development

Tutorials

Before I began any modelling I wanted to find a good way of making the body, using a Bezier curve was suggested to me by Henry and so I started practising using them to make meshes. This tutorial really helped with this, although it took me a few tries to get the curves the right way I wanted.

I followed the tutorial along first and made this, just to test and practise with this method, especially with scaling the tip, and rotation.

Blocking

First Attempts

Using the tutorial above and what I remembered from my first 1 to 1, I started making a long millipede body. The very top model was my first attempt, which came out very lumpy and choppy. I did want the end of the millipede to be smaller than the head and mid body, but the size I made the ends in both of these attempts were too small and looked more snake-like than bug-like. Typically millipedes don’t get smaller at the end, but I thought a bit of variation in scale would be more interesting.

This try was much better, the scaling was smooth and I liked the posing, however the body was much too long and isn’t very cute, and the end of the body is much too small. I was originally going to pose the body as I had in the concept art, but I wanted something more interesting in the model so I had the end swirl upwards a little bit more.

Last Attempt

Here, the trunk is much shorter and curved more like my concept art, besides the end part which I curled even more. I thought the pose in the concept art was a little bit too stiff when put into 3D, though cute in 2D. I continued to fiddle about with the overall shape; making the end a bit larger, making the trunk shorter, and trying to fix the mesh’s folds in where the end of the body curls up.

Since I used a Bezier curve for the mesh’s shape, I wanted to try one of the techniques I saw in the tutorial video on changing the circle’s shape. As millipedes have a flatter underbelly I wanted to do something similar, but subtle. This worked great and I really like the new shape of the tube, slightly flatter belly with thinner sides and a raised top; I think the new shape looks good and much more organic looking than a regular circular tube.

Body Blocked

Once satisfied with the shape I could make the body into a mesh and add caps to the open ends. The only thing I wished I could have fixed was the folds in the curl, and the rotation of the end part, I would have preferred it to be tilted down as if resting on the trunk and not rotated to the side. I thought about fixing this in edit mode on the vertices themselves, but thought instead that I could fix it easer when sculpting the ridges. I thought at this point that the trunk was still a bit too long, but in order to fit legs in on the inside I knew I would have to keep it longer.

The Face

Attempt 1

I thought I could sculpt the top half of the head, and then add a sphere for the ‘chin’ or mouth piece, while it seemed like a good idea it would have actually been better to just sculpt everything from 1 sphere. I did like the shape of the face here but it deviated a bit too much from my concept art, which I wanted to try keep as similar as possible to. This face shape is cute, but perhaps a little too baby/puppy like and doesn’t read as insect well.

Attempt 2

For the second attempt I used a single sphere and the sculpt tools with dyntopo on constant detail with 20 resolution. I mostly used the snake hook tool with Y axis symmetry and a large radius to mould the head into the right shape, and then pull on the bottom of the face to make the jowl like shape. I also used the crease tool to try separate the top and bottom of the face so that I could freely modify the top and then move attention to the mouth and chin.

To build up the jowl area I used clay strips and the blob and inflate tools to make a cute, simple head shape that I think looks a lot like my concept art! I really love the final outcome of the face.

The antenna are just modified spheres to have long, teardrop like shapes and posed in the way I wanted them. I could have made them match my concept art a little bit more, with more defined arches, but I liked them as is. I learned how to mirror duplicated objects along an axis which came in useful for placing the antenna and eyes. It was also surprisingly hard trying to find the right place for the antenna to stay, I didn’t make any labrum (which could have guided me) because I knew adding them would make the face more creepy. The fewer the features, the cuter!

Adding the eyes were trouble too, trying to make them just the right size and shape to fit nicely on top of the face mesh and still stay close to the antenna and look cute, often the face just looked too bug-ish and ugly, it was hard finding the right spots for the antenna and eyes together. The eyes are just simple spheres with lower poly settings, I wanted to try keep everything as low as I could.

All Blocked

With everything except the legs modelled, posed and smoothed (although not joined yet), I think the base shape came out very well! It’s quite cute and certainly matches the concept art enough to where I’m pleased with it. All that’s left is the legs and then making the tergites with sculpt tools.

Tergite Texture Experiments

Millipedes have tergites, or segments, and in order to both match the animal and my concept art I would have to figure out a way to create these indents. I liked the look of the realistic millipede model from my inspirations, but thought that it could look too sharp or realistic. I liked the other inspiration’s method also, which is cuter and more soft, but it didn’t look like a millipede’s tergites. From my 1 to 1 tutorials with Henry and Michael however, I learned some different ways I could achieve the look I was going for.

Henry had sent me multiple helpful resources on how to make the texture of the millipede using brushes, instead of sculpting the segments. I tried these before using the masking and inflate methods on some blank cylinders to see which technique I liked best from the bunch. All of these methods were came out well, and I’m glad I tried the few methods Henry sent me as they both helped me figure out what I wanted with this model, and taught me some new techniques.

Brush Alpha Textures

Sculpting

I learned from both Henry and Michael’s 1 to 1 tutorials a way I could make the ridges using the mask tool and the inflate sculpt tools. There was also another technique using the clay strips which I liked as well, but I thought I could get a bit more control on how I wanted the tergites to be shaped using the masking tool. I masked the bottom of the model, since I didn’t want any edits made there and also to plan out how the body is actually rotating, and where the underside would be to join the tergite lines to the underbelly.

I knew from looking at my own pet millipedes and reference images that their trunk segments are straight and layered , but I wanted my model’s tergites to follow the curvature and twists of the model and also be simple, soft indents. I thought this would be much cuter than a shell-like overlap. One thing I did remember to add was the thinner segment in between the very first at the head and the 3rd (with my millipedes, they have many segments and usually the first head tergite, and the 7th tergite down, if the millipede is male, are the thickest). I didn’t want to have tons of tergites on the trunk, again; the fewer the features the cuter the model, so I used my cintiq tablet to draw the mask on the mesh in somewhat even intervals but I wasn’t trying very hard to keep the intervals equal as I thought that the model would look more organic.

Again, I wanted the tergites to follow the curves of the mesh so I took care around areas where the trunk curls so that I could make the pose seem more natural with the exoskeleton following the curves.

Masking Done

I was very happy with the finished masking job, I though that the irregular and curvy tergites were cute and would help make the model seem soft and cute. The end of the millipede caused me a bit of trouble, as usually the end has a final shell and then a slit under, but I liked the one I made which mirrors the head’s first tergite.

Inflate Tool

Instead of using clay strips for the segments I just used the inflate tool on a high radius but with low strength, I wanted the bumps to be soft and subtle instead of clear sharp indents. After using the inflate tool I unmasked the mesh and used the smooth tool to smooth out any hard areas and feather out the ends into the flat tummy.

Final Touches

Millipedes actually only have around 300 legs, not 1000 like the prefix ‘milli’ suggests, with 2 pairs on each segment. I of course couldn’t do something like this as it would appear much to realistic and would ruin the cuteness. I opted to just have 1 pair of legs (roughly) for each segment, I ended the legs near the end at the head (the legs often go all the way to the end) as I was running out of room. I also ran out of room on the inside of the millipede, so some segments only have 1 leg with 2 segments on the inside sharing the other leg. The most important pair were the front legs, I thought these would add a lot of cuteness to the model as the stubby round legs would make the millipede seem more animal-like, without the legs it just looked like a strange worm.

Finished Mesh

Environment

Before starting the millipede texturing I wanted to try making the ground plane, I wanted something very low poly as I think its a cute look and could contrast well with the rounded millipede model. I made the ground out of a thin cylinder with 12 vertices, I also wanted this low poly to match the grass, and added a simple green material.

The grass meshes are cones with 3 vertices, duplicated and rotated from the top vertex so that they are all slightly different. I did this for one side, applied 3 different green materials to the blades, and duplicated the left side for the right. I really like this environment, I think it looks really cute!

I also wanted to add a mushroom, so I followed a quick tutorial on making a low poly mushroom to match the low poly grass and ground plane.

The mushroom is simply made by adding a cylinder, extruding it and scaling parts to be thinner (I also rotated mine a bit to match my concept art), and the cap is an ico-sphere extruded on the inside. I thought about making simple gills for the underside of the mushroom as well but I liked the simple look with the indent. I didn’t smooth shade my mushroom either like what they did in the video, as I liked the sharp look of it as it was and it followed the look of the grass anyway.

I also added a simple gradient material to the whole mushroom with a colour grid I found online. I wanted this mushroom to be fully brown with no spots, like a wild brown cap boletus or toadstool. Finally, I edited the material attributes for the ground, grass and mushroom so that the roughness was higher and the specularity was lower, I didn’t want these to be shiny unlike what the shell of the millipede would be.

All Together (shaded and unshaded)

Retopology And UVs

I had a grasp of retopology from the classes we had on retopologizing a head, but like UV mapping I found it difficult applying it to my own model. I had to watch several tutorial videos on how to retopologize to help me.

References

I followed multiple references images for the face, and they helped a lot with helping me understand the flow of the head.

First Attempt

I found retopology really hard at first attempt 1 was an absolute mess and after spending hours on just the head, I decided to just restart it.

Second Attempt

The second attempt went much better, I started to understand the flow better. Although I used Henry’s tutorials and practised on the human head, having to apply this to my own model was a struggle for me. I faced many issues later on, when I finished the retopology it was a total mess and had over 8k polygons, better than the 200k of the blender file, but still a total mess.

Without Smoothing

The body was actually looking quite good, I like way the retopo was looking. Then, once finished, I smoothed it and it was a disaster! Vertices were going missing, whole faces were inverted and stretched halfway across the model, and parts weren’t even attached. I tried my best to fix everything, but unfortunately when I finally exported it, I found more issues with the faces not being smooth, some concave, and the UV seam was very visible in substance painter. I really liked my model before, but the retopology was the worst part of the process. I watched many videos of others retopologizing, and I realised I was adding too much. Others don’t spend hours on retopology!

Another issue was the model itself, if the model was symmetrical (to be posed later) the retopology may have actually gone smoothly but with the tight twists of my model’s shape, getting into the corners of the bends and legs were also very difficult. I wished I had made the model symmetrical, then I may have enjoyed putting together the topology like a puzzle.

I’m still confused with UV maps, I treid watching more videos on it but I decided to just go with how I though the model would unwrap, I would have started with a line from the back of the head and unfolded it, but the retopology edges didn’t run the whole way along the model, a mistake I wished I noticed! I had to unwrap the model in a few different sections, as well as around and through the legs, the eyes and the head itself.

The first time I tried to UV unwrap was also difficult for me, it was for the hard model of a well, and I believe I will just have to practise UV unwrapping to understand it. Henry recorded a video explaining some things for the last model assignment, and I tried following them here; keeping everything oriented (I realised later I flipped the head upside down) assigning materials to parts to be different layers on substance and therefore get better quality textures, and making the texel density higher. I still managed to make the UVs quite small sadly, I will have to practise this especially.

Substance Painter

Finally, bringing the model into substance painter for the textures was definitely the best part, I loved seeing model fully come together. I used my cintiq to paint on the textures I wanted; I wanted my millipede model to look like my own ivory millipedes, but I added some extra colours and I made the trunk more shiny than they usually would be. I added some subtle freckles and blush, for cuteness. The eyebrows were a last thought, but I really like them! Although it may make my model look more seal like, rather than bug like. I also added some darker stripes on the millipede’s underside, for more detail.

The Environment

Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to merge the millipede with the environment I made, I tried exporting from substance to blender using the specific settings, where I would merge them there, but there were errors. I think I will definitely go back and attempt to add the background, I feel like I will just have to combine them both in Maya and UV them together there. I may even try add the 2D sparkles I wanted.