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.