Friday, 23 August 2013

Week 12 - Nanosuit Design (Final Report)


Week 12 - Nanosuit Design (Final Report)

Considering the nature of my choice of research task, the final task had been modified from las weeks goal, which was to create a smaller version of the creature. It had instead been changed to the creation of an armored sci-fi character, in which the armor would be influenced by the musculature anatomy of the human body.

The reasoning behind the change is that the smaller creature would not involve as much anatomy practice as a human character, and by creating a human character I would be combining Final Project with Independant Study, which meant that I could have more time to polish one project rather than work on multiple projects of lesser quality.

Throughout the past twelve weeks I have been continually building up my skill in anatomy and character design to this final point in which I have designed a full high quality character. 
The pipeline for the character is as follows

  • Sculpted in ZBrush,
  • Retopologizing in 3ds max
  • UV Mapped in ZBrush and Photoshop
  • Textured in ZBrush, exported to dDo, touched up with Photoshop,
  • Normal Maps exported with ZBrush
  • Rendered in Maya 2014


The final results can be seen below:




Click on Images for Larger Size










As promised, I have also completed the rendering of last week's creature design.

---Click and Drag the above turntable---








Throughout the Independent Study Project, I have learned numerous valuable skills that have helped me in the field of character design. Due to the nature of these skills, I will be listing them in a per-project format as each project was tailored learning specific knowledge and therefore specific skills were learned during each project.


Sculpting the Human Anatomy (Male & Female Ecorche Models)

The main area of skill that was increased during this project was the ability to understand the human form. By using Scott Spencer's Digital Sculpting the Human Anatomy book as reference, I was able to go through the form and purpose of each individual muscle group and learn it from the ground up.

By learning the shape of each muscle, it has also helped me improve in the rigging and animating areas of 3d art. Topology should heavily rely on the musculature anatomy of the character, so bettering my knowledge in anatomy has helped me improve the skill of retopology for animation purposes. This has especially helped me around the shoulder area, as the character I created last trimester had topology issues around this area.

Furthermore, I learned correct human proportions, Fat storage locations, genetic predispositions and the differences between male and female anatomy.





Sculpting Lion Anatomy

This project was a much smaller task, so I focused on  primarily on speed sculpting, and learning the basics of quadrupedal creature anatomy. Rather than sculpting both Lion and Horse, I decided to stick with just the lion due to the great similarities between each anatomy.



Creature Design


The creature design was a great way to combine all the anatomy knowledge and sculpting skill that I gained during the previous projects. I learned some great creature design methods from Rodrigo Vega (http://iririv.deviantart.com/art/Tutorial-on-creature-design-110577241) and exercised them by combining certain animals to create a new one. In this case it was that of a shark, hermit crab, and a fish.



Character Design




The final character was a result of countless hours of sculpting, texturing and retopologizing. During the process of the character design, I have learned many things about texturing. I learned about specific brushes in ZBrush that were tailored to painting between mechanical parts. I learned how to properly automate texturing in dDo. I learned how to apply materials in Maya, and specific methods of hard surface sculpting in ZBrush.

 The project took exactly 50 hours of work, and I still plan on improving it for final project. 
I am very happy with the amount of sculpting and texturing skill I have developed. You can see the amount of progress when I compare the last character I developed (for ANI203)


The above character was mostly designed in 3d Studio Max. I sculpted the entirety of my final character in ZBrush this time, and I have found it is a huge time saver. Despite spending about the same amount of time on both my previous characters, the final character is far more improved.

In conclusion, I believe that this trimester's independent study unit was extremely valuable to my career; more so than most units I have completed at Qantm. I am very happy with the amount of anatomy knowledge I have learned, and I look forward to applying it to future characters I design in the industry.

Tuesday, 13 August 2013

Week 11 - Creature Design

Week 11 - Creature Design

I was originally going to be sculpting the anatomy of a horse this week, but I have instead decided to sculpt a creature as I believe I have already learned enough about quadrupedal anatomy from the lion sculpt I did last week. Furthermore, the anatomy of a horse is quite similar to a lion so I would not be learning nearly as much as I would if I sculpted a creature.

The creature i have sculpted this week is a six legged crab-like alien.

I have decided to use Rodrigo Vega's method of combining certain animal attributes to form a creature that might actually exist in a certain environment (http://iririv.deviantart.com/art/Tutorial-on-creature-design-110577241)

In this case, I have used the idea of combining a fish-type animal with a crab-type animal.
During the planning phase of the creature design, I chose to gather two folders of references; one full of real -life animal references and one full of concept art. I then created a simple base concept to work off, and progressed the design during the sculpting process.
The results can be seen below:
Concept Art

Animal References

Concept
(note, the Red circle is where the third leg will be placed. It has been removed for visual purposes)


ZBrush Sculpt



As this week's independent study project merged with Final Project, I have left the final half of the creature's retopology up to my project partner, Ashley Seric.

I will be posting the final, low poly render in next weeks submission.

The general idea for final project is that there will be a few large creatures (the one I just completed) among a swarm of smaller creatures, so my goal for next week is to design at least one small creature.

Monday, 5 August 2013

Week 10 - Lion Anatomy Part 2

Week 10
Lion Anatomy - Part 2

This weeks task was to complete the other half of the lion's anatomy. The results can be seen below:

As there was no research task for this week (other than gathering references), I have decided to specifically focus on gathering and learning about strange insects and a few other creatures for creature design purposes.

I believe this is important as insects are a great way to get ideas for fictional creatures. Things we don't see with the human eye can appear very alien, so they are great references for fictional aliens.


Megalara Garuda
Known as the 'King of Wasps'

I really like the look of this insect as its eyes have a smooth glass-like film over them, making it look a lot like a jet pilot's helmet.

Silkmoth
I love the design of this moth as the fur on it and the colour of it resembles that of a bird.

Hyalophora Cecropia
This is North America's largest native moth.
It looks pretty neat, but what's even more interesting is it's caterpillar form which can be seen below:
And here is it's Pupa.
I think the pupa is a great reference image for when designing alien insect larvae.

Japanese Spider Crab
The japanese spider crab can reach up to 3.5 meters from claw to claw. This animal would make some great references for sci-fi mech walkers.

Bee Fly (Anastoechus Nitidulus)
These little guys are completely harmless. They feed on flower nectar.

Gasteracantha Cancriformis
Commonly referred to as the 'Spiny Orb Weaver', Females are 5–9 millimetres long and Males are approx 3 millimetres long. Due to the nature of it's spiney back, there are a few physical variations of this animal, which can be seen below:

Archaeognatha
This looks like a great reference for insect/alien faces. I can see a resemblance to the 'prawns' from District 9 (2009).

Chondrocladia lyra
This animal is not an insect, but it is definitely worth looking at. It is a meat eating sponge. It lives 3.5 kilometers below the sea. Once the animals barbed hooks catch on to any animal stupid enough to come near it, it envelops its prey and slowly digests it.