weighing the skin

This is the part of the process where I paint weights on the mesh to try and make it so the character doesn't distort when I move him around the scene.

Rigging Via Tutorial

By this point I have added my skeleton to my model and created IK handles in my arms and legs, and created nurb curves for each of my joints.

Responding To Crit

I was told in crit that my model looked too 'different' to the other characters, it was too high poly and the textures didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the characters. I was taken back by this news, considering that was the point of our animation. they're all our original designs and original animations.

I changed the 'Blinn' texture to 'Lambert' to make it less shiny, I also took off my normal's and added a black outline to make it look more like a cartoon. It doesn't look terrible but it's not as nice as the original. 

I also decided to go a bit more intense with colours, with toons. Very flat textures with slight lighting. But again, It's not good enough.

Figuring out where the joints would be - What do I need him to do?

I have to think about what I need my character to do, taking reference from my most recent animatic.

I can see I don't need a lot of hand motion, I see that my eyebrows and eyelids need to be rigged. Even though the face is hard that shouldn't be too bad.

Adding my Textures in Maya

I wanted to see what my textures looked like in Maya, It looks better than expected considering it hasn't been rendered. But that's why I favour having nice looking textures. Even if your model is simplistic, a nice texture can make anything look impressive.

All in all i'm pretty happy with the way it looks, below are all the parts the make up my textures.

Textures for my Chest Plate:

Colour Map

Metalic Map

Normal Map

Rigging

Just having a quick try with a simple rig, it turned out better than I thought. Considering I had some worries about it before. I feel more confident. 

Turntables - Week 6

High Poly - 50,000 tris

Low Poly - 9,000 tris

Week 6 - An example of both my high poly model and low poly model on a turntable made in marmoset, I also created a character sheet made with my 3D turntable. I was told that the actual look of my character didn't fit with the overall look of the rest of the characters in the animation, I attempted different 'textured' models. But my character won't look that high definition in maya.

We also had sound tutorials - deciding what sound effects would work well with our animatics. 

Normals/Light fixed

Mesh Display > Set to face

A simple fix for what seemed like an annoying issue.

Bamboo

Practising by helping make the bamboo model.

Low Poly VS High Poly

High Poly: 58,418 Tris

Low Poly: 9275 Tris

Textured

High Poly

Low Poly

There has been a significant change in tris within the character, and to be honest the difference is pretty minimal. The shape of his helmet is slightly distorted, I feel you could only see if you were told that, I do seem to have a but of issue with the texture on the helmet, I need to try and fix this.

Textures On My Model

This model unfortunetly is pretty high poly, which means it would cause problems with me animating and rigging it. The plan is to break down the polys in maya, but making sure I don't mess up the mesh and uv's.

Adding My Textures

I've colour coded my character, just to make it easier for me for when I'm adding my textures later.

Second Attempt at an Animatic with Sound

Here is a remastered version of the animatic, the general story is my samurai is sad about not being a 'strong fighter', and finding this special sword in the woods will impress his friends. But he finds it hard to get out of the log. He does eventually, but falls over in the process. Something I'm not sure I'm going to stick with, this is because a lot of people's characters fall over. I would like mine to be different, it came with the whole, we didn't tell each other what we were doing until we showed our animatics. 

Group Animatic - Remastered with sounds

We did a mini task to get us to grips with the best way to show emotion through our actions, it has shown that it might be better for me. If my character put his leg on the log to pull the sword free.

Blade for a wakizashi

These aren't the best quality pictures but you get the idea of the shape of sword we as a group are looking for in our animation, we want it to not be as curved with a flat tip. This will make it easier to animate, with it being shorter without there being a curve. The handle also doesn't have to be heavily detailed.

Wiki Description: The Wakizashi has a blade between 30 and 60cm, with Wakizashi close to the length of a Katana. The Wakazashi being worn with the Katana was the official sign that the wearer was a samurai or swordsman of feudal Japan. When worn together the pair of swords were called Daisho which translates to 'big-little'.

It hasn't been textured yet.

Museum Research - Swords

The museum gave me a great insight to the different swords that were used by samurai's, with swords on show I also got a great idea of what designs they had.

Museum Research - Armour

I went to the British museum in London to find primary research of Japanese armour, maybe it would give me a chance to analyse my character to see whether I am happy with the design. 

In my first design for my helmet, the entire helmet was made of copper. But i've decided to texture the back of the helmet in a type of mesh.

Complete Sculpted Model - Next Stage Texturing

Animatic Re-evaluating

The new animatic will start off with a wide shot (WS), cut to a close up (CU) for an emtion shot. Ending with a mid-shot of pulling the sword from the stone.

Animatic - Week 4

Week 4 - Here is the animatic that I have made for my section of the animation, it's comprised of wide shots, mid shots and close ups. At the end of the films my character becomes possessed by the spirit inside the other character, this is somthing I'm not completely sure about. This is because I'm not sure how easy it will for me to rig a 'smoke monster' essentially, but I will have a go. If it doesn't go well then I will re-consider the ending. 

I started with a establishing shot, just the let the audience know that I am still in the same bamboo forest. Later using a mid shot of the character back and forth from the sword to show his happiness. A wide shot as he's pulling out the sword, and then a close up to show my characters eyes change as he's being possessed.  

All of our character Designs.- Week 3

Week 3 - We showed and were assessed on our character deigns, we also worked out the size difference between all of them. As you can see 'Ronin' looks like he would be an 'average' sized human being. But it's actually tiny compared the the log and scene.

Getting our Story Sorted

Week 2 - We focused on making storyboards and animatics, the biggest flaw we realised we had. Was that we didn't have a solid story, this is what we decided to do.

By this point all we knew was that our story would be set in Japan, and we would use a sword and a stone. This was changed when someone suggested that the sword should be stuck in his 'head' - he is a log of possessed wood essentially. So that's the idea that we've gone with.

We each get 10 seconds each to make up 60 seconds:

1. Wooden character is trying to get the sword out of his head
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. My chibi samuri pulls the sword from his head (proving that he is tough)

Within the section 2,3,4,5 - we will decide where the other characters will go through editing together the animatic that we will create.

Character Sheet

Based on my 3D character design I decided to re-work my original design, I decided to do it this way around. Is due to being practical, I had to think about what was practical for me in my abilities to model. I also had to re-think the design in regards to what's easier for me to rig and animate. I feel like this design has clear, long joints that will be easier to rig. 

I used the material of oxidised copper for the armour, it's a realistic metal. But due it's oxidisation it's turned a blue colour. The idea is that it's passed on from generations. My original idea featured my character with a snake skin cape, for this design I've decided to make less of a cape. And have it as a material under his clothes that shows through. Realistic to the time he will also be wearing a weaved fabric for his clothing. Under his armour is wrapped leather, that comforts his skin from the copper.

Modelling My Design

I decided to start modelling my character design, I started off with a very basic shape. All very low mesh.

I started to extract that parts of the body that I selected in order to make the clothes and armour.

I did this technique further, along with smoothing out and sculpting his face. I also added extra spheres for his eyes.

By this point I am close to the finished project, I just need to create his shoes. And possibly more details, My next stage is to take it into Maya and unwrap it on a UV sheet. I will then take it into 'substance painter', which I have used in previous projects to add textures.
I feel rigging will be hard.