Retopology!

Over the past week I have been retopologising the body for the reservoir dogs characters. This is quite a laborious process, but is not overly taxing, just time consuming if you want to do it to a high standard, which I do, obviously! My technique when it comes to retopology it to first use poly paint to draw topology onto the mesh, and then use the ZBrush retopology tools to create a new mesh over the existing high poly mesh. When doing this it is very important to make sure I pay a great deal of attention to silhouette of the high poly, and make the low poly follow the silhouette as closely as possible. This has been rather easy task with this model, as there are no major extrusions of the form to worry about. I actually managed to get a retopology of the whole body that was around 4100 polygons, however I think I am going to up the subdivision on a few components and then reduce them in Maya, aiming for a poly count on the body of around 9000, allowing for 2000 for the head if needed.

Shot of the mesh as it is in its low poly form.

The next stage after this was to project the details from the high poly onto the new low-poly mesh. This process can get hellish, and I seem to learn a bit more about the approach each time I do it. I think that a mistake I made this time was that I use the extrusion tool to create the clothing, this works great, but it makes detail transfer a pain. A better way to do this would be to make a hole-less mesh and use that to generate the initial high poly, then retopologise  the whole mesh, not just the parts that need to be seen and project the detail from that on then just trim out excess details later in maya. This will probably give a much more accurate projection without any of the strange artefacts I was getting. An easy way to explain it is to say, I want to make a t-shirt, instead of modelling it with space going through the centre, I will model it as if I am chiseling it out of a block of clay, and not hollowing the inside out, whereas what I did was make it with the centre taken out, like a real shirt would have.

The next stage was to create the UV's. For this I used Roadkill. Roadkill has become a massive part of my pipeline for unwrapping anything organically shaped. It turns a job that could take hours into one that only takes a third of the time, and gives great results too!

UV sheet for the model.

Over the next week I hope to get the texture done for the suit, and have it re-proportioned to fit Mr. Pink's body shape. I'd also Like to have the Mr. Pink head retopologised and UV'd too.

Teeth and Shoes...

This week has been about teeth and Shoes, and a few revelations about keeping a stock file of generic objects that can be re-used wherever necessary. As such I have decided that It would be a good idea to start building things a little more generically. By this I mean that I am going to start making versions of Items that are less specific to the current project. The teeth I made this week are a good example of this. I used reference of dentures and dental diagrams to build average set of adult teeth, and then created polygroups within Zbrush that allow me to edit each tooth individually. The implications of this are that I now have a set of adult teeth and gums that can be manipulated to look like the subject that I wants teeth.

  

The other thing I worked on was the shoes, I have decided to take a bit or artistic license with the shoes as they are quite boring in the film and I wanted to give them a little more detailing. Here is a shot of the progress so far.

The way I am approach the modeling of these 2 characters has changed over the past week. I was originally doing it as an action shot sculpture. But I have instead decided that It would be more efficient time-wise to have the two characters modeled standing then pose them as if they were rigged using the transpose tool in zbrush. The initial plan would have given more visually appealing results, but it would also have been something I would have found myself explaining in interviews as to why I modeled them in a pose, as that is not good practice in the games industry. I may pursue the idea of extra detailing in a plain sculpt as I want a model to have a 3D print of, and I think this would make a great piece.

Over the next week I aim to have the body detailed and the retopology done. From there I can go on to finishing the Buscemi head and retopologising that, then onto Harvey Keitel.

Week 2 - Thing's start to take some form!

This week has been progressing well with regards to work on the reservoir dogs project. I have made good progress with the character models and have definitely made good progress in getting the likeness of John Buscemi nailed down. I think that when doing likenesses getting an outside perspective on the work is key, I have gone about asking many colleagues  what they think needs changing on the sculpt, and everyone seems to notice something different. This has helped really nail down a good likeness, and I think that the sculpt of John Buscemi should be done by next week's update. This is the progress so far -

The other thing I have been working on is the body sculpt. I have chosen to approach it in a bit of an unorthodox fashion. I am starting by making a game style model, in the "A" pose. This model is going to flesh out the broad details and non deformed parts of the suit and be a generic body frame size. I am then going to re-proportion the mesh to fit the actors body, and then post it using transpose in ZBrush. From there I am going to sculpt in detail and deformation that is unique to the pose of the characters in the scene, almost as if they were frozen in that position.  This is not a technique that would be used that much in the games industry, but I think that it will allow for much more detail in the piece as a piece of sculpted artwork as opposed to a game model that was going to be rigged and animated. The way I described it to my peers was that I wanted it to be like a "matrix moment" as if time has stood still at a moment of high emotion and tension.  Work so far has got to the stage where most of the body in the "A" pose is fleshed out, and some detailing has been done. Over the next week I will be aiming to have the "A" pose completed ready for re-posing. This is a screen of the work so far -

As far as group work is going, Dan seems to e coming on well with the block out, and has started to create some more detailed geometry, it's looking good and I am excited to see more!

First Entry - The project begins!

This week has mainly been about starting the project. Me and Dan started by looking at films we would like to make a scene from, that contain scenes with a good amount of work for both of us. This meant that we had to find a film we both liked, with a dramatic character scene, and a good environment for Dan to model. In the end we decided on the scene from reservoir dogs where mr white and mr pink are having a little bit of a scuffle!

This scene offers a good amount of work for both of us, and will be a great challenge. The workload for me will consist or making 2 character models, and posing them. I plan on making the characters realistic representations of Harvey Keitel and Steve Buscemi, this will be a real challenge, as getting good likenesses is a hard thing to do well, but I think I'm up to it. I started with getting a sculpt of Mr Pink, it is starting to take shape, but is no where near a good enough likeness at the moment.

We did our project presentation on Thursday, It went well, and feel that our peers will assess well. I think we communicated the project plan well, although I did forget to put the alpha deadline on the project plan! I think that's the only mistake I made though, so i was a success on the whole!

Over the next week I want to have the sculpt of Mr Pink's head done, and to have the body base mesh 50% complete, carrying on with the project plan that we set out. This is the current project plan for reference:

Week 1-3

–      Research and Initial development

Week 3-4

–      Basic posing mock-up

–      Test renders

Week 4-7

–      Character modelling

Week 7-8

–      Unwrapping

–      Alpha Presentation

Week 8-10

–      Texturing Passes & and any extra prop unwrapping work

Week 10-12

–      Scene composition

–      Import into engine

–      Lighting

–      Final Hand in