#individual work

01/08/2024

We’re combining all of our work together tomorrow so I’m wanted to make sure all of my animations are ready to go so we can get straight on with it. I had a bit of a weird learning process with this, I think it was mostly just user error but I spent a rather frustrating 7 hours trying to work out what I was doing wrong.

Trying to rig my model.

I spent a long time trying to get this model into Mixamo for animations with no success, so I took a T pose rig and connected it manually, hoping that I would be able to get it to recognise the shapes after that. I followed this tutorial and was able get it to connect and set the T post as the default rest pose, but still was unable to get the model into Mixamo.

I wasted a lot of time trying to get it imported in, and even looked at if it would be easier to use Rokoko animations and project them onto the rig I added. I also tried to get it to work by posing it using Maya’s rigging tools but this also didn’t work. I eventually realised I could use the original FBX file that I had imported into substance painter rather than exporting this model out of Blender and that worked perfectly, so I was able to get my animations. A bit of a silly mistake but luckily it worked out in the end!

30/07/2024

I’ve finished texturing my full model! I’ve realised while doing this that I find texturing so enjoyable and rewarding, seeing the model you’ve spent forever making finally look exactly how you pictured it, so I definitely plan to look into this more.

Dark mouth texture.

I chose the colours based on my concept art, choosing each one from the picrture using the colour dropper to put it exactly where I needed it. I chose to make the mouth a really dark red to have an intense contrast between the skin and the mouth, almost making it look like a void.

I later had to decide between two kinds of texture. My original texture choices were very smooth and clean looking, but when I added a rougher texture to it I thought it looked really cool. I decided to ask my group for feedback to see what they thought, since there was such a difference between the two looks.

Feedback from my group.

They agreed that the rougher version looked better, so I decided to lean into it and used it over the entire body, giving it a more damaged/ decayed look as if it had been stuck there for a long time.

Added the rough texture to the rest of the body.

I also added it to the ribs to help blend it better and feel more cohesive, before toning down the texture because it was starting to look really noisy and take away from my sculpting work.

Toned down the texture to remove the noise of the roughness.

I also added the same texture to the head and went in with a textured brush to add a vareity of colours through the skin to add more depth to the piece. I painted the tongue black because black is often related to danger or poison, so it felt fitting for this model.

Added roughness to the head.

After this base was completed, I went in with all of the colours I wanted in the piece through each section and painted them on using a soft brush and low opacity to blend everything together.

Colours added to the feet.

Colours added to the legs.

Colours added to the ribs.

Colours added to the body.

Colours added to the arms.

Colours added to the head.

Colours added to the back.

25/07/2024

UV unwrapped in Maya.

I UV unwrapped my model in Maya because I’m very familiar with the UV editor in Maya so I knew I wouldn’t be wasting my time while doing this. I cut the model up into sections to try and avoid any distortion and make the process as easy as possible.

I wanted to try and use UDIMs for this bake because I’ve never used them before and have heard people talking about them a lot in class, however my lack of knowledge got the better of me again and I had a really bad bake.

Bad UDIM's bake.

The head however came out completely perfect, so I knew that moving all of my unwrapped pieces to one tile as I usually do would be a lot more successful, so I did.

Good head bake.

Put all my UV's onto single tiles.

With all of my UV’s laid out exactly where I needed them now, I was able to get on with baking again. My vein UV’s were simply cut down the middle to split them in half since they’re so small, so I haven’t included those as they were never going to cause any major complications.

Stretched UV.

My bake was so much more successful this time around which I was really pleased with, however, this one section of the leg was really stretched and it draws the eye straight to it, so I needed to go back into my UV’s one final time to unfold that UV again and hope that it fixed the issue.

Updated UV's.

No more stretch.

Luckily for me, it worked beautifully and I was able to move on with my now fully baked model.

Adding smart materials.

Based on my previous experiments, I knew what colour choices would look best on my model, so I layered two creature skin smart materials and edited the colours to greens and browns, which added lots of dimension to the model. My main piece of advice from Wayne on texturing was to make sure the colours didn’t look flat and lifeless, so to add in a variety of different shades throughout the model so it didn’t look perfect. I wanted to keep this in mind, so I knew I wanted to hand paint my entire model using these materials as a base.

Seams caused by UV unwrap.

By handpainting my model I was also able to find and remove any of these seams made from my UV unwrap, which was very helpful for the overall look of my model.

21/07/2024

I’ve been experimenting with a few different things just to get a basic idea of how they’re going to work when I’m making the final versions. To start with, I used the Adobe Substance Painter auto unwrapper to see how well the UV's would come out, even though I knew I would obviously UV unwrap the model myself, just to be able to test a high to low bake on the model and see if it keeps all the details I want.

Baking the test model.

I was actually very happy with the bake quality, it kept all of the details as high as I wanted them to be and was so clear, so I’m excited to know that I can definitely achieve the quality I wanted from the start.

Baked test model, testing out textures.

I also looked at adding different textures to see how they would work. The creature skin smart material was exactly what I was looking for with this model, so I tested different colour choices with this.

Baked and textured teeth.

I also did a full bake and texture of the teeth using the auto unwrapper, and decided that the outcome was actually exactly what I wanted since it’s such a small section that won’t have much impact on the overall look, so I kept this as the final version.

More colour testing.

I tested some different colour chocies to show Wayne this week for feedback on what the best methods for painting will be, and also did a very rough animation test on the model. It’s far from perfect but it’s so encouraging to see that this could actually work exactly how I intended it to.

19/07/2024

After talking to Neil today, I’ve decided to put my manual retop on the back burner and switch to an automatic retopology method. While this is frustrating, it’s absolutely the best decision to make in this scenario since it was taking so much more time than I had anticipated. I will be coming back to it after this project is finished to continue my learning, but for my Neil kindly showed me how to use the ZRemesher tool in ZBrush to achieve a much better and lower topology to be able to get on with the final parts of my individual work.

Full body retopology.

Head retopology.

Rib retopology.

Teeth retopology.

Final poly count.

I used the ZRemesher on each main section of my model, leaving out the veins because they were already low poly so I wasn’t concerned about them. I was aiming for 100,000 faces and managed to get below that so I'm definitely happy. This method was so much faster and ended up being really effective, so this was definitely a major learning opportunity for me. I’m still planning to learn effective manual retopology because I believe it’s an important thing to learn, but this was a great technique and I’m grateful that it’s finished now so I can crack on with the rest of my work.

14/07/2024

So I’m finding myself quite frustrated by my retopology process this week. I think because I don’t have experience doing retopology on such a detailed model, it’s really slowing down my work process. This is causing such a delay to my schedule and I’m struggling to think of how to fix this without wasting any more time, as my group’s deadline for individual work is set for the 31st of July, so I would like to be getting on with the texturing and animation as soon as possible.

Bringing the retopology around the body.