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.