I'm still having major trouble with the hair and gravity and NURBS curves in Maya, but I managed to roughly get a feel of what the hair is eventually going to look like. I also did a quick UV map for the face to highlight the lips and the eyebrows. It was a lot easier than I thought - I scrapped the automatic mapping feature and used cyllindrical mapping instead, scaling my UV shells until I was satisfied.

I'll probably go in to more detail, but I'm happy that my face is looking a bit more human. As for the hair, it's only to get a rough idea of what the model is going to look like with her hairstyle.

It's the first character I've made in Maya, so I'm pretty happy with the progress.

Started on the barnet.

Following a tutorial here to learn how to use NURBS shapes and the PaintFX thing to make hairstyles in Maya. Wish me luck!

Those two things that look like the little poos out of Digimon will actually eventually be the twisty hair buns on either side of the head.

Oh, and that's the face model finished (but not yet textured). I didn't bother with ears since they'll be covered by the long hair anyway.

Today I

Figured out how to do fire, f*** yeah!

Now my fireplace can actually be functional. This is how far I've gotten with my fireplace wireframe. I'm going to UV map it this week, probably to look like some sort of mahogany and cast iron cafuffle.

Working on the exterior concept of the Inn

Basic sketch of the layout. Inn is situated on the top of a small hill, surrounded by trees. Mid-19th century sort of theme, wooden panels, black and white as is common in old English towns.

Then, decided it was too simple and came up with this concept instead. Noticed there was a lot of recurring 'roundness' in Victorian architecture so wanted to incorporate that.

It's only a quick sketch for lighting and colour purposes, so that's why it's a bit of a mess! Not sure if I'll end up doing the exterior though, as a 4th year in my crit session today said I'd probably find it too hard with all the lighting variables and camera angle checks. I'll probably rattle off some interior speed-paintings to try and nail down the atmosphere of the interior and start to hammer away at that instead.

Concept for 'Mother Redcap'

So this was my first quick concept for my character model. I wanted her to be fat, and grimey looking.

However, on reflection I found that this made her look too slow and dimwitted; not what you'd expect a smuggler queen to be at all. So, I'm now in the process of painting concept V.2.0. Apologies if it seems like the colours are off, I'm currently having MASSIVE problems with Photoshop, Corel Painter and my monitor colour settings. I think I'm due a system wipe soon.

Face us coming along.

Thought I'd keep the internet up-to-date. Working with edge loops as a rookie is hard.

Making a Face; A newbie's trials and tribulations.

Started modelling my 3D face, or at least, attempting to. The first tutorial I followed went awfully as I had to improvise about 80% of it. I'll post the embarrassing and awful result up later.

For now, this is where I'm up to on a new tutorial I'm following. It's much easier and because it didn't use a square as the base shape, it seems a lot more organic already.

I'm about 1/5th of the way through, so, here it is so far;

More stuff

Blah.

All in construction, all completely non-related to my coursework. Also, it's now 6:22 am. I feel like a zombie. All my creative juices are gone. /cry.

EDIT: This is for a nationwide challenge, rather than my university work, but I thought I'd include it to show my development anyway. It's kinda fun working with bright summery colours, and cartoon UV maps are certainly a hell of a lot easier to nail than hyperealism.

The background photo of the ocean in the last two images was not taken by me.

Made a smoothie

for the hell of it. Because it's 3am, and I'm tired, and I can.

Was also testing out the Anisotropic material because I never had before. Yawn. I'm so tired.

Week 3 - Random Stuff

So it's the third Maya lab of the Semester, and we were pretty much subject to a lecture about the semi-basics of maya modelling, texturing and lighting. Found out some pretty interesting information about specular highlights and using photons in my lighting.

Made a pewter cup to test out the photo lighting in photometric lights.

I haven't smoothed it yet or added much detail, just wanted to show an example. The texture isn't mine and is quite plain, so I'll be making my own texture on Photoshop at some point to replace this.

Reference photo was not taken by me.

Quick concept

Was looking at how Kekai Kotaki does his initial concepts straight from head. He pretty much does quick, inaccurate greyscale sketches in photoshop that look like random blotches on paper. But they work! At least, to get ideas out of your mind quickly. Here's an example;

Sketches by Kekai Kotaki.

This was my go, done in about 5 mins. It's really weird working quickly and inaccurately, I'm used to spending 30 hours + on any digital sketch/painting I do.

I actually hate looking at this, it's shit, but it serves its purpose in preserving my idea quickly I suppose. Already from comparing the two I see I need to be more confident with blacker lines and stop relying on lower opacity to hide my errors. Might do some quick idea sketches with charcoal to get me out of the habit.

Now I made some

PLAYING CARDS. Because card games are fun, kids.

I used the 'scan lines' texture I'd made on photoshop, combined with the trusty burn tool, to try and make it look like there were individual cards rather than me modelling them one by one. It worked well zoomed in, but no so much zoomed out. Oh well, I suppose it is only a 'prop' after all, and until I find a better texture to use it'll have to stay.

Now that I know how to UV map, making okay-looking 3D stuff is so much easier. I had to normalise the images for the cards though, which took me a while to figure out, as beforehand the images were all distorted and not very nice.

The actual face textures of the cards aren't mine. They're 19th Century french cards from a historic website. Not sure if copyrighted, will have to check that later / acquire permission.

I made a barrel.

For alcohol, to sit in a smugglers' Inn. Just incase I make a smugglers' Inn.

(Trust me, it's related!)

Can you spot the hidden barrel? (lololol)

Obviously, that painting isn't mine. It's an oil painting from the 19th Century.

Hello, storyteller.

So I finally came up with a game to work towards with my 3D production module. It is, of course, fictional (for now) and I'm going to keep most of the story in my sketchbook (and away from the internet). However, it's set in the mid-19th Century.

We were told in lecture today to always ask ourselves 'Why?'. Why are we doing what we do, and how can we justify it? So, why am I focusing the theme of my game in to the Victorian era?

Firstly, I find the style of the 19th century interesting. The industrial revolution and the consequential dark, dirty cities makes a home for plenty of interesting characters. The architecture in the Victorian era was slowly getting more and more advanced, and the political and social unrest caused many events that would definitely make good stories to tell. The fashion was also particularly iconic, with its ruffles, lace, sharp tailored suits and large hats for the ladies. Put all these factors together and we get a large, bubbling vat of artistic inspiration. (and a pretty sweet concept, too).

To set the mood for my game, I researched several existing 19th-Century-based games such as Amnesia, and Fable 3. I also took a look at some black and white sketches of 19th Century designs, as well as traditional Victorian paintings from the time.

Here is the mood board I compiled;

My colours, naturally, are going to stay in the zone of dark. Not because it's a tried-and-tested method, but it also is complimentary to my story line. Which I'm still not going to reveal, just yet. Most of my game will be set in the nighttime, and the parts that are in the daytime will most likely take place under the grey cloudy overcast that frequents the English skies. The overall mood of my game is melancholic and glum, and so I want my pathetic fallacy to work. Plus, it's set on a northern English coast, and let's face it... They're never sunny.

Week 2/3 - Unfolding UV's

"While texturing a flat object is fairly straightforward, texturing an object with curves can pose some unique problems. How do you paint a 2D texture on a curved surface? How do you deal with a texture warping over bumps and grooves? If you try to break apart the UV mesh like Lesson 1, you can potentially end up with hundreds of small pieces."

- Autodesk Maya Tutorial.

Week 2 - UV mapping.

Used the help section at the Autodesk website to complete my first example of UV/projection mapping.

http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2010help/index.html?url=UV_texture_mapping_Creating_a_cracker_box_model.htm,topicNumber=d0e22765

Made a cereal-box-shaped-box by using the create primitive polygon tool rather than using the toolbar icons. Allowed me to set dimensions on just one click.

Created a texture map on Photoshop, each side was different.

Viewing the UV perspective/texture window showed me how messed up the texture mapping is by default.

Create UV's >> Automatic Mapping, put the settings to 3 planes rather than the default 6.

Select Edges in the view-window by right clicking and holding. Clicked an edge, Polygons >> Move and Sew (in the UV perspective window, not the drop down menu bar of the main program.

Tools >> Move UV Shell, again in UV texture view.