Week 11 : Putting the Jackal to rest.

Character project over! I am glad to see the end of this project. It's been hard and full of issues but I am quite happy with how this has all gone. Its been a big learning process in a good way, so lets look at whats been going on.

This is my character with just his Albedo on. This is how I prefer my character personally, I have created hand painted PBR textures for him but I really just prefer the simple painterly look of him like this. I wanted to create him for a MOBA or MMORPG like game, and the most important thing for that is clarity. I do think this character has clarity!

 His silhouette is strong and colours pop. I'm really happy with how his texture went. The blood is perhaps my favourite, or maybe the cracks in the mask. It was important to me that his design wasnt all cluttered.

The main issue, which is really damn obvious is that he hasnt been rigged. As you can see the character was designed to be hunched and disfigured with an almost monkey like pose. Now I have absolutely no idea if the model will still work strongly if rigged or even work at all. But I think it will. Theres a high chance of me rigging him over the christmas holidays to turn him into a portfolio piece and practice rigging in general. 

This is the Jackal with PBR textures. As you can see he doesnt quite pop anymore! Which makes me abit sad. But I like how the texture has gone, especially in the cracks of the mask. Also the kind of silky matieral hes dressed in has a good looking microtexture. So I am happy with how the PBR has gone but I think I prefer it just as albedo. Fits my inner ideas more. The PBR took a long time to work out as several issues showed up. It's always issues you can fix with one button press that hurt the most.

Looking back at this project what would I have done better? Well I did waste a whole week with a concept that got scrapped. That would be preferable not to do. If i didn't waste a week maybe I could of rigged the character and started off on my second of the duo. I also probably would have liked to do more concept for these guys, maybe a nice paintover thats showy. But really I think I've done the best I could of done with my time constraints and work issues.

Now its time for christmas break! I can fix some of this perhaps, or maybe focus more on personal projects I've wanted to do for a long time? I dont know yet but I do have to make sure to do atleast something creative!

Week 10 : Jackal the Jester

My plan for this week was to evolve my concept for my Dichotmous Duo Project into a wonderful 3D model, textures and all. 

The first step for modelling this was to make the main body. Now Jackal here looks abit weird modeled. In my design I have him hunched over in an ape like position and standing up he just looks incredibly out of proportion (which he is deliberately so) and kind of weird. This was one of my main challenges in modelling the Jackal, making him look right and human with these strange proportions. 

Another significant challenge is his mask! Faces are hard to do. But a face ontop of a face which is emotionless but with the slight hint of emotion is quite difficult.  This is just a first look at doing it, and it's quite awkward. Also ontop of all of this I have to work out how to make smoothing groups work right for it! Now smoothing groups are my enemy, and never seem to work. So the face is a big issue for me.

But it has worked out. This is one of my first looks at my model. From here I had lots of tweaks to do, but I like how its gone. The tassels at the back I especially like, almost looking like crazed hair.

Because I want my character to be in either a MOBA like game or a MMORPG I wanted to look at the silhouettes. I'm very happy with how they look! I feel like Jackals body shape could be recognizable from a far and gives great clarity. Of course he isn't rigged. If he was rigged and in a more characterful pose maybe this would work even better.

Now it comes to texturing. I was looking forward to this. Sure the model is alright, but its nothing special. But with the texture I can bring something to life. Below is just a rough look at the colours where they should be.  I mostly did this to test how colours would work together, especially the mask and the orangey skin tone of his arms.

This is my first try at the texturing. Some things about it work, some other things dont. This is why I decided to paint over to study it.

This has probably been my favourite part of the texturing process so far. I'd never done anything like this but it seems to be really useful! With a quick paint over I can easily look at what the texture does and doesnt have and what it needs. I'm definitely going to do this more in the future. It's perfect for when you aren't sure what to do.

Heres my finished albedo. I'm really happy with it. It has more contrast, more blood. It really does look creepy and yet has alot of clarity to it. Having designed him for a MMORPG kind of game I wanted the textures to not be too crazy or over the top. Hell he could even work for a mobile game with this poppy colour.

My current problems is that he just doesnt work properly in Unreal Engine 4. His smoothing goes weird, the shading doesn't work and just general issues. Part of this may be because of PBR, as I haven't set up a Roughness map yet and thats on track for next week. Sadly I probably wont have time for doing a rig for him, definately not for doing one well like I'd want. But this I might do in extra time, just to complete him.