New Website!

Heya, I have a new website up:

http://www.scottbennettgameart.com/

There it is. Sorry for any inconvenience.

-Scott

Better Turntable

Last one was a bit of a botch job so tried making a better one. 

Where to go from here.

Deadline has passed and everything is handed in. So any additions here on in will not be marked however in a months time there is a degree show; it would therefore be prudent of me to spruce up my characters a little for that.

Even though my characters could do with a lot more added to them, in terms of texturing and geometry, I feel that calling them done would be the better platform to which I can jump forward instead of dwelling behind.

What I mean by this is I'll be focusing on exterior flare such as better pedestals, idle animations and hopefully a little environment that will help to present my characters in a more interesting light as oppose to them rotating on a pedestal; which is boring. Fine. Just boring.

I've had my post-hand-in break and am now ready to get some more work done. As much as I would like to see the back of this project an extra few weeks will be well worth it. So, what do add exactly?

Odin
Weapon! Gungnir, the mighty spear of Odin that never misses!
Idle Animation (standing)
Extended scope:
Idle Animation#2
Idle Animation#3

To expand on the idle animations: I want them all to be standing there in a pose, the animation for this will be generic breathing and the slight movement this brings. Typical idle animation really. The other two which I'll add when everything else is done are just to break up his idle animation cycle; so every now and then he'll look around, or feel the weight of his weapon.

Thor
Idle Animation #1
Extended scope:
Idle Animation #2
Idle Animation #3

Fenrir
Idle Animation #1
Extended scope:
Idle Animation #2

Environment
This is what I had originally planned (poorly) to do alongside the three characters. After being really disappointed having to cut it from the project I'm really looking forward to doing some environment art again.

It's only going to be a little set-piece where the player can just move around to get a look at the characters. At the degree show I'll have two screen sat next to each other so one will have this playable piece on and the other will have concepts, including the turntables.

The set itself will be a sort of middle-ages hut mead/hall. Stonewalls, thick wooden beams, cobblestone floor complete with a firepit, tables, food and Odin's very own throne. So lots of wood, stone and furs. It's only going to be a small hall, so nothing crazy. I'll have some concepts up within a week hopefully depending how long it takes to work on some of these animations. Something along the lines of this:

Joravaskr Skyrim

Fenrir

Fenrir

Wildcard! Haven't created an animal before, barely even drawn em. I figured he was either going to take longer than the others, or a lot less due having never done it before I had no idea how difficult it'd be; on top of that I needed to learn canine anatomy. 

The real nail in the coffin here was that I only had one week left to make him in and at one point I was 100% sold on forgetting about this guy and just brushing up the other two. Fortunately I decided to give myself a chance on this and after completing the sculpt on the first day I was confident I could get it done; which I did! Yeah!

Was tough and required me to work about 80+ hours. Worth.

Process

Due to my lack of confidence with animals and a general lack of know-how I thought it best to start completely in Zbrush, no base mesh. Reason for this is so I could pull out forms easier, which Zbrush is a lot better for than Max. So:

-Zbrush for sculpting

-3DSMax to finish up gemoetry (fur on back, claws and sharpteeth)

-3DSMax for retop

-3DCoat for Unwrap

-3Dcoat for Texturing Diffuse

-Photoshop for tweaking bakes from Xnormal and creating specular.

-Rigged in 3DSMax

-Rendered in Marmoset

3DCoat

http://3d-coat.com/

After finishing up Odin's textures on a friends 3DCoat I really wanted to adopt it into my workflow. Apparently it can do a hell of a lot more than just painting directly onto the model (Max's ViewportCanvas pales in comparison) like sculpting, modelling, re-topping and some such. I have no doubt that on those particular things it's probably not as good as such established programs as Max and Zbrush however I found out about unwrapping while looking up how to paint and I have to say it's very good. On top of that because you're painting directly onto the model, seams aren't a big problem. Of course you shouldn't have tons of seams and you still need a concise unwrap yet with that said it really takes the pain of of trying to line textures up properly in Photoshop.

3DCoat is by no means a replacement, but something to be supplemented into your workflow. I couldn't recommend it more.

Hindsight

As I mentioned earlier, the fur took a lot longer than I anticipated. Obviously, painting fur clump by clump is pretty time-consuming and not to mention insanity-inducing. 

Other than that my only regret with this character is that I didn't leave myself enough time to really polish it and try out some other avenues. I was really flying by the seat of my pants on this one; calling steps done and moving on without pause. I just didn't have the time left-oover to try iterating.

How I feel
Love it. So happy. I'm not the greatest visual design artist so when I finally got the hang of fur AND good hue variation it really meant a lot. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't anxious about not getting this done.

Where to go now?
Post coming soon

Odin

Odin

This character was for me. I purposely left a slot open for a burly Viking dude and out the other end of that came Odin! 

This guy was meant to designed within a day but ended up taking a few as my initial plan of doing a typical muscular armour-clad barbarian evaporated as I took it a little more seriously. One of the first major design mile stones was adding a belly. Basically he's this old war hero who earned his crown through legendary feats and deeds, but after sitting the throne all he did all day was sit and listen to the common-folk whine about a lack of crops or missing geese all the while continuing to eat as much as he did when he was a warrior which resulting in him cultivating a little too much mass around the belly. Still needed to look like he could rip a man's head off though. 

So the overall theme of him was 'big'. The belt is thick and heavy looking, the sword is wide and ridiculously oversized, the antlers are a massive 'Hey, look at me!' and the cape lends itself to blocking out his frame. I even aimed to get this across with his boots by making them with right-angles (considered to add strength in composition).

Process

Same as Thor's:

-Base mesh in Max

-Sculpt in Zbrush

-Retop in Max

-Unwrap in Max

-Texure in Photoshop testing textures in UDK

-Final texture tweaks done in 3DCoat (will talk more about it in Fenrir's post)

-Rig in Max

-Render in Marmoset

Hindsight

This guy got off to a great start. I had the head sculpt done in four hours, and the rest with in a couple days, re-topping and unwrapping was all on schedule (under a week) but then I presented my work where I received some very good criticisms. This was only meant to be a week more of work to cut in however it ended up being two. There were exterior reasons which affected this as well but mostly it was the fur taking a lot longer than I had anticipated (a recurring theme for me). Firstly I didn't know how to go about it; do I use alphas? Do I sculpt it or just model it in? Alphas weren't working very well initially so I ended up trying sculpting and just making yet all looked terrible! Despair was settling in a little when I decided to give alphas another go, which thankfully turned out quite nicely. Although my technique has improved since then so they look a little hammy looking back.

Critiques are good.

Other than that Odin was a pretty awesome experience that served to bolster my confidence quite a bit. Which I really needed haha. Very proud of this.

Where to go from here

Post coming soon

Thor

Thor
When I started this project I knew I wanted a variety of content which would push me to move outside of my comfort zone; this is when the idea of Thor being a boy came in. It may not seem like anything special to design and create an adolescent, yet when all you ever draw are machismo males I thought it best to respect that it was not as easy as it seemed (as things often are, and conversely, aren't).

After a few days studying up on proportions a from such sources as Loomis or google (never felt more tension than when I googled child anatomy) I felt I had a good amount of confidence with regards to making a boy actually look like a boy, as it's not as simple as just scaling down an adult. For example the head looks larger in proportion to the rest of the body the younger a person is.

Moving forward with that knowledge and messing around with a few designs here and there I finally settled and began modelling. A brief run-down of the process as follows:
-3DSMax for base mesh
-Zbrush for sculpting detail and pulling out forms
-Back to 3DSMax to retop using the freeform modelling tools
-Unwrap in Max
-Texture using Photoshop checking textures in UDK
-Rig and animate in 3DSMax
-Final renders done in Marmoset

This is the general process I used for all other projects.

Some Hindsight
I dawdled far too long on this character; taking a week just to decide on the one liked as I was going back and forth between iterations. After doing this project it was really driven home that I need to decide and just move on, as in the industry you don't get five weeks to make a character.

The reason this took me so long to decide is the obvious one that I imagine most people share; that you're not happy with it. So this got me thinking whether or not artists in the industry see there stuff go out the door that they're really not happy with. It's a common trait amongst artists, or people in general really, to see the worst parts in your creations, yet other people don't see it in the same way, or simply don't notice. So yeah I was just pondering about that, if people would really care about the right type of nose, or the paler skin or if they'd just take that as the design choice or just not care either way. I'm not talking about anatomically incorrect, obviously if that's wrong its wrong, I'm talking about variations. Big nose, small nose etc.

It's a bit cheesey to say it, and I don't think I am but perhaps its perfectionism. I consider it more along the lines of self-doubt, not believing its good enough, rather than it not being perfect.

But how is it really?
I honestly really liked this guy in the end. In the final week I hastily gave him a facial expression and a pose and boom, miles better than before. It's amazing how little changes like that can just make something so much more. It reminds me of a level I made that looked isolated, that how after placing in a flat plane of a mountain brought it all together.
Oh and I really like the folds on the arms which you can't really see with this pose. I know, why pose him like that then? Ah dunno, hammers n stuff.

Where to go from here?
Post coming soon

Fin.

Wudja look at that...

Fenrir Texturing Update

This is so time-consuming. I've been doing this for about 30 hours now and I still have what seems like another 5 or so left. Fortunately I feel like I'm on the downward part of the hill now closing in on the finish line but damn, this fur. Honestly thought it would take me too long. 

All that said; really happy with the outcome so far. The hind legs are done so that's what the front should look like, there's not a lot of detail or fur on the lower portion which is to not create too much contrast and then drag the eye away. Did toy with the idea of making them a flat colour with an emissive on as to focus purely on the silhouette making the feet look like some sort of void which would add to Fenrir's somewhat unnatural, seemingly otherworldness. Though I think the blue fur will have to suffice.

Other than that I have the teeth, hairbands and bracer to do and then the mammoth task of making the clumps of fur on his shoulders look decent. I'm reaaaaally not looking forward to that. 

Final 30 odd hours! Gotta get this all done, then rig him and Odin and finally make some pedestals. Somewhere in all that I need to find time to to renders, turntables and turn it all into a presentation.

 I. AM. GOING. TO. DIE!

How many energy drinks was it before it killed you? 

Fur

Happy accidents are great. The head on the left shows how I was originally going to paint the fur which, honestly, I didn't think looked all that bad - in fact I was quite pleased. Then I started blocking in some colours for the rest of it with a typical round brush when, with a little refinement, looked great! So on the left is how I'm going to do the fur. Unbelievably happy with this as avoiding too much noise was one of my main priorities and this has helped that fantastically. 

Should also mention the colour palette. It changed a little while working but generally it's a hue shift from purple through to a blue/blue-teal for the fur, going darker on the extremities inward to relatively lighter hues. Having green for the iris and will later add some orange-red for some cloth strips, dulling it down for the teeth and his bracer. The ears are a mixture of these. 

Also, check out that new and improved logo. Awww yiss.

Fenrir Unwrapped

First of all I'd just like to express my love for 3D Coat. I've only had a little experience with the program which I thought at first was just a tool for painting onto your model.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

You can also unwrap in it! Pretty damn well too.

Interestingly as well I realized you don't get seams as you paint onto the model, which you'd expect, so this means, I guess, that you could just flatten map your model and paint straight onto it. Of course that would be silly and the pixel density would be all over the place but the point stands that seams are a problem of the past.

Doesnt mean unwrapping took any less time for this as I had to keep juggling it between 3DCoat and Max to make use of symmetry as 3DCoats unwrap also automatically packs them as well, which is just lovely really. Also you can change the size of certain islands, say if you want the face to have more space, then click pack and it packs them according to your knew preferences! I know Max has its own packing tools but I never seemed to get them to work well for me. 3DCoat really takes the pain out of unwrapping. So much so it should be illegal.

This program was well worth the £60 and all I wanted it for was the painting. Yay for hidden gems!

http://3d-coat.com/

Extra Fur

Added some fur geometry which I have no idea how it'll turn out, too late to test unfortunately but I'm positive of the outcome; as so far its been really good.

Still need to add this and that but not too much work.

Fenrir Retop

Caw blimey retopping took a lot longer than I thought it would. I appreciate humans are naturally bad at guessing times but c'mon, Scott. Anyway he is currently sat at just over 7k tris with some geometry to add which I imagine will end up around 8k. 

Fenrir

The wolf is here at last! After some super deep soul searching, considering whether to just polish Thor and Odin or go ahead and make Fenrir I decided it wouldn't hurt to gamble the first day; if I can get the sculpt done in one day, then I'll continue, if not then I'll cut my losses and work on presenting the other two. 

Been a tough day, fighting a lot of doubt but I'm glad I stuck with it because I'm very happy with the sculpt.

Here's a turnaround of my complete sculpt. The fur on the back was just a test and I'll most likely just model the fur clumps in max which will be easier. Also going to add some fur sticky-outy bits to the elbows and knee as well as work on those bits on the tail. Really Z-brush was used to detail the head and, predominantly, to work out the overall form and proportions; having never created an animal while also lacking comfortable knowledge of canine anatomy I figured sculpting would be the best way to pull out forms and shift things around until they were right.

Odin is Odone.

Really happy with how this turned out as this was what I was aiming for with the overall style. Real simplified look (no crazy armour or intricate details) with a strong, bold colours.

Ended up filling in the belt as I figured since I had the texture space it'd be a shame to leave it blank and pretty glad I did. Got the deathknot in there again (also on bracers) and had a go at making a scabbard which started off looking like a UV map error. Adding the specular really helped as well. I've used photo-textures for the specular which I'm not sure is some cardinal sin against hand-painting but I really liked the outcome of it. 

Yeah so pretty stoked about this just need to decide to spend this final week either polishing up the two models I have or trying to bum-rush Fenrirs model out. Either choice is bad and I'm not sure which is the lesser of two evils. After today I'm half-inclined to go with polishing the two I have as I'd at least like what little I have to look as good as I could make it. 

Butts... I mean boots.

Been dabbling with gradients a little. I've endeavoured to put them onto all the objects to help lead the eye towards the face. This image below shows the difference on the tunic; left has no gradient while the right one does. On top of hue variation, gradients just add that little extra that helps bring it together.

And boots. I'll add detail to the foot bit later but I've done the actual shoe part now which turned out nicely as I had my doubts looking at how boxy it was untextured. Still boxy, but you know, looks nice n stuff.

Finally an update.

 Not updated this in a while and Odin should have been done by now however the labs have been closed for a couple weeks now which was incredibly inconvenient as I struggle to work at home, so progress has been very slow.
Nevertheless it should all be steaming along as normal now and I'll endeavour to post regular updates.

Last time I posted I believe it was about the fur. Well that's all done now and I've moved on to overall texturing such as adding hue variation to break up blank areas, folds and skin tones (washed out by the light, my bad)
Just finished the back of the boots which I was all happy with until I realised the cape covered them up. Silly of me but ah well. Texturing should be done tomorrow with only the hair, sword, crown and rest of boots to do as well as any final details like the possible addition of some pattern on the belt, however I think there is enough noise around there anyway; I quite like the blank metal sheet.
Once all that's done and dusted I'll rig and pose. Yay.

Here's a closeup of the brooch/clasp design. Odin is known for having two ravens called Huginn and Muninn that go out every day to gather information for him. Again, this guy isn't a god in my story so doesn't have speaking ravens but its a nice reference I think. 

Update on Fur and why I've not posted recently.

Heya,

So I've been having a real problem getting fur to look nice which at first I figured would be pretty straight forward (and it is really) with the use of an alpha however the aliasing was too noticable. After many attempts and frustrations I realised the alpha was going to look dodgy no matter what. I don't have any progress shots, which is a mistake on my part I thought it pointless updating with that though in hindsight it would've been smart to show.

Originally the alphas were very noticable and I was quite sure how to fix this but after seeing some of the new stuff done by Blizzard for Warcraft I think I got the idea! There is hope.

Looks a little chicken-feathery around the belt though I recon thats the scale of the clumps and possibly the colour as well. At least I know how to do chicken feathers I guess. More to add under the belt as well as on the bracers. 

Here's what I was talking about on the new stuff to Warcraft.

Link: http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2014/april/gromOrc.jpg

Added stuff

Added the extra gubbins and managed to scrounge a ton of tris from other places which is quite embarrassing really that the geometry was that loaded. Still have 500 odd leftover as well which I'll keep on hand just in case.

Here's a screengrab of the sword/scabbard. As I said in a previous post this item is purely cosmetic and doesn't have a blade modelled, just a set-piece.














Oh, and the fur will be alpha'd.

Edit: forgot to mention I redid the belt taking out the chain links. Although it looked nice in my head it turned out looking rather ugly in reality. I could probably have made the chain motif look a lot nicer however the links themselves took a lot of tris which I thought could be better used elsewhere; like making all this extra stuff.

Paintover.

After a major critique I've got a better idea on where to take Odin as he was looking a little bland before.

Here's a list of things I'm changing:

-The antlers have been rotated outward to show more of an angle.

-Cape on shoulder has been beefed up to bulk out his sillhouette.

-Added fur trims to bracers, boots and belt to create a repeating element. The original design had this but I -decided to take it out for some silly reason. Also the trim on the boots helps break up the odd transition from boots to trousers that I had previously. 

-Added quick squiggle designs to boot toe-caps and belt just to see how the clumps of detail would contrast.

-Created hue variation on torso, trousers and skin (will be for all ultimately)

-Whacked a gold trim on tunic to make him look tidier and hopefully somewhat more regal.

-Diagonal straps (with sword) to break up constant verticals, horizontals and general symmetry.

The sword is really there to help balance out the design so I'll likely model it inside it's sheathe (so it wont be coming out) as to be a piece of gear rather than a dynamic object or whatever you'd call it. If I were to give Odin a weapon to hold it'd only be right to make Gungnir.