GAM 708 - FINAL MAJOR PROJECT

I’m currently in the main bulk of production. I’m running a bit behind my original schedule, but it’s for a good reason. Balancing early morning cleaning shifts and managing ME while working remotely means I have to be really smart about how I use my energy (or spoons!). I’ve had to prioritise the fundamentals to make sure the core of the project is solid before I rush into the next stage.

I found it easier to break the model down into simple shapes first to get the form right. The first version of my base mesh looked like it was leaning too far forward, but after looking at the top of the leg, I realised why. Because I’d been so focused on the planar sculpting style, I had actually squared off some of the muscles way too much, mainly where the glutes meet the thigh, it was just going straight down like a pencil. If you look at your own leg, you'll see that’s not how it works. I decided to head back to Anatomy for Sculptors to check the muscle groups and figure out which shapes I needed to fix.

After adjusting these proportions, another thing I made sure to nail down this week was the character's scale. I’ve had issues in the past where my proportions drifted, which made importing clothes or getting the model into an engine later a total nightmare. I used the MeasureIt add-on in Blender to fix this. I dropped a reference block in (you can see it in the screenshots) to lock her height in at 5.42 ft. It’s a bit of a boring, technical task, but it’s a lifesaver for me. Now that I have a solid measurement, I know every piece of armour, weapon, and clothing I build will fit right the first time, so I’m not constantly fighting with the scale later on.

Sculpting: "Planar" vs. Final Detail

I’ve been refining the character’s form, I've been trying to stick to the hard planar and chunky aesthetic I’m aiming for. I’ve had to remind myself that the plana" look is a simply a sculpting tool, not necessarily the final surface. So with this in mind, I’m focusing on:

Volumes of the mesh. By this I mean I’m keeping the planes sharp. Mainly the cheekbones, muscle insertions, joints, this is because that's what catches the real time lighting better and makes the lighting overall pop. This is my first time trying this, I'm trying to steer clear from the 'smooth' look on everything.

Texture phase. I’m not focussing on the pore or wrinkles, or any other micro detailed. I'm keeping things simple, and clean. I will later let the hand painted textures do the heavy lifting for this character. I have however sculpted in some scars, this is so that when I come to bake my curvature and ambient occlusion in Substance and then transfer this to 3DCoat, it will be much easier to not only paint on, but also catch the light and make the hand painted texture pop in real time lighting.

One main piece of criticism I have for myself is that I’ve definitely spent more time on the body base than I originally planned. It felt like too much when I would be putting clothing over most of this or making it modular so some might not be seen. Honestly though, it’s a necessary anchor for me. Since I’m making this character modular, the base mesh needs to be perfect for everything else to sit on correctly.

My current workflow

I unfortunately don't have Marvelous Designer at home, so I’m splitting my time between home and the Games Academy. To keep things from breaking, or file loss etc, I've setup quite a solid system that's working great for me.

Version Control: I’m using Fork and Git for everything. Being able to pull my files at the GA means I have direct access to it, but I have to remember to always push so I can access it there. It has also proved to be a life saver as I can revert, recover or remove files quickly and easily without issues.

Trello acting as Jira: I’ve been using power ups and automation in my Trello board (Something learned from Leo (Our teams programmer in the last university module). By using automation to link my Git commits directly to my tasks, I can see exactly where I’m at without any guesswork. It’s working way better for keeping track of my sprints.

So what's next? Since I've officially blocked out the model, for the rest of this week I will be blocking out the hard surface items. This is the weapons, belt, armour and hat etc. I've already completed the rifle blockout (I'll likely have to lower the poly count on this when I work out what the total count is once everything is blocked, this is so things can stay optimised for Unreal). Over the next few days, I will be making sure that they sit flush with the body, and then I will be heading into the GA to finally give Marvelous Designer a test run, build my clothing and export this into Blender for sculpting planar creases etc. I will also ensure my mesh is optimised to export first by adding a decimate to lower the poly count, I only really need a simple base for my clothing, so all the detail for now isn't needed. I will be retopologising my mesh in a later week.

This week has been a bit of a slow one because I had to get my proposal presentation sorted. It was online and actually pretty useful—getting feedback from Brian and Ady really made me stop and think about the project's scope and how I’m going to present everything.

The main thing I’ve been dwelling on is accessibility. Since this is an interactive portfolio, it clicked that employers won't want to spend time downloading an .exe file just to look at it; they want ease of access. Brian mentioned making it a web-based app, and since Unreal doesn't really do that well, I’ve been looking into switching to Unity. I’m already really familiar with its UI and systems, so that part is fine, but it’s a bit annoying to lose the speed I’d get from using Blueprints in Unreal. I’ll need to do more research into this, but a pivot feels like the right move.

I’ve also been prototyping the UI. I’m currently leaning toward the layout in 1 because it’s clean, though I’m still figuring out how to combine that with the features in 2 and 3. Honestly, I’m having a hard time deciding if I should keep the explode view, it’s tough to tell how that'll function or look in 2D, and I'm worried about it being readable. It’ll probably need some actual user testing later on, so I might need to add that to my ethics and accessibility research. I also can't really decide on the UI theme yet until I’ve got the character design locked in, so for now, I'm just sticking with placeholders.

On the art side, I’ve been teaching myself hand painterly texturing. I’m going for a Stylised PBR approach (kind of like Wayfinder) where I use a modern PBR pipeline to get that illustrative, hand-painted look that still reacts to lighting. It’s been a challenge because I haven’t really worked this way before, but I’m enjoying the process. You can see my first attempts at a wood and metal study in the images below:

Sorting the proposal and concept photo bashing

I spent the first part of this week stressed out trying to get the GAM708 project proposal sorted. The main part I was stuck on was 'state of the art' and refining my question into something that I really wanted to focus on. I knew that I wanted to do something with characters, but I don't want to fall into the same habit I have of sticking within comfort and ending up doing something I have done before in my previous work. This project, I really want to challenge myself. Trying to write a research question was the difficult part. My problem was I wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to do yet.

I had to think of something that would really push my skills. I figured that the real goal was figuring out a pipeline where I could combine two complete different workflows: One where I could use high quality, dynamic cloth physics, along with a sharp, flat planar sculpting style that is used in shows like Arcane and South Of Midnight.

Once I had found that style that I was after and found a technical focus to aim for, I searched for people who may have researched or challenged themselves to do similar. I found and have now anchored my project using the research of Hall (2016) and Bernaers (2023). Hall covered how stylised planes catch lighting on high fidelity sculpt, and Bernaers covers non linear pipeline, which fits my modular character screen perfectly.

Research Question

'Using the stylised art methods from Hall (2016) and Bernaers (2023), how can I balance realistic cloth physics along with a flat-planar look to build a modular Star Wars inspired original character for an interactive portfolio display.'

With the question sorted, I could finally get out of my own head, and move onto the art and getting something down on canvas!

Photo bashing & Shape Design

This week I worked on starting and finishing my initial photo bashing passes to lock in silhouettes and the overall vibe/aesthetic of the OC. I was strict with myself and purposely avoided colour. I wanted to focus purely on working out the silhouettes and overall interesting shapes without getting distracted by colour yet.

Initial Design Exploration

Before deciding on my final configuration, I explored multiple character archetypes to test how different garment shapes and hard surface elements interacted with each other.

As shown in the images below, I'm aiming for a gritty, live in Star Wars aesthetic. My character should be a blend between something that looks as if It could belong to the Star Wars universe (Mainly something in Outlaws and Rebels), along with something that matches that sharp, planar art style of Arcane that catches real time lighting, along with blends with painted in lighting.

I explored and experimented with distinct silhouettes ranging from a light scavenger look with tactical vests to heavy, dramatic trench coats and structure capes. Some of the things I explored were The Samurai/Bounty Hunter (Inspired by the bounty hunter Embo from the Clone Wars, The Desert Walker (Inspired by Dune - Large, baggy attire) and The Mechanic (I used a drone head as a welding helmet, made the hair slick back with engine grease, and the clothing is very light weight).

After receiving feedback from various people, the second iteration on my design sheet (The one with the conical hat, wrapped face and long rifle), stood out to me the most. The large drape of the cloak hanging over the shoulder has given me a broad, blocky surface to test our Hall's (2016) lighting principles on flat planes, while providing a strong, recognisable Star Wars wanderer silhouette. I created two different variants for my modular, interactive character screen. I have a full poncho silhouette and and under armour variant. The full poncho is a combination of the conical hat, wrapped mask, and a heavy poncho creating that distinct, gritty Star Wars wanderer shape. Giving my character an asymmetrical drape gives a unique, dynamic silhouette.

The second variant I stripped away the heavy headgear and outer poncho. This lets me check the base anatomy and the hair silhouette on its own. The look switches from a rugged, desert wanderer, to an industrial, tactical vibe. This features tight, form fitting tactical vest, armoured knee pads for battle, a blaster pouch, a long ranged weapon, and a heavy utility rig.

Modular Gear & Backpack Variants

To make this display truly modular, the UI will allow users to toggle dynamically between these two clothing variants. Alongside the main outfit swaps, I've designed a hard surface mechanical component to act as separate swappable attachments. As annotated above, I'm building a specialised backpack kit bashed from Rey's speeder engine parts. The backpack will feature a hard case and retractable jets. These are going to look like scrap. The backpack will be made up of several odd parts made to look like Rey's speeder. It will look industrial and mechanical. This will contrast nicely against the soft, flowing fabric folds of the poncho, and acts as a jetpack that Mandalorian's wear. The backpack will also have net storage. There will be messy junk stored in the net and the vents of the backpack will be rusty to sell that classic, lived in Star Wars texture aesthetic. By seeing how these will work together in concept and separating them into static, individual meshes now , hooking them up in blueprinting will be easier later on.

Weeks 3&4: 3D Blockout and Fabric Test

With week 2 complete, I'll be moving straight into production for the next two weeks. I'm jumping straight into sculpt to get the primary shapes down and see how the blockout starts coming together.

For the next two weeks, you should expect to see: Proportion and base sculpting. I'll be blocking out the main character proportions in Blender or Nomad, then sculpting the high poly base in Blender Marvelous Designer. I'll be using a basic template garment in Marvelous Designer to start creating, simulating, and testing how the fabric drapery and folds sit for the poncho and cape layers.