Initial Design Concept (Photoshop): Final Design Sketches: ZBrush Sculpts: Blender 360° Turntable: Textured Components: Skull: Body Detail: ‘Anxiety’ Tail Appendage: Textured and Posed 360° Turntable: Final Bedroom Environment: Final Render:
All in all, while this was the most work-intensive assignment competed to date, I can honestly say that it has been the most enjoyable, and that the Character Creation module the one I feel I’ve learned the most from so far. Motivated by discovering that the word ‘monster’ is derived from the Latin ‘monstrare‘Continue reading Character Creation: Reflection
Environment: The final stage of the pipeline was to develop an environment in Unreal Engine 5 (UE5), into which the posed creature would be placed that would evoke emotion, and demonstrate storytelling in a single shot. Having decided to mainly base my creature design around a dog, the obvious environment was a domestic setting. However,Continue reading Creature Creation: Navigating the Industry Pipeline – Environment, Lighting and Final Outcome
Rigging: To facilitate posing, my creature was then rigged and weight painted in Blender. However, on checking the weight painting, I discovered that issues had been created in the extremities of tail appendage due to some weight painting leaking into other joints within the pelvis. However once the ‘bone’ causing the problem had been identified,Continue reading Character Creation: Navigating the Industry Pipeline – Rigging and Posing
Texturing: With UV mapping complete, the next stage of the pipeline was to texture the model in Substance 3D Painter. Already having a clear vision from the development stage of the project of the colouration and textures I needed to use to both make my creature emotive and relay its backstory, I quicky realised thatContinue reading Character Creation: Navigating the Industry Pipeline – Texturing
UV Mapping: The basic process of preparing a model for texturing in Substance 3D Painter had been taught in first year, which involved marking the natural edges and seams and unwrapping the model, before then combining the mapped pieces into an ordered UV map and baking these as a ‘normal’ map. However, given the detailContinue reading Character Creation: Navigating the Industry Pipeline – UV Mapping
Source: Eun, C. 2023 (cganimator.com blog) Retopology: The next stage in the pipeline was retopology; a process which creates more optimal geometry, and a clean, quad-based mesh. However, as some detail may be lost when retopologising the model, additional sculpting is often subsequently required to add this in again. Understanding that, as it notContinue reading Character Creation: Navigating the Industry Pipeline – Retopology
An important part of this assignment was to also gain a more in-depth understanding of the industry pipeline and the workflow involved in 3D character creation, as shown in the diagram below. Therefore, with the concept design stage now completed, the next stage was to begin modelling and sculpting. Source: Serra, 2017 ModellingContinue reading Character Creation: Navigating the Industry Pipeline – Modelling/Sculpting
For as long as stories have been told, fantastical creatures and monsters have captivated the imagination; their form serving as allegories of human conditions, inexplicable events, unseen horrors, and the supernatural (Ries et al., 2017), and while each creation is brought to life by skill and artistry, a solid understanding of the theoretical andContinue reading Character Creation: Implementing Design Theory Principles
The aim of this assignment was to design and develop a character or creature that, when presented as a static image within a chosen environment, embodies either a series of actions performed for a movie script, or represents a thematic criteria related to a topical subject, and while navigating the creation process, gainContinue reading Character Creation: Module Overview, Initial Research and Ideation
