Texture test

Today I consulted Jamie on how to texture my characters. He took me through how to UV texture, how to take the snapshots into photoshop and all that. However, I told Jamie that I was thinking of going for a stylistic look of a canvas come to life. We experimented with UV mapping a canvas texture onto the model but it didn't work out that good. Instead Jamie set the canvas texture as a bump map, to which we can apply colour on top of. As well as that Jamie created a smudge effect in photoshop, which we then applied as well. This gave it another dynamic. I also expressed how I wanted the whole thing to be quite bright like Street Fighter 4. Jamie told me that he thinks they use a combination of textures and ambient brightness with a colour on top. We applied this use of ambient glowing onto the model. I then expressed my interest in the toon outliner, which we both played around with. Overall, I am really happy with this look. The toon outliner needs a little more playing with but I can imagine how these models could look in the end...that's if I don't balls it up! Thank you for you help Jamie, it's much appreciated!

Mr X Hand and stuff

Hey guys, Putting the last updates on the rough model of Mr X. I spent a while trying to get his last two fingers correct, this was difficult because they are not separate but joined together by skin. I achieved this by creating a two fingers, then creating a sixth one, deleting the side and merging them together. Using the extrude tool I defined the edges to his waistcoat, his fly and his pocket. I think I'm done in terms of the rough version of this model. I still needs more tweaking.

Big Mr X Update!

I've decided to proceed with the Mr X model, rather than the Snubbs one. I became worried about how Snubbs would move and how I would texture him, so I decided to leave him. The last two days have been pretty productive with the modelling. I've almost completed the rough model of Mr X. Using the same modelling techniques as I used with Cutler, I made Mr X's arms and chest. What you will notice is that he is allot bulkier than Cutler, this is because he is supposed to be more imposing than skinny old Cutler. I want him to be more muscular than Cutler so I spent some time defining his chest and neck muscles. I then spent A while creating his moustache and hair. It was pretty tricky but I think it turned out OK. My own personal achievement was his foot, I just kept extruding things and adding vertexes, but I think it turned out well. Still needs more work though.

An Attempt at Mr X

After the disappointment of modelling Snubbs, I decided to give MrX a try. I basically used the template of Cutler and fiddled around with the vertexes. I made his cheekbones higher and more defined, his forehead and jaw more pronounced, I made his nose bigger and flatter, as well as sloping his head more. I made his eye smaller and changed it's shape. I think I will have to do this with Cutler too, as his eye looks too big. I also noticed that in Street Fighter 4, their characters eyes aren't as big as I have them in my models. Anyway, I'm quite pleased with this model, there is still more work needed. Guys I need to know which one you want to see made ...Snubbs or MrX.

An attempt at Snubbs.

Here is a rough model of Snubbs. I decided to give Snubbs a go as I thought he would be different from Cutler. Unfortunately the result is not that great. The face is yet to be smoothed, but I think the whole thing looks rather amateur, like some really early cgi from the 80's. anyway let me know what you think.

Toon Shader...EPIC FAIL

I completely forgot i did this, last week I had one more attempt at the toon shader. In our last project we attempted to use the toon shader, but it all went wrong. So I thought, just for fun, to do it again. S0 here we have the results, and it does not look good. I think I will try my hand at texturing, but trying to keep it stylised.

Cutler Model Rough

Here's my rough full model for cutler. It's rough, defiantly not final. Needs more tweaking, way more tweaking. I fiddled with his hair, scaled up his hand and joined it to the body. Definatly needs more work. But I need to decide what to do for the next model...any suggestions.

DragonBall Z Tenkaichi Budokai and Burst Limit

It's DragonBall Z...fine the franchise has had some of the worst games in history, but that's not why I'm showing you it. Jamie said how my character looked too flat and and would not look right in 3d. Well, Akira Toriyama has the flattest drawing style I can think of, but the good people at Atari managed to get Toriyama's drawings to look 3d, without making the characters look weird. This was first achieved on the PS2 with the Tenkaichi series. It was then vamped up in HD for the current generation of game system's in Burst Limit. The point of this post, is to say to myself that there is a way for me to get the model to look like my 2d drawing. (Plus I am also aware that there are a few Naruto games that are using a similar style of graphics).

Crackdown

Crackdown is an XBox 360 game released in 2007. If you want a rough idea of what this game is like, it's basically GTA 4..............ON STEROIDS! This is a very interesting exclusive for the 360, who's games mostly comprise of gritty shooters. This game is stylistic, vibrant and really stands out. Bright textures and out liners are used in this game to give it the look it has. I don't have this game, but since winning the college's XBox 360 competition (thank you Matt and Sam from the 3rd year) I've been meaning to pick it up!

Metal Gear Acid 2

Anyone who knows me, knows I love the Metal Gear series of games (It was only a short amount of time before Snake would crop up in this project somewhere). SO Imagine my excitement when I heard of a Metal Gear game for the PSP. When I got the game, I was expecting to replay the awesome stealth action of the previous games, but instead got a turn based card game. Lame. Anyway, I did not buy the sequel, however, I do commend it for its vibrant graphics and art style. It makes it stand out against the other metal gear games. Its use of bright colour and the out liner make it very visually interesting. These graphics are what I imagine I can achieve...with some technical know how.

Prince of Persia

Our group tried to play around with the out liner in our last project, but unfortunately we failed. With this in mind I wanted to give it another shot! In the last project I mentioned Prince of Persia. I love the look of this game. Released at the end of last year, Prince of Persia really stood out visually against all the bald space marines coloured grey that had flooded the industry during the year. If my final product looked anything like this game, I would consider it an achievement.

Plan of action.

This is my plan of action:

End of this week: Have rough Cutler Model Finished

End of Next week: Have rough Model of other character

End of Week After: Have both model's finished and textured

End of week after that: Have everything Done!

Cutler Update!

Today has been quite productive. Firstly, Simon showed me how to attach the arm to the body by deleting faces and merging vertices's. This process was done to the arm and the leg. Afterwards I attempted to make the top of cutler's shoe. I did this by extruding the faces and rotating them. The model is coming along now, but still more work is needed!

Cutler Body...Again!

Looking at Josh's model, he showed me how he was going to make his vest. After coming back from a whole day's lecturing, I decided to give the vest a go. However, I found that I had made my previous body sooooo badly that it was impossible to do this. So I had to make the body again, and like Jared said would happen, It was allot better. I created the vest by using the split polygon tool. I'm pretty pleased...still needs more work though!

Cutler Foot and Hat

Today was productive. I started it out tweaking Cutler's foot. On converse shoes there is a white plastic part over the fabric at the heel and at the toe. I shaped this by using the split polygon tool and pulling out the vertices. I also created a strip for his Velcro. I was going to create some lases, but I imagine that that would be allot of animation information in a game, so I switched to Velcro. I then moved onto cutler's hat. I created a cube then played with the verticesto create the shape. On my model sheet I drew the hat like a cone, so I could see it straightened out, but I thought this looked boring so I decided to give it its characteristic bends. After creating the brim of the hat with another cube, I moved onto the hair. I created cylinders which I shaped to roughly look like dreadlocks. Currently they just look like poles as I'm going to bend them when I put the head on the model. Currently, the hat is the thing, I am most happy with. But as I always say, more work is needed.

P.S I would like to thank Dan S for his help, I was going to comment on your page but, my crappy computer won't let me. Instead I'm' thanking you for your help on this post. I'll be following your stages of modelling to see if I'm doing it correctly.