Semester Wrapup

Hello everyone!

With the semester coming to a close (just one week left!), I'm getting certain things wrapped up. Those are:

1. Finishing up the Bodacious Creed head animation for Head Sculpture and Facial Expressions.  Basically, I need to make final tweaks to the animation, then do the final render.  I know, I didn't post much of it in the vlog, but I'm waiting to have it finished to post more.  I think it's looking pretty good.

2. Detailing Anna Lynn Boyd pre-texturing.  I got her up to what I think is the right, higher level of detail.  This, I should actually show in a vlog, come to think of it!

3. Detailing Bodacious Creed pre-zombification.  Like how I coined that term?  Or did I?  It seems to me that someone else must have used it before.  Anyway, I'm detailing in more of his muscles and bony landmarks, too.  The texture on him is looking very good, though I should probably still polish it up at the fingers and toes.  I'll be working on this the next couple of days, and I think I'll just show the further sculpted models in a vlog together.

Next semester, I'll continue with these characters.  Anna Lynn will get her texture, and Creed will get zombified and get all that great Steampunk technology built in.  I may also at least create the base mesh for Coconino, Creed's Steampunk/cybernetic coyote.

Also next semester, I'll be taking Introduction to Rigging.  As a 3D modeler, it's good to understand the processes later in the pipeline.  That way, I'll know better what the riggers need to get out of the models, and I'll therefore be a better modeler.

Plus, rigging, while quite technical, is fun, and a will be a nice skill to have.  With the rigging I've learned in Head Sculpture this semester, I've already rigged a 3D head for our YouTube show, Couch Zombies.  While eventually, we hope to have the show itself animated in Flash, I'd like to create some 20 second to 1 minute spots using 3D animation.  Hopefully they will be a draw in themselves and get more viewers to the show, and will be a nice change of pace for me, and the cast, to work on during the winter break.

'Till the next post, adios, Pardners.

The Associated Vlog Is Up

The vlog I promised yesterday is up! It shows details on the body texture, and one technique for fixing texture problems, and the beginnings of the head animation.

I finished animating the jaw and lips as well, and they look pretty damn good. I'll be sharing that later.

Since Last I Wrote

My last entry to the Bodacious Creed blog was five days ago, but it feels like I haven't written anything for weeks!  I've been working hard on the thesis all these days.  I've done and learned a lot, just since last Sunday.  So, here's a breakdown of what I've been doing and how it's all going.

A. I had my weekly online meeting with my Group Study instructor, Chad Josewski, on Monday.  I always learn a lot from those meetings, because I'll come in with specific questions and Chad will answer them all.  He also points out where he sees my models need improvement.  Here's some of what resulted from that meeting.

1. For the head model, I fixed Creed's beard.  I had it as a sort of rectangle on his chin, and Chad pointed out that such a pattern isn't very realistic.  So, I fixed the cut map for it and now it looks much better.  I'll insert an image at the end of this post.
2. Chad affirmed that I'm going about doing Creed's texture the right way.  So, I've continued on with that.
3. He also let me know the level of detail the models of Creed and Boyd should generally be at before texture placement starts.  So, I'll be getting Boyd up to that detail level, which is basically emphasizing her muscles a bit more and showing more definition over all, with nice, clean sculpting lines.  I started Creed's texturing a bit below this level, but he's a unique case.  As he's going to be undead, for this specific model, it makes sense to put on the normal skin texture, and detail/zombify the model and the texture together.

B. I had an upsetting problem with the head model.  Not the hair... that was easy to fix once pointed out.  It was with the blend shapes.

Remember, I talked about those before?  The blend shapes are all the morphs that allow for the face to be animated.  Eyebrow raises, smiles, things like that.  I had animated the head tilts, the eyes, the eye brows, the eye lids, and the jaw.  When I went to animate the mouth shapes (the phonemes, for when he's talking), some weird things started happening.  The shape of the mouth would be different depending on where I was in the animation.  Sometimes it would do the opposite of what it was supposed to, say closing instead of opening, or totally distorting the face.

I ended up resetting the animation to see what was going on, and after much trial and error, figured out that the blend shapes were interfering with each other.  I would raise eyebrows, then go to widen the mouth, and the eyebrows would lower.  I was afraid I would have to go back about five weeks worth of work, and redo all the blend shapes.  I was afraid that the problem lay with zBrush.  (And believe me, I'm glad that wasn't the problem, since zBrush makes creating them so much easier, and better looking!)

I posted to two school forums: the one for my Head Sculpture class, and the 3D Modeling workshop, and asked if anyone could figure out what was going on.  I also posted the file itself so people could check it out.

One of my classmates came through later that evening.  (This stuff was all yesterday.)  The problem was that I had the various blend shapes applied by category.  Basically, I had told Maya, "Okay, here are the major expression blend shapes, apply those.  Now, here are the eyebrow blend shapes, apply those."  Because of that, they were all affecting each other.  Turns out what I needed to do was remove all the blend shapes from the head, and tell Maya, "Okay, here are ALL the blend shapes.  Apply them in one category."

And now, they're working fine, and not interfering with each other.  Phew!

Since I had to redo the animation anyway, I re-videoed myself acting out the line, and have started the animation again.  Since I now know what I'm doing with the animation, it's coming along rather quickly.  I'm already up to animating the eye lids.

Oh, the line?  It's from American Beauty, and is Kevin Spacey saying, "It's the weirdest thing.  I feel like I've been in a coma for about twenty years, and I'm just now waking up."  I had asked if we could record an original line, but we're supposed to choose one that comes with the class.  That's Okay, this one works pretty well.

Time permitting, I'll do a vlog later today and actually show a little bit of this work.

Meanwhile, here's the improved beard!  (Okay, so it's two pictures!)

Paradigm Shift

The next step for working on the full body models of Bodacious Creed and Anna Lynn Boyd is a departure from what I thought would be next.  It's enough of a departure that I'm thinking of it as a paradigm shift.

I had figured I would model up to high detail on both before I textured them.

Then I realized something.

Many of those fine details we 3D modelers sculpt in must also be shown on the texture.  If I was creating textures from scratch for these characters, it would make sense to sculpt everything, then to use the details on the models as a basis for the textures.

It's different though when you're modeling after real people, and those details on their bodies--wrinkles, moles, and so on--are right there in the reference photos.  I figured it would make sense to get the models up to a moderately detailed level, where everything is shaped right and the major body landmarks are in place, and then texture.  Texture, before the real detail work is in there.  This way, I could then use the textures painted on the characters to refine the models, to know where all those details need to be.

With Bodacious Creed, there's another reason.  Both the body texture, coming directly from the photographs of the guy I chose as a reference, and the body, will initially look as he would have alive.  It makes sense to me to zombify the model and the textures in unison, which this will allow me to do.

So, even though Creed is at a slightly less detailed stage than Boyd, I've started texturing him.  I'm going to refine Anna a bit more, then start work on her too.

Oh, I asked my two modeling instructors about this, and they both said that this is a good methodology.

I'll be sharing pictures and probably a video soon!

Animation!

Though I'm a 3D modeler, and the skills I'll be primarily demonstrating with my thesis, and demo reel, are modeling, texturing, and lighting, we are doing a bit of animation for my Head Sculpture & Facial Expressions class.  That's why we've been working on all those blend shapes, and all that rigging!  (Blend shapes are part of the modeler's job, if anyone's wondering.  Rigging is generally not.)

So yeah, that cool head I've been posting?  It's going to be MOVING soon!  I'm using a clip from American Beauty, so Creed will be talking in Kevin Spacey's voice.

Now that I have all that, plus the hair for the head model done, I'm starting the animation!  I'm really excited about this.  It will be a fun project, an interesting departure from my focus.

Anyway, I'll share more on this as I get it done.

Here's the text book we're working with in class.

US Marshall Robert Creed

I worked hard on Creed's hair this weekend. It was a lot of work. I ran into one big problem with it: after I had the hair done and liked it, I realized that the head was no longer rigged! NOT a fun situation. So, I had to decide, do I re-rig the head, or do I redo the hair?

The blog gets fairly technical right here, so read on if you like, or just scroll down to the images. I really wanted to show how the hair came out, since I'm pretty happy with it.

Fortunately, I frequently save, and I save incremental versions of my files. So I had a rigged head with the hairdo done, but without the beard, etc. It was actually pretty easy, though a little time consuming, to redo just the mustache, beard, eyebrows, and whiskers.

Of course, after that was all done, I found what might be a way to just transfer a finished hair style from one model to another. Yes, you may say it. "Facepalm." Well, something to use at another time!

I had problems crop up with the Creed and Anna Lynn Boyd full body models as well. I needed to do a bit of retopologizing on both models, and popped them over to Maya. I fixed the topology, then brought them back to zBrush. While the high rez details were reapplied just fine, the 3D layers were deleted. Fortunately, with Creed, it wasn't hard to redo them. With Anna, there was only one I needed to redo. The others were at a high detail level I don't really need yet, so I let them be.

With Anna, I kept getting mixed up on which was the current file, so I had to redo the clothes several times. I ended up with one file with the improved clothes, and one file with the body at a more finished level. So, I deleted the body from the clothes file, deleted the clothes from the body file, and put all the correct sub-tools back together.

The end result was that I got some good work done in some areas, and not enough work done in others.

I have a bunch I want to get done this week, even with Thanksgiving coming up. I'll write more about that as I get it done.

Ghosting is Sweet

This vlog is another tutorial!  zBrush has so many amazing features, and sometimes I like to share what I'm learning in the form of a helpful tutorial.

This one shows the power of the Transparency, Ghosting, Solo, and Xpose settings, and how helpful they are when working with sub-tools.  Even if you don't use zBrush, check this video out.  These settings look so cool.