Week 9: Turn Table

The final turn table showing texture and normal maps:

Fai Mor Turn Table

Week 8: Fur and trouble shooting

Fur: 

Initial tests:

I started testing hair in a simple shape to understand the control methods for hair and how to gain the desired shape and volume for my hair. I need hair which covers the entire body and a longer patch going from the base of the head to the underbelly.

I used the squirrel hair preset and using the paint affect brushed the hair in various directions. In maya the number of hair follicles is lower than what renders out. I worked with about 60- 100 hairs for every U and V point on the UV of the mesh.

There I was experimenting with a ramp shader on the length control to change the length along the mesh. By changing the offsets one could go from a fairly even fur length to having parts which are very shot to very long. This is basically created by using a gradient of black to white mapped on the mesh which can then be changed to control the value of the gradient.

Deer tests:

I then moved my test to the base deer mesh which required far more control then the mesh above. Again I used the squirrel preset and used the inclination, polar and role settings to get the fur to follow the shape of the body. The render versions show how the fur isn't distributed every throughout the mesh. This is because the fur uses the UV not the mesh to form it's shape. 

The current UV has a very small area dedicated to the head part of the mesh which mean that less hair is distributed there, hence the bald patches, and meant that I had a hard time mapping the length around the eyes and nose which is key otherwise the entire head will be coved in fur. 

This was a little experiment to try and achieve the main of the deer. I was playing around with the length and the scraggle. This could be controlled by painting directly onto the deer using the Fur Paint tool (show below) the white indicating a longer length.

New UVs: 

To achieve higher control on the face area I created a second UV map for the mesh detaching the head, re doing the UV so that I would have higher control on the fur folicles produced in that area. 

In the end I used tow different fur systems, one to create the main fur which covers the entire body ( I liked the squirrel present so I used that as a base to work form) and a second for the chest main (for using the lion preset).

Below are screen shots for the different length maps for the different fur systems. The first is the lion- chest fur. The white signalling the longer hair and the black indicating no hair. The second is of the squirrle- body fur. This is very even distribution so is one colour but noise can be added either using a noise map or changing the settings provided. 

Fur Colour and Pattern:

To colour the fur and give it the patterns whcih featured in the desings and concepts I paintned the deer in Mudbox using the fur UV map. This was then aplied to the base and tip colour so giving the fur full colour. 

This render was done on production mode taking 20 minutes for one frame. Although it produced the best results I unfortunately did not have the time to render out a full turntable at this quality. 

Trouble shooting: Antler UVs

When I went to texture the antlers using a reapeting texture tile the texture was streached horrible which can be seen in the screen shot below with a checkerd texture. This ment that the UVs wheren't proportional to the mesh and had to be redone.

To do this I kept the checkered texture and re did the UVs for the antlers so that the chesks distortion was brought down to the minimum and that the cherker size was consistent throughout all the antlers. The end result was better that belfore howere the mesh themselfves were badly made with uneven topology. Given the deadline I do not have time to remodle the antlers but if this project is to be taken forward they will need to be remade. 

The new UV the chekers pattern is far less distorted and is even though out all the antlers:

Week 7: UVs, Normals and ZBrush Projection

UVs:

This week we had a in class tutorial on UV maps. Although I had already done mine it could be improved. The UV had too many seams and one half was on top of the other. The best way to present the UV would be to create one that looked like an animal hide, with the main seam doing from the chin to the base on the neck underneath the stomach and the insides of the legs.

1st UV:

2nd UV:

ZBrush Projection:

Changing the UVs had it's problems as I had already done most of my ZBrush model and the normals would sit on the new UVs. To solve this I projected the details form the first mesh onto the new one in ZBrush. This was the quickest way to get the details form one mesh to the other but the transfer wasn't seamless. There were bulges and irregularities which I had to iron out. 

Mesh After Projection: Needs editing.

Low Poly Mesh after projection:

High Poly Mesh after projection:

High Poly Mesh smoothed out:

Low Poly Mesh smoothed out:

Displacement maps:

Once the mesh in ZBrush carried the UVs desired I could export the normals map to then be placed into maya as a bump map.

The normals often need a bit of calibration and tweaking to create the desired affect. For example the image below show very harsh deformation caused by the normals where are the one underneath is a little softer and I closer to the effect I'm after. The change can be by editing the normals in photoshop, making the RGB values less extreme or experimenting with the filter values in maya. I found that a mixture of the two techniques worked well with a value of 0.2 for the bump filter. 

Week 6: Environment Design and ZBrush Modelling

Exploring the Premiss:

The enviroemt of a character can tell a lot about the character and their story. In the previous post there was a pice of concept art of Fia Mór on a hill moor landscape valid in mist and clouds. In class we were to explore the environment and premise of our characters further. 

Home:

The open wild landscape of Ireland.

The Danger:

Fia Mór explores human territory.

The Attack:

The humans have used the gorge as an ambush point to capture Fia Mór.

I found the exercise very interesting but had trouble generating ideas quickly and producing drawings of decent quality. I lesson which I have learnt and will need to be practiced and implemented is that I should use HD proportions for my concept art. The last thumbnail was a portrait as a pose to a landscape formate. In future I should try and frame the image in a landscape as this will the end formate for film or games.

Z brush Modelling:

This was the first my first time ZBrush modelling and I found the mask tool ver useful. It meant that I could focus on a very select part of the mesh and not have to worry if my brush strokes affected any other part of the mesh.

The sub divide was very useful for creating the high level of detail I wanted, using versos reference images I was able to create some intricate details.

Full Model:

The muscles are far too defined and need more work. I wanted to exaggerate the muscle as most of the deer will be covered in fur so I want some of their form to come through however there is still much to be desired and more work is needed.