#digital creatures

Pause Fest is Australia's premier Creative, Tech and Business event

This year's theme of Pause is "Different Perspective"

Xiaolin Zeng was invited to craft this year's opening titles

"The whole idea was inspired by an anime called "Digimon Adventure", whose opening scenes show the different angle of a night city and digital creatures.

Therefore, we decide to focus on a different angle or perspective of empty cities, to express a feeling of isolation, despite the fact we live in these spaces"

Smells like Cyberpunk to me

I wonder if I was supposed to have all these existential crises in high school. I thought we were supposed to know who we are by now. Apparently not. I think I want kids; that’s dumb as fuck, I’m terrible with kids and shouldn’t have them for numerous reasons. I know it’s hormones but it’s persisted for three weeks now. And, like, everything is hormones. I’m having a bad week; I’m sad and chaotic and making bad choices and guess why? It’s hormones! Does that make it not real? Are feelings not real because they arise from biochemical reactions? Obviously, they’re still real; and the ones from Hormone Shit like my biological clock saying “You Should Have A Human Baby” and “Go Fucking Feral On That Chocolate” every month and now, apparently, all the time in some respects as I’m That Age™ and, y’know, nothing means anything because evolution isn’t an Inherent Good it’s just what persists: things that die don’t exist. Things that live, do. What is that on the table? Is that blood on my table??? no it’s Chicken Tikka Masala juice that dripped while I was stuffing my face with chocolate. I’m trying; I’m not doing as bad as I used to, but does that matter either? I want to celebrate Easter but I don’t have the [money/energy/something that is needed] to; of course I’m not religious but I’m imagining a Honey Ham, a small one, that I put on the table and that I cut up into Chunks to make Servings and in my head I guess it’s just me so that’s why it’s not worth it! and then I set out the Corn Pudding and the Honey Rolls (I like honey) and there are Sweet Potatoes with Toppings and I don’t. Songs about revolution play and I save them to my Spotify library and I do not take part in a revolution. I used to call myself a transhumanist; they’re overrun by libertarians and The Right now, that’s gross. I don’t know if I’ll choose to live forever now. Favorable turns, and all that. You shake and you miss the bus. You shake and you make it on in the last minute. You shake and you wait a normal, average length of time and proceed to your seat without thinking about it. Which one is better? I’ll be eating Cake and spending time with Friends tomorrow; I’m trying to socialize more (you hear the echo that we’ve been saying that for two continuous years) and I’ve been self sabotaging a hell of a lot and I can tell but I don’t know how to fix that. I’m doing lots of things; I’m going to go into Philly to a Zone and Interact with people in a Subculture and later this summer I’m going to try and get a sugar daddy because I like Things and y’know what? That’s fine! I’m looking for specific kinds of human connection and hoping all works out. I’m quitting something I’ve done for most of my life because I Just Don’t Care and I’m happiest when I’m plugged into the internet and consuming media and is that terrible maybe what WOULD I have done if I’d gone to Lycoming? Would I be happier? A. L. said I would work just as hard and he’s right of course have I ever told you I can trace my decision to come to Swarthmore to

just

one

comment?

Did you know my ego usually gets the best of me and I have this dichotomy and I’m made out of contradictions and maybe I’m also self-sabotaging by never breaking the habit of being Plural because I spent my formative years as two people and I can no longer mourn deaths? Is the effort to dismantle the ancient habits worth the science? Is it something to do? I am Better when I am occupied. I do not spiral and I do not Consume.

“You? At little old Lycoming?”

Well, he turned out to be embezzleing funds. I don’t care about that, either; he was a nice man. I made the mistake of taking that class I also made the mistake of taking sociology and I also made the mistake of coming to Swarthmore and maybe I made the mistake of being born again! I believe in reincarnation you know I believe I’ve been here or universes like it before so would it be wrong to live forever? Favorable turns, favorable turns; am I trying for a good body? A good life? Resources? Memory? I remember nothing. Not much. I work from a very incomplete data set and I’m halfway done with this college thing but what then? I do not enjoy my every day life. I think back nostalgically on all the times I know I wanted to fucking die or at least be anywhere else (like, here, now). What does it say that I think back nostalgically on Kmart of all the godforsaken places? On 13, on what is presumably in the Void Times where my memory just blacks out for two fucking years due to ??? the BAD? Rose colored glasses. Everything is better in hindsight. Nothing was ever really better; it’s just different things that are bad.

So, no, A.L., I would not have been happier I would have been a logical continuation of high school.

Do you know I’ve even forgotten The Parable of the Scientist and the Programmer? We just have that phrase and we turn it over in our mouths and we murmur that we chose wrong. That we’d trade the all-of-our-awake-hours-are-beholden-to-productivity-or-guilt for selling a 9 to 5 just to hope to not hate it NO I’d like to think we’d have refused to hate it for a 5 to 12 that we enjoyed and weekends free and clear for nonsense or shenanigans or travelling or going home.

You know, I don’t want to move out. I may not be able to mourn deaths but I can mourn my childhood. I will never get it back and I never appreciated it when I had it because I wasn’t any happier I just didn’t know how much worse it could be. They don’t tell you that a version of you dies when you turn 18, how different it suddenly is to look back and realize all the things and modes of being you can Never access again.

So, I’m moving out; I’ll have my own apartment. In the day to day, this will make me happier. I will be able to cook an Easter dinner because I’m not Christian in the slightest but I am that sort of American default from a historically “““Christian”“““ household though my grandparents might rot in hell if such a place existed. I will have my cats (my cats!) but they will lose the only home they’ve ever known. Molli will be sad. Lavendercloud will also be sad. I’ll have to live with someone again and I am so bad at socialization; I’ve wasted my youth and I’m wasting my young adulthood and it’s because I can’t make friends and I can never get ahead of the curve with knowing anything what the fuck to do what the fuck I want to do.

I’m not convinced I can focus longer than an hour anymore; how am I going to do research this summer? Have I been damaged beyond my old capabilities?

And I don’t think therapy will help; I don’t think nutrition is helping; it’s all a self control issue. No one can tell me how to fix the place I live.

Growing up is just taking psychological damage and I wonder if that’s the reason a plant of mine died. My favorite plant. Dave. He has some Davelettes that might live but I’m incapable of dealing with death so it may have been too late when I had a breakdown and realized I had to do something.

My sister’s had her own place for a while now so I go to the house that my dad never lived in because he’s dead and she probably knew him better than I did because my mother has her own psychological issues that she never dealt with and now I’ve inherited them.

“It would break my heart if you left.”

So I didn’t, and now my dad is dead and he doesn’t exist anymore and I will never be able to cope with the loss of his soul from reality.

It’s not a fucking contest and I love my family and it took me a long time to realize that and try for that. I’m doing okay; not great. We don’t text. We should, but what to talk about?

So do I want kids because of hormones or this crippling and constant never-belonging and always craving Family? Don’t you know there’s other ways to get it? Don’t you know?

so I’ve never belonged anywhere and it’s a constant struggle against all of my Psychological Damage and I’m nostalgic of all the past that was just the same, relatively speaking, and I still have no idea what I’m doing with my life and above all I have so much regret even though I know logically it is stupid to Regret that which you cannot change.

When I die, I think I’ll become a neuroscientist. I’ve been a philosopher, I’ve been at least one other kind of scientist, I’m doing astrophysics this go-round unless I flunk out because I’m not any kind of person with any kind of integrity for anyone to like or get to know... I’ve been the worst version of myself and so no one respects or likes me and I don’t blame them... but I guess I’m trying.

this has been... 041820192257... signing off

Here is my rendered turntable of the final version of my Honeydoo model, including a wireframe render. (Use this link if it doesn’t appear above: https://youtu.be/DOnKmIxNraQ)

I used the PDFs provided by Thomas in his Advanced Animation Production, composition workshops to help me get it set up. Although I was unable to get render layers working properly, which is something he too had trouble with.

I’ve made adjustments to the mesh, especially around the hair in order to make it appear less like a helmet. I’ve attempted this by making her ears slightly visible, making the overall shape of the hair less ‘perfectly round’ as well as basing the side profile on that of actual afro hairstyles (see reference far below).

I’ve also updated her hands so that there’s an extra loop at where the fingers begin and I’ve moved the thumb down to a more natural position. 

Ideally, I reckon they could use a lot more edge loops for extra definition, however since this is smoothed version (for sculpting) from the low-poly model, it might be best if I just did this by revising my low poly model with what I’ve learned from my first sculpt-modified version.

I’ve also made attempts to create an updated version of the model with additional detail, especially on the shoes. The arms have also been slightly updated to appear less sausage-like.

Before I began texturing in Substance, I had the idea to save on performance by using a lower poly version of the mane and having it normal-mapped with the high poly version.

Unfortunately, it didn’t succeed, since the normal-map version ended up with having just as chunky shading as without it.

Here is my retopologised mane’s UV map. It’s in high poly, so it took a while to do, due to the performance impact it had on my computer. Hence why I wanted to work with the lower-poly version.

I had to redo it with the low-poly version, since 

Here’s my first attempt at normal mapping, based on Autodesk’s Transfer Maps editor instructions. It’s blocky and defeats the entire purpose of normals. I’m not entirely sure what caused it, but it did take a while with the settings I used, so it was a considerable waste of time.

Here is the low poly mane as it appears from behind without the normal map. It’s pretty chunky around the lower areas, with the points.

Here’s the same area with what I consider a successful normal map. However it is only slightly less chunky than what I had before.

Here is the front. As you can see, there are major seams from the underside of the mane from my UV mapping. It’s here where I felt that normal baking would not be an effective solution for improving the visuals of the model, whilst maintaining good performance.

It would probably be better just to add more edge loops, that go around the back side of the mane, though that might cause complications on the front and sides by adding heaps of detail that might be difficult to manage or even also impact performance.

Here is my texture in Substance for Honey’s head/face. The brown, ‘insect’ part of her antenna transitions from skin on her ears. 

I also redid the eyes to be larger from previous, since I felt that she might look more appealing from the side if her pupil was more easily seen. The eyeliner shares the same material as the lashes and is assigned directly to the faces themselves, as opposed to being part of the face/head texture.

Also note my updates to the eyebrows’ thickness, so that Sorin doesn’t have to bring it up as much in the future.

Here are the shoes. As observable, I feel that the lack of detail turned out to be much more consequential than I anticipated. Since they didn’t look as appealing as I hoped, appearing relatively flat with just the texture.

I wasn’t completely sure how I wanted to handle the 3D detail of the shoes, hence why I didn’t really bother with them in the first place.

Here are the textures for the rest of the clothes, front and back. The skirt has its own separate material and UV map. 

At some stages, I had to make tweaks to the mesh as well as the placement of some of the materials. Thankfully, Substance was able to maintain my progress when I updated the mesh during those incidents.

However, if I were to do anything that changed the UVs, Substance may not be able to keep my texture, even though I knew that a representative mentioned that Substance is able to retain progress as long as the brushwork was done in 3D.

After taking into Andrew’s advice on always enabling tessellation and having gentler use of the smooth and bulge tools; as well as being gentler with the grab tool in general. I was finally able to sculpt a mane that (although resembled some kind of weird starfish, sea creature) I was pleased with because it stayed true to my reference sheet.

So I brought my sculpted model, at the lowest division setting, from Mudbox back to Maya to retopologise the mane and make and final tweaks before sending it to Substance Painter for texturing.

Here is the very start of my retopology process, using Maya’s quad draw.

As you can see later into my sculpt, I hid the body mesh so it didn’t get in my way. I would later hide more and more of the meshes, such as the hair and the teeth as I worked my way into the centre.

The points/fluffs were going to be tricky, especially in regards to handling the topology flow and their relationship with one another across the mesh.

As you can see in these two images, I began running into major issues with the centre edges merging into each other and Maya’s symmetry feature becoming unreliable. This is when I attempt to relax the edges along the geometry or add additional edge loops near the the centre-most edge.

Note the faceless edge at the centre of where I deleted them in order to fix them.

Here is the topology as it appears again, with the hole filled in, smoothed. When unsmoothed, the mesh appears perfect, but it is revealed there are overlapping vertices.

Here is a video showcasing the symmetry ‘merging’ issue in action. 

At one stage I managed to work around the issue (see lower image) by temporarily disabling symmetry, relaxing the area a bit and then re-enabling it, followed by mirroring the mesh so it’s truly symmetrical again.

Unfortunately, as I continued working on the topology, that’s when what’s depicted in the video started occuring again.

Here is the topology continuing through to the back of the mane.

Here is it progressing into the rear underside. Note the two bulges I accidentally left from sculpting. These would not be reflected within the retopology.

Here is my progress towards retoplogising the ends of the points. As shown, I began facing difficulties involving triangles and n-gons when trying to solve them. 

The usual solutions were to add more edges (which can make the model more resource-intensive and harder to work with) and to redirect some of the edges to make more of a proper loop.

Here’s an example of the topology on one of the fluffs, near Honey’s neck, showcasing a half-loop.

Here is my first completed version of the toplogy. I wasn’t pleased with how one of the points didn’t take its full shape properly, so I went back to retopologise it. Mainly with the addition of more loops and edges.

As you can see the geometry is very tight after adjusting the topology. Potentially more so than what’s preferable, but it’ll probably have to do.

Here is an overall view of the mesh, with a smoothed version of the retopologised mane, before I export her into Substance for texturing. 

After completing this model of Peleando Pollo, there are a lot of things that I need to reflect on. First of all this experience of researching, designing and creating my human character has been not only an eye-opening experience, but it has been an empowering experience. This has made me want to more modelling and produce more successful and more aesthetic looking model.

This project has helped understand typology and how to create better typology, especially with the face of the model around the mouth and eyes. Another factor of the typology that this project has helped me with was how to get rid of polygons with more than four sides. It has been something I have struggled with in past projects but in this project, I did some extra research to see how to get cleaner typology as a human character is something that clean typology is essential.

Another factor of this assessment that I found interesting was learning how to use blend shapes. It's a fun way to create different expressions and poses that I didn’t know existed.