Week 30 - Toyota Hilux Zombie Version Model, Texturing & Life Drawing

Final Toyota Hilux Pickup Model -Zombie Version

So far the model was turning out the way I wanted (It sticks to the concept). Certain areas like the back needed more concepting, as I wasn't yet sure what could be palced there along with the mounted gun. For now, I was thinking about placing ammo crates there, but if possible there could be some junk laying around too, such as clothes or tools. Any food boxes or equipment that didn't fit inside could have been placed in the back too.

I started everything by gathering reference to model the initial Toyota Hilux Pickup. Then I began additional research on vehicle modifications, weapons, tools, textures and any other useful resources. I organised everything into my mood board and briefly annotated them to gain a better understanding of this project. It helped me realise the problems of making a modified vehicle and how I could solve the numerous problems involved in designing one that is fairly convincing and believable. Next I modelled the Toyota Pickup in 3DS Max, then unwrapped and textured it. Later I made a few renders and started painting my ideas on top of the silhouettes of my model.

When I had enough ideas, I've spent some time deciding on the best few and merged the best aspects of each into one final idea. I moved onto drawing prep sketches and planning of how I was going to model some of the parts. After I got through the modelling process again, it was time for unwrapping in 3DS Max and extracting details from photographs to make my own textures for my modified model. These were made in Photoshop CC just like the previous ones.  

I added rust and mud marks to the base model's texture. This was partly to adapt it to the new modifications and changes I was making.

It was my first time modelling a vehicle, so it was normal for me to not know how some parts of it looked like or how to model them. I overcome this by carefully analysing my reference before making any moves in modelling. Modelling took me a really long time, but mainly due to this project's high triangle budget. Unwrapping was tricky, as the high triangle budget allowed me to make a lot of details which in turn were not easy to unwrap correctly. Texturing turned out to be the easiest aspect of this project to me. I enjoyed it the most and also had a lot of practice during it, as I tried to change certain areas of my texture a few times.

One area I'd like to improve in is modelling, as although I can get quite far in that myself, I still lack the experience to be quick. I will need to keep practicing until I improve my speed of work. Unwrapping gets tougher and tougher as my models become more complex. I will also need to focus on this area more, as my textures are just as important as the models I make. Both of these heavily rely on each other to produce a successful outcome. The way I pack my UVW's is not so great to me, I am still practicing new ways in which I could arrange everything to prevent losing too much space for my texture. Lastly, my Photoshop skills are still lacking, I feel managed well with making of my texture, but it took me quite a long time. I could improve in this area through practicing, but also with the help of online tutorials.

I was really satisfied with my outcome, the renders really turned out incredibly good and my detailed model clearly shown how far I have gone in my first year of Game Art Design. I hope more projects like this are coming too.

Life Drawing

During this week's session I've done just one tonal drawing, but I got to spend roughly 45 minutes on it. It was a still life composition arranged by my life drawing teacher. It's square shaped, but drawn on an A3 size, mid-tone paper. I mixed 2 mediums on this piece, charcoal and white chalk.

From looking at it, I think it some areas still needed more work. I missed a section of the curtain in the top-right corner, the left side of the curtain is not of the correct tone what flattens the drawing, the curtain should be pushed back more. The floor should have been slightly darker on the left too.

Aside from all this, the rest appears to look fine to me. The fabric layed on the pillow has a clear and visible shape, as I can see how its mass spreads across the surface beneath it. The hanging fabrics also looks fairly convincing, their shadow seems to be dark enough and is pushing them away from the background.

Week 29 - Toyota Hilux Zombie Version, Life Drawing & Zombie Survival Presentation

Moodboard

It's seperated into sections. Firstly, the top-right shows other pickup trucks, my truck idea could consist of improvised repairs, such as having parts from other pickup trucks, in case there are no vehicles of same make around in the apocalypse. Top-right is mainly containers that may be placed or attached to my behicle in some of the ideas. The bottom left consists of modified vehicles of all kinds, from those I'd like to sample some ideas and modifications. Next to that are weapons that I  found to be the most effective or useful in case of a Zombie Apocalypse, although some were simply picked for their appearance/design (rubber-band gun). I focused the centre of my mood board on vehicle damage like collision marks/dents and surface details like scratches. Lastly, the top area has a few illustrations and paintings. I found these to have nice colour schemes and details which could inspire some of my ideas, as I was thinking about making my vehicle look slightly futuristic. There isn't a set time or year in which an Apocalypse could start. An old pickup truck, refurbished with parts of modern vehicles could be the only way to survive.

Ideas/Silhouettes

As I mentioned earlier, some of the ideas were aimed to have that slight futuristic feel to them. I was starting by making some basic modified versions of the pickup truck, but then moved onto some armoured and uniquely shaped versions. A few ideas in the bottom 2 rows came up  through that process. These don't necessarily have a clear, futuristic appearance, but it was something I kept in mind and tried to implement. Additionally, some of my ideas look aggressive, clean and give out that "prepared for somethnig" feel which is great.

Concept Progress

The final idea was made by mixing 3 of my favourite chosen ideas. The wire-fence window protection from the 7th idea, the body of the 12th idea and the bumper armour taken from the 13th idea. I plan to begin experimenting with my Toyota pickup model more now. I aim to model most of the components I painted on the idea above, but I will also keep in mind that I shouldn't take complexity of the design too far. It would become too comples or heavy looking and not functional enough. It is an aspect of the design which I will judge my model on, but after I model most if not all of the parts. Also, adding too many additional surfaces would cause my texture space to become limited and lessen the quality of the design. I will need to be careful with that area too.

Life Drawing

This session was about us drawing eachother, like before we came to the centre of the room to stand in any pose we wanted. First ones lasted only a minute or two each, the rest lasted for roughly 5 minutes. 

A few of use held a cardboard tube to support some of our poses and give them more meaning. This also helped us partly make our body mass more understandable, as holding an object made us look busy and active. The top right drawing and the final show this well. The models looked more involved and dynamic, Dynamism is another aspect I'd like to say something about. I found my last drawing to express a lot of dynamism due to my style of mark making then. I can almost make out how the model was movingand not just see that he's standing and holding a tube. He looks ready, prepared and about to act on something. I'm really happy about how this one turned out.

Week 28 - Toyota Hilux Pickup Texturing

Unwrapping & Texturing

Unwrapping was getting easier to me over time; especially when it came to hard surfaces of vehicles. I unwrapped much harder objects before, like my Stylised Rock or Stylised Character, so this was a nice break from those, as it was fairly straight forward. I've just put a few seams here and there and used the relax tool to flatten the unwraps. Using photo textures was a quicker process for me, these didn't take me long at all. I have only spent additional time later to make them clearer and add some more marks. Some were of which were done using the burn tool (windows, tyres and the underneath of the pickup body) and some with a low-opacity brush (highlights).

The chassis took me a little longer to unwrap. Many parts needed to be overlayed on top of eachother, as they were too similar to eachother and I thought I'll use the same texture space for those. It all went well up to this point and I only needed to make sure my textures were evenly applied to all unwrapped surfaces. The detail level needed to be the same throughout the whole model, so that none of the areas stood out by having too much or too little detail.

Finished Model Renders

The end result was much better that I expected, mainly since I didn't have much experience in making photo textures. My pickup model turned out readable, clean and its details were sharp. The only area I would have added more work to would have been the body's sides. I had to leave them, as I was low on time, but what I wanted to add was some wear marks around the door bottom and edges. Only small scratches and dust marks. The kind of marks left by small rocks, which were stuck to the tyres of other vehicles on the road and thrown back at it hen it was too close behind them. Maybe a small chip or crack in the front window would have been good too. Even a long scratch on the front bonnet would have added some form of history to my pickup model.

Week 27 - Toyota Hilux Pickup Modeling & Unwrapping

Modelling

 

Unlike in the past week, now all the parts of the truck have the same colour as I have attached them to eachother since the model was near completion. Having it as one object made it easier for me to manage, when adding more details. I felt I would get slightly confused if it remained that way. I also readjusted some verts in the windows, front bumper and bonnet to add more definition.

I then needed to focus on adding some form of a "grip" that would attach the wheels to the metal tube holding them. It's only a shape that suggests this part, not a detailed model of it as this area of the car is not very visible. The car body needed to be completed on the inside, so that it was a closed shape. I initially made a flat plane to make the body's bottom, then I strip modelled from it to connect to other areas of the body like front bumper's inside and the doors. I even decided to add an exhaust pipe in there with a hook that holds it in place.

I didn't spend much time on making the registration plate as it's a simple object and not an important part fo this vehicl. I left it as a flat rectangle, made of just a few triangles. The tail gate details needed to be added too, I'm talking about the indentation that follows around the upper side and follows slightly to the bottom on each side. Making those back lights was tricky, as they won't be that visible when modelled. Their appearance will mostly rely on how I will texture them later, so for now I extruded their shape into the main body by a few millimeters.

At this stage all I had left was to adjust the raised areas for the wheels in the pickup's bed and the bed area itself. It needed to have the right shape and roughly similar dimenstions to the real pickup here.

I've have eventually appraoched the end and finished my model. I needed to stop adding any more details here, as my model was close to exceeding my triangle budget. It was currently at 5,800 triangles and my budget was just 6,000 triangles. 

Life Drawing

Since last week's life drawing focused around drawing the model's hands and feet; we now used this week to draw her head (mostly facial details). I enjoyed finally having some more time to focus on drawing our model's head as usually I left this area out or drew it very roughly, only as a suggestion to allow myself to draw the whole body in perspective etc.

9.3.15

The usual warm up drawings were done first to get me into the mood of drawing. Then we moved onto 1 minute short poses of her head from different angles. The ones from the front with a slight tilt were the hardest to draw; I drew her face too flat on those, what is disappointing. I'll tried harder at measuring on the final drawing, which happened to be the toughest pose for me to draw and I think I managed to draw it ll. I was satisfied with my drawing this time. The hair was still unfinished, also some rendering was too dark, but overall The angles of the face was clear to understand from my drawing which proves my measuring has not failed this time.

Week 26 - Toyota Hilux Pickup Modeling

Modelling

The chassis was the easiest section for me to model. Its shape is fairly straight and has visible bends on the blueprints. The only issue I had was figuring out how much detail I should put into making it; certain areas where the metal beams connect could have been welded or I may have added more polygons to make them look smoother. I decided to save that idea until the end of the model, as I may exceed my triangle budget by doing this. The whole model is being made with a symmetry modifier.

Wheels and front of the body were the next steps. Adjusting the tyres' shape so they had that specific roundness and volume was tricky. It required me to apply my smoothing groups correctly, as otherwise these tyres would have looked like baloons and not strong chunky rubber tyres. I selected a different smoothing group for the wheel rims too, as this way they stood out more. Additionally I changed the smoothing group for the fenders above the front wheels. In the real pickup truck they are a seperate part of the body and I needed them to stand out, to be rendered seperately.

Adding on those body sides was tricky. Although they look straight and flat; they actually are slightly curved from top to bottom. I have overdone it at the start and they looked too round from the front view. I went ahead to look for some reference shots from angles views. This way I had a better idea of how to readjust them and I feel fairly happy about the result now. The smoothing group for back fenders has also been changed to make them stand out from the body, just like the front ones were earlier.

I encountered a similar problem here to when I was modelling the sides. The roof and the windows needed to be correctly rounded off, the windows were the hardest to get right though. They curve in their own way and it's slightly different to the car body's shape. The windows are held inside the doors, therefore I needed to extrude a few millimeters into the door, before making them. This way they seemed like seperate objects from the doors. I also made sure to set diferent smoothing group for the windows so they don't blend with the doors too much.

When I was almost finished with the body, I decided to move onto other areas and I started modelling smaller details like the headlights, side mirrors and door handles. I will later remove one of the door handles, so I am just left with one to texture, as then I can just clone it onto the other door to save time. Next areas to focus on will be the underneath of the pickup's body, the back bed and tailgate. Also I may add additional details to the inside sides of the wheels, as they look fairly empty there.

Week 22 - Stylised (Butcher) Character Project Progress & Life Drawing

Unwrapping & Texturing

The main texture sheet for the butcher character's body. I made a mistake when unwrapping the face. The way I thought about doing it was to unwrap half of it, but that caused it to deform what made painting of it harder. I'll need to practice unwrapping of faces more in the future, as that would make my work easier here. Due to running out of time I have also not done enough work on my character's hands, they have only a few basic, painted details. They lack some more rendering and colour.



Above is a texture for my character's accessories, boots and belt etc. This texture was the easiest to make as I could stylise things here quite easily and that's what I did. Painting basic objects, like the surface for the knife handle was easy to me. The pouch for the knife was a problem though, I was aiming for a dark leather appearance for it, but it turned out looking a bit like a chocolate bar to me. I've shown it to some of my colleagues and they agreed. I clearly haven't used my reference well enough and will need to work on my digital painting of materials.


Above image shows the progress of my texture, applied on the 3D model. In the first step there are no smoothing groups and only the pouch is textures as a test. After that I applied smoothing groups to my model and some basic colours to seperate the different areas from eachother. Then I moved onto making the thick fabric trousers and some rendering of the facial details. My digital painting was still weak at the time and I found it hard to define some surfaces to represent the material I wanted. All I could do was to make some more research or at moodboard. That helped me slightly, but it was still my inexperience that has let me down. I hope to get better through this project so my digital painting skills will be better for the next one.

Now moving to the end of the texturing, all that was left was to add details to the head. I needed to paint in the darker areas around the eye sockets, then the ears and also the neck to help define its shape. I made a few rougher marks with my brush to give the skin a rougher surface, as it looked too smooth and I wanted my character to be more mature looking. Lastly I had the hair to paint, that included a short beard too.

Final Renders

I finished by making light maps and exported my character into Unreal Engine to render it.  I think he lighting wasn't adjusted correctly as my renders had this odd, dark shadow around the bottom of the aproon. I also somehow managed to make a visible seam following through the centre of the model and I couldn't find a way of removing it. It hasn't happened earlier when I was texturing and checking the model by using a symmetry modifier. It's when I finished it and properly collapsed the modifiers that I encountered this problem. Changing the smothing groups hasn't helped either, it looked as if my model was still plit into 2 seperate halves, but I checked for that and everything was attached.

If I went back to improve this character, I would start by painting more fabric folds onto the clothing, as I didn't know how to do it properly and only did a few. Apart from these problems, I think everything else looked fairly good in the model. Another area I would like to fix next time is the ears. I struggled to model them corectly to fit in my budget and eventually I didn't have anymore time to spend on making them so I left them as basic shapes. I would really like to go back to this project in the future and improve my model as much as possible as I really enjoyed it.

Life Drawing

23.2.15

In the last week of the project we approached more focused drawings. We focused on drawing seperate body parts and on this day we were drawing the model's hands and feet. Hands and feet were the toughest for me to make in my character model, so returning to these drawings partly helped me see how I could simplify and maybe stylise my hands so that I could save some triangles in my budget. I needed to figure out which areas to pay most attention to and which to leave simple as they were more flat than other. The outside of out wrist is a fairly flat area, so this is one of the places where I tried to limit my use of polygons/triangles.

Week 21 - Stylised (Butcher) Character Model Progress & Life Drawing

Butcher Model Progress



Eventually I was getting near completion of my model, so I went back to correcting the head and fixing its topology. I finally fixed the head structure and it started to really resemble my appearance. When it comes to the hairstyle, I decided to block out a basic one, as giving it a more 3 dimensional shape would use up too many triangles. I will make sure I texture this area correctly to improve it and hide its simplistic shape. The area I'm most happy about is the nose and mouth loops as they turned out surprisingly good to me. I wasn't expecting these to look so similar to mine.

Unwrapped Model

The first unwrapped sections of the model. This texture is going to be a 1024x1024 24bit Targa. I unwrapped only half of the model, as I wanted to use more of the texture space to get more details. The textured half of the body can then be copied, mirrored and attached to complete the model. What's seen here is unwrapped arms, hands, aproon, shirt, trousers and head.
The next unwrapped texture, next week is going to be a 512x512 24bit Targa.

Life Drawing

16.2.15

Drawings like the large, brown one above were really useful too. I worked really hard on imitating the strong foreshortening here. This isn't easy, but I think my choice of medium was of advantage to me, as I used charcoal and white chalk. These materials, in combination with brown midtone paper, have helped me add the darks, as well as the whites to give my piece a stronger "feel" of depth. I'm really happy about this one. Also, during this session we did not have a model so we had various students pose for eachother (different body types and heights). I was really happy about this brave pose one of my class mates did for us.

Week 20 - Stylised (Butcher) Character Final Concept, Model Progress & Life Drawing

Final Concept


I chose the 1st idea in row C. It looked the most natural to me, and it didn't have any cold colours. I could always change some of its areas and colours, in case it won't look as planned when modelled in 3DS Max.

Butcher Model Progress






I focused on mostly modelling using quads, not traingles as it would be easier to work with. This way my model has loops in its topology, allowing me to edit it faster.

The toughest part to model was the first, and that was the head. Adjusting all the edges and verts to make the loops even was taking me a very long time. I needed to time away from it so I moved onto the body and ontinued blocking out its shapes. I had much better progress with the body so far.

The area under the aproon was hard to get to, to see clearly what I was modelling there, as my view was blocked by other parts of the model. Even the x-ray mode wasn't helping much as it was hard to tell which edges were the right ones.

Life Drawing



8.2.15

The simpler drawings, such as those done with straight lines or with strong pencil marks have helped me see how I could define a 3 dimensional form/shape. I hope to now know better how to define these using limited tools, mediums, materials or even geometry (especially when modelling in 3DS Max). I really like how I used the darker/softer pencil to separate sections of the body and push some limbs more toward me by darkening the area behind them.

Week 19 - Stylised (Butcher) Character Tonal/Colour Studies & Life Drawing

Colour Moodboard



Aside from this one I also made a smaller mood board, focused on colour. It's a simpler collection of images (mainly paintings) that represented different colour variations, which I could use in my  colour studies later on. I made sure to collect reference that shows mostly butchers here, also in different times and cultures. I could use this later to define my character more, as to me colour is very essential in making a character look unique.


Chosen Idea Value & Colour Studies

After the last weeks silhouettes/ideas I selected the most interesting few and decided on one that I took forward. Firstly I used photo bashing to add detail to this idea; that combined with a bit of painting over. For that idea I spent some time, carefully selecting the most appropriate tonal values for each piece of clothing and I have managed to come up with 9 different tonal variations. I aimed at creating more variations but eventually felt that it was enough experimentation; I could essentially go back to the value studies and make new ones if I felt that my chosen ones did not look well enough to me with colour.

The next step here was to again, pick a few more successful ideas, select the best/most unique one and spend some time on applying colour layers onto it to develop more convincing ideas.

My characters clothing still seemed empty at this stage. I added a few details by painting over on the knife pouch, the belt and also the boots. The boots now have these small patterns and strings on the upper section. I'll try to apply these extra details at the end of my project (when texturing). 

I picked the 9th one to take forward, then copied it into 3 rows and then made more copies horizontally. For each row of ideas, I used a different colour palette, taken from a different painting from my colour mooodboard. I picked 5 of the ideas here, marked with a "tick". 

In my style guide for this project, I was advised to use mostly warm colours, so 2 of the chosen ideas in the middle row needed to be scrapped, as they had too much cold blue in them. I would have kept them if they only had small hints of blue but I couldn't decide on where to put that colour.

Life Drawing



2.2.15



Tonal pieces like the one above are the most useful now, as they taught me a few things about fabric folds and how to separate values of different surfaces such as skin, and cotton. I have used charcoal and white chalk to give surface depth to the model's body and also other objects like the fabrics placed on her legs. This should really help me in the future, when painting my character's texture. Also to understand how fabrics fold/hang around our legs, arms and shoulders etc.

Week 18 - Stylised (Butcher) Character Moodboard, Silhouettes & Life Drawing

Moodboard


After gathering some of my reference last week, I now focused on selecting the most appropriate reference and photographs for my moodboard. I have reassembled this moodboard many times, until I got to one I was fairly happy with. The point here was to have it focused more around the character I was deciding on, which was the butcher. I've included some photograph of clothes and also armour. The armour was there to help me understand how metallic surfaces look, in case my character had metallic features in his equipment or clothes. Some of the clothes (the older looking ones) have numerous folds and creases and these will be really helpful when I move onto drawing the texture for the clothing. It will help me paint more convincing clothing surface.

Some of the first photographs I wanted to add were the ones on top-left. These show different hairstyles, beards and unique facial features. They also show faces of different ages, so I can have some idea of how I could alter my characters face if I felt I should make him older or younger. I could even consider changing his hair and skin colour to suggest him as a traveller or someone from a different region of the world. Other photographs include shoes, boots, butcher knives and belts. even such small pieces of equipment/clothing can have a strong impact on my characters look. It's important to try out different styles to hopefully end up with the best possible combination.

Butcher Character Silhouettes

























The bottom 2 rows were my initial ideas (apart from the last one). I was not happy with them, partly because I spent too much time at this stage and didn't have as much variation as I planned. I've put too much detail into those too early. Then after my initial review of the ideas by a tutor, I went back to develop some fresh ideas, I added the last idea and also the top row; to my surprise these were the strongest ideas. The fact I went away from these for a day and came back with a fresh mind helped me a lot. I felt ready to move on and decided to use the top left idea.

Life Drawing







26.1.15

I think I would struggle with modelling of my upcoming character if it wasn't for all the Life Drawing sessions I did in the past, including the ones now.



26.1.15

These proved to be really helpful, as my visual library has surely expanded and allowed me to understand the shape of the human body better; modelling should feel much easier to get through because of this.

Week 17 - Character Project Preparation & Life Drawing

Reference and Moodboard

In preparation for my upcoming project I have began collecting various forms of photographic reference. Some presenting, people around me like my friends; while other showing different types of clothing and accessories. This is more of a visual library for me, one that I can return to later, especially when I get stuck or need to think up of more ideas. I plan to check through all the images and photographs to then decide on those most useful to me. I can then put them together into a usable moodboard  to use for the Character Project. Apart from this I will later on need to look for already existing paintings, art pieces and images which I could use for a Colour Reference Board. I hope for this to help me decide on more appropriate colour schemes and styles for my character ideas. 

One character idea I was thinking about was the blacksmith, but I have designed a blacksmith house in a past project, so this time I was hoping to focus on something else. Then I came across the idea of a witch character which was very interesting, but I still prefered something less fantasy like. Eventually I decided on designing a butcher. I found this to be the best character for me to try and design at this time, if anything goes wrong I can always go back and try making a different one.

Some of the photographs I collected of members of a Viking Re-Enactment Society. I was really interested in some of the hairstyles shown on the photos. Their weapons, clothing (some of which is authentic) and accessories such as belts are a great source of inspiration which I can use within my design process. The last photograph shows my friend holding up one of the shields with really nice decorating and patterns. There are tens of other photographs which I've collected myself, but unfortunately there's too many to post on the blog and so I've decided to pick a few interesting ones that I could share here.

My Face Topology (My friends called it Topor-ology)

As the character I'll be designing will be based on my appearance/body, I started to prepare some photographs of my body and face. As shown on the photographs above, I made sure they allign as accurately as possible with eachother when I took them (there were many attmepts). This ensured that my following steps were easier. The following task was to draw a rough topology of my face on top of these photographs. I've made sure to have a shadow casting on either side of my face; this enabled me to see the various bumps and depth changes in my face. I drew the coloured loops on the left image first to get a rough idea where certain edges should be placed and where the could connect. After I have placed most of the lines down and marked where they connect, I moved onto the other image. I then drew grey horizontal lines across the images to transfer and redraw the topology on the right photograph.