Category Archives: Characters
Daren Thatcher
Well here’s a familiar face! At the same time that I was creating textures for Natalia, I was also doing the same for Daren.
The low poly mesh is the same as before, but the textures are updated and a high poly mesh was created. The inclusion of a normal map (which was missing from the Rally Race animation) really helped.
The high poly sculpt in ZBrush, again with overlapping areas lopped off. The diffuse with created with the Polypainting tools.
A texture breakdown, featuring the unwrap from 3ds Max, the diffuse from Polypaint, the projected normal map, and colored specular.
Natalia
Things have been a little quiet around here, I apologize for that. For the past few months I was caught up in Pre-Portfolio, which is arguably one of the more busy and stressful classes we have to take. The bulk of the coursework is (ideally) revisiting all of our past projects and revising them for a final critique which then determines if we are ready to graduate or not. My review went well, so I am now in Portfolio, which still means little “new” work is being done in favor of spending 11 weeks putting together a branding package and a demo reel. But since I have so much work prepared and formatted from Pre-Portfolio, I thought that I would go ahead and dust this blog off and show some older work.
This is Natalia, a character I made in April 2011 for the purposes of animating. Back then she was only a mesh, so the textures are new from Pre-Port.
The new high poly sculpt from ZBrush. I also used ZBrush’s Polypaint to create the diffuse map. I haven’t done a whole lot of actual sculpting in ZBrush, and it’s something I’m looking forward to exploring more once things are a little less hectic. One thing that I’ve found works well for me is to only import parts of the mesh that I need, which is why poor Natalia is seen with only one hand, one eye, etc… I do this for anything that is overlapped in the unwrap, partly to prevent issues when baking the textures, and partly to have even more polygon real estate.
Finally, here is the original animation sequence that Natalia was made for. The objective was to have a character go through a three-part obstacle course that involved a run, a jump, and a climb. Since animation and characters are not my focus, I wanted to make it fun so that I could really put everything into it. So I tried to base each animation in the realm of parkour, and watched plenty of slow-motion footage to get started!
Advanced Character Animation – Passes and Environment
We’re getting down to the wire on the Advanced Character Animation project! I now have a full environment with lighting as well as animation progress in both the idle turn-arounds and final video.
Progress on Daren’s idle/turn-around. The final render will be part of a breakdown video for the entire rally race project, and will include some overlays of the wireframe.
The Subaru idle/turn-around was overhauled more than I expected, mostly by adding in a lot of beauty shots to show off the model (and eventually wireframe overlays). I also had the car spin off in the opposite direction at the end, and added in body roll and drifting.
The sixth animation pass on the final product now has a background! And plenty more animation than we saw in the last pass. A few shots have been altered from the original storyboards based on conversations I had with peers, and I feel that it’s much better off because of that.
Earlier this morning this pass was critiqued by Kyle Kenworthy, an animator from Schell Games here in Pittsburgh. He pointed out some interesting things for me to work into my next pass, as well as things that were good and things that needed some more love. It was very exciting to have a professional give his thoughts on the progress so far, and was a great experience!
Since the above video is still in the form of an animation preview, which is missing lighting and shadows, here are a few renders of just the environment. It took a bit of creativity and experimentation, but the amount of foliage in the scene handles just fine in terms of render times. It will still take a few hours, but nothing that an overnight rendering session or two can’t handle. I was also able to learn a lot about wire parameters, which is a very powerful tool that I may need to work into my projects more often.
This week I will be making last passes on the animation, finishing up a quick high poly mesh for the Subaru, generating normal, ambient occlusion, and specular maps, adding dust to the Subaru diffuse map, and cleaning up any extra loose ends that I have time for. Ideally, I will have most (if not all) of the final week for rendering and preparing documentation for the 9th quarter review/final presentation.
Rally Race Base Textures and Sound
Did some work on the actors for the rally race animation. Both Daren and the Subaru are unwrapped, and for the time being they’ll be sporting basic diffuse maps only. Cross-referencing what logos go where on the Subaru took the largest chunk of time last week, as well as either finding or recreating said logos and placing them correctly on the texture (I have it timed at 10 hours, between the research all the way to completion). The large decals on the sides proved to be the most challenging, as there are three seams in the UV’s between the doors and rear panel, but I’m pleased with the outcome so far.
Daren posing with a mock-up of his camera.
This blue Subaru is more true-to-life to the actual car used in races, minus that it’s being “driven” by a fictional character. The white version below is to prevent confusion in the animation between Royce and Lehtonen.
I also mixed the audio for the entire animation. It may see some changes by the end of the project, but it’s definitely about what I was imagining as far as sound is concerned.
The animation is unchanged from pass 4, but adding in the base textures for the characters and the audio felt like a big enough step to warrant a new video.
Next up I’ll be working on fleshing out the environment! Lets see how much foliage it takes to make my computer cry.
