Friday, 21 May 2010

Created a clay render of the final Audrey model. Quiet happy with the look of her. Just packing to go to London in the morning, so that’s it for the week. Will updated again proably next Sunday ish.

Friday, 21 May 2010

Just about of to bed, nearly finished the mesh for Audrey. Quite happy with her. Will take a clay render tomorrow after a little more working. Will also be packing for my journey on Sat to London! But will try and get a little more work done tomorrow.

Thursday, 20 May 2010

Reworked the topology and continued building the mesh.



Reused the hands and pockets, again from Ian, although I reshaped them once more to be smaller and older. Also I created a very quick model of a old mobile for her pocket. Using scanned in photographic imagery for the textures since it is only ever featured sticking out of her pocket. It is not necessary to build into it more. Just a box, with a cylinder pocking out the top and took about half hour.

Wednesday, 19 May 2010

Reworked the topology of the head, and began working on the body for Audrey. It looks a lot better but once I have created the main mesh I will rework the topology of the body again to be cleaner. Not to happy with the amount of triangles around the chest.

Tuesday, 18 May 2010

Updated the website with new imagery for Ian and also a making of video for Ian. The link for the video is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPNvyA0Kbe8

Monday, 17 May 2010

Began compiling the finished making of for Ian and while waiting for it to finish I began creating Audrey’s head. A difficult challenge because of the long shape, it makes it difficult to decide where would be best to add edge loops etc. At the moment I would call it a base head, but no way near the right topology. A lot of work left to do on it!

Sunday, 16 May 2010 (little latter)

One thing I noticed I had put in the biography was that Ian takes his shoes and socks of at work, where as the concept and model has shoes on, a mistake in continuity between the bio and the concept, however since its never featured in the Animatic I see no reason to go back and edit his feet to have bare feet rather than shoes. Perhaps since its early in the day he just has not had time to take them off! Of course if it was a feature of the film I would redo it but its really nothing to worry about.

Here's another render



Anyhow for the “making of” video I am looking for some royalty free “Bob Dylan” style music, folk etc. Ian’s favourite music. After a long search on Jamendo I found a piece of music by Robin Grey, a Folk piece with a hint of Ian’s personality in the lyrics. “think I will go back inside, got me no place else to go”. I am just editing the video so should be up in a few days. Also need to update the website, will probably leave it after I am back from work placement.

Sunday, 16 May 2010

I choose to try a different way of developing the hair this time. Using actual moustache imagery I adjusted the levels to create the hair texture. However it came out very pixelated if up close. Here’s an image.



I am going to try reworking the planes to see if I can work with it, it does give a nice texture like you would have from a heavy smoker, with the slightly stained look of the moustache. I just don’t like the white blobs of pixels. If it just doesn’t give the effect of a layered moustache I will paint it by hand in the end.

I am quite happy with the eye brows, although it does again have slight white specs appearing.

You can see a strange white artefact at the top right of the brow.

Adjusted all the setting of the material so it has the same mat as George. using a bump maps to heighten the sense of real hair.

Also I have adjusted the Specular to remove any high whites which seems to have resolved the problem in the brows

Then began reworking the moustache. Bellow is the first layer of hair, although I only adjusted the Specular of the hair it looks a lot better, hardly noticing the pixilation due to editing the elvels of a photographic reference.

And second layer, still not looking to bad. Yet not thick enough

Its eventually seems to have come out rather well using photo reference rather than painting. Just need to take some renders from different angles then its on to figuring out how to work on the wisps of hair on the head. Either alphas again or splines…. Either can be animated when he moves, so not sure which will be best.

Looking at the render bellow the moustache looks nice but the eyebrows look far to thin. I think Ian would have great big thick eyebrows to go along with the thick moustache.

Reworked the eye brows some more, yet I think they could do with going all the way round as a normal thick eye brow would do.

I think I will skip the wisps of hair the head, I think its non essential and will just waist time. Anyhow here’s a render of the brows, I think finished.

And a full render of the head

Friday, 14 May 2010

Worked on the texture today, trying to keep within the same constraints as the George character so they all belong in the same visual world. However I wanted to experiment with using some photographic textures on the face, and blending them in to add more detail but again still exist in the same stylised cartoon world.



In the end I used a soft light layer to blend the cartoon to realistic look, so its a lot more subtle, but due to the amount of close ups of the character should give it more realism.



Since the hands will be seen a few times I tried to make the finger nails a little more realistic, in the end I opted for a ss shader with the same settings as the skin, so they didn’t like plastic and stuck on, also adjusting the pour maps weight so as not to be so harsh.












Finally I added some dirt around the clothing to be slightly more slob like.



However the skin was slightly to wet, so toned it down a little more and took of the reflection on the eyes which was just far to much.



I will work on the moustache, eye lashes and wisps of hair on the head next.

Thursday, 13 May 2010

Finished Uvs and began detailing the character. I decided to detail the character in sections, head chest etc instead of one whole character. mainly so I can add more detail in each section.





I created a pours map for a alpha brush in Zbrush to create pours in the skin, a slight detail that I felt was necessary the amount of camera time the character has.



The hands I have not really concentrated on, mainly since they do not spend a long time in front of the camera, apart from taking of earphones.

Wednesday, 12 May 2010

Reworked the hands one more time and split the model apart for uvs which I will do tomorrow. I took a few photos of my father who has chubby hands, and reworked the models hands to suit the reference. With shorter nails and chubby hands and fingers. Looks a lot better.

Tuesday, 11 May 2010

I have completely reworked the topology of the hands to have less triangles. Its a lot cleaner now although there are still on the connections to thee arms. Also fattened the hands to be more Ian like rather than George.


The older hand is on the left and the redone topology on the right,
I also re-jiggled the mesh a little, so his jacket is accidentally tucked in on the back, perhaps due to a quick toilet brake



I just need to add the teeth, UV then it will be ready for texturing. Hopefully Thursday!

Monday, 10 May 2010

I have begun working on the Ian character. Currently each character should take approximately a week each. I began this character on Saturday night, first creating the head and front of the body,



Then importing in parts of Georges character, such as the ears, arms, jacket and pockets, and combing them to create the finished character.
I wanted to try using the turbo smooth with smoothing groups applied, yet the results were far to sharp for what I was after, so in he end chamfered edges the same way as the George character.
I still need to add the teeth, edited the hands to be fatter, then will UVmap the character over the next few days and create the textures on Thursday. Ideally I would like to get ahead of the characters just in case I run into any major problems with the rigging latter. Hopefully start Audrey by Friday if all goes according to plan. Again I have been recording the creation. However the recording tends to slow things down a little, so everything’s slightly sluggish, So I have only been using it in certain sections, just enough to get an idea of the creation, but not every single mouse move.

Friday, 07 May 2010

The presentation went well, although I was rather nervous. I spent the last few days reorganising my drives, and created a mass texture library of 50gig. A great resource, and now am going to start the work for production. Although semester 2 doesn’t officially start till September I am going to work through the holidays. It’s the only way to get the project completed on time.

I am going to create a short schedule today for the development of all the 3D models, a sprint schedule basically, listing each model needed and a estimate of the time it will take, to create a decent schedule that I will adhere to.