Big 3D post

This will probably be a rather long blog post where I write about the things i should have blogged about before. I have sadly neglected to write blog posts because I got behind with the advanced assignment, and I felt that I couldn’t write a blogpost if I did not have anything to show. Even though I still worked on the last assignment for the course at the same time I didn’t write because I felt I had to work on the assignments instead. Which was wrong I should of course written about it and said so my teacher could have seen where I was in the process.

So now I’m going to write about the Viking longship I did for the advanced assignment. The reason for I me falling behind was that I had never done textures or a UV mapping before, and as the ship had some complex shapes it was hard. But I learned a lot and redid the UV map several times because I realized new ways to do it. I’m sure I still messed something or several things up but my teacher will surely note on that and I will learn more.

As I’m not good at painting or 2D in general I did 3D painting in Mudbox, which let me paint on the 3D model itself and not on a 2D plane. So one of the hardest things, well maybe not hardest but the thing that took the longest time, I had to do when doing the textures were the planks for body of the boat. It was a problem I did not really know what way were the best to do it. I was thinking on painting it in Photoshop and then distort it to get the curves needed. But as I don’t feel I know how to do it or comfortable with doing it I came up with an idea. I painted green lines in Photoshop on the texture for where the planks where going to be.

Then I would use the Projection tool in Mudbox to paint the texture with the help of a picture of planks overlapping each other. I would match the overlapping parts to the green lines.

I used the Projection tool for most of my textures to help me. Then came the normal map, I used the problem crazybump to automatically make the normal map. The normal map adds a second layer of textures that only makes the texture feel more 3D, looking at it from the front will add depth to the textures, but if you look on them from the side you see that they are flat. Then for the specular map that adds a layer to the texture that determines how much it shines I used Photoshop. I used the diffuse texture file that contains only colors, the original texture, and made it grayscale. Black is not shiny and white is very shiny, and everything between is different grades of shiny. So I made all the wood almost completely black, the nails that was still in the texture I let be white so they would shine, and the all the metal parts of were also a light shade of gray to make them shine.

Here’s some pictures from within Unreal engine 4:

A problem I stumbled upon when trying to send the model into UE4 where this:

This meant that 27 of the objects did not get the right textures, and I got 27 white textures in my folder that I did not want.

And as shown above the sail dont have two sides to the sail, I do not know how to fix this when I just have one plane, without extruding it so it have two sides.

I don’t know why UE4 dose this but after a while I found the solution, I simply deleted the useless materials and dragged the material with the right texture on, to the 27 parts that did not have a texture. I can feel that there must be a better way or I did something wrong, but it went well at the end.

I feel really happy with what I have accomplished as it was the first 3D object I have ever textured, I mostly like to only do the 3D models. It’s not a really good texture if you look at other game assets, but for me it is as I’m not good with 2D. And it’s something I am and will have to work on more.

Now to Palo’h the old tribesman.

Doing this assignment was fun but hard and I think it have made me realize I might want to do hard surface models like the Viking longship rather than organic models. But I have learned a lot doing this, both more UV mapping and about edge loop placement and how to model a face.

One way to “cheat” to model a face is to use the program 3D coat, where you can import a 3D scan of a face you have done and then paint the polygon topology on. But doing this you still need to know how the edge loops should look like in a face.  But doing this saved time and I think it’s a really good tool to use for recreating stuff from real life. As the 3D scans can be done with a camera, where you take several photos from different angles to get a 3D view of the object, and then use a software which I can’t remember the name of as I’m writing this, to make it into a 3D object.

I could then use that face model in Maya to help me create the face for Palo’h. But as you can’t see the eyes on him I could make him without eyes and save polygons. I could also take away a lot of edge loops from the face as it wouldn’t move much in those areas if animated. I would also reshape the face to more fit the shape of the old man’s face but having a face from the start helped a lot.

Now for the body, I started on the assignment before we started the modeling in class because I felt like it, I enjoy creating things in 3D. I started with the leg which isn’t the traditional way to do it but I thought that if I would screw something up it would be something small. Then on the day we did the body’s in class I made it a little too high resolution to start with, when just getting the shape of the body you should do it at low resolution and then add to it afterwards to get the right detail to the shape. I will probably work like that in the future but this time it was not that big of a problem and attaching the legs afterwards instead of extruding them out of the body worked really well.

The cylindrical shape of the head was a little funny to create and I thought it was going to be hard to attach the head to the body, but after getting the shape and starting to create the neck the two meshes kind just melted together nicely, none of the problems I thought was going to appear showed themselves, instead the edge loops melted together at some points.

The biggest problem I had with the UV mapping was the hands, as they were of a mitten shape I didn’t know how to make the UV to not overlap, but as one side of the hand would be bigger I put the finger on the side where the mitten shape were the smallest so I would have to bend it too much.

Now to the texturing, as I mentioned I don’t like it, and in this case I worked in Mudbox again to paint it, used crazy bump for the normal map and then did the specular map the same way as with the ship. One thing I had a hard time with was the self-shadowing that I had to do and make the old man wrinkles. It always felt awkward after I was done but I had to settle after a while and I think I came up with an acceptable result and something I am quite happy with. What I was most pleased with was the old skin spots I made, they were easy, just make brown circles, but they turned out really well.

Here’s some pictures from within UE4:

This time putting it into UE4 I had another problem, the texture refused to be imported with the model, but I think I fixed it by importing the texture by their own and then attaching them to the model.

A problem I had with both the old man and the viking ship was seems, in the diffuse tuxtures I could make them kinda dissapear but as fast I added the normal map they really popped out and i did not know how to fix this, because i couldnt figure out how to eddit them as i couldnt se their colors in mudbox, and editing it in photshop would be too hard. This is how a normal map can look like.

But after I had slept I realized I could put that in the diffuse channel, and that made me able to see the colors in Mudbox and tried to erase the seems. The results werent perfect but made it look a little better. Then alter when putting the models in UE4 I realized the engine also helped hiding them, so maybe I didn’t need to edit the normal map.

My colleague who was acting my client on this was quite happy with my model and the parts of the texture he have seen. We discussed how to do the wrinkles on the skin and I think I managed to do it the right way. We also decided I would skip the squiggly shapes on the knuckles and elbows as they would stretch in an awkward way when you animate him.

To then one I was acting client to make the troll I talked about in a previous post. I think he managed to create something I am and think he should be proud over. He managed to make all the round shapes and followed the concept art really well. I haven’t seen the textures on it but I am confident he will manage to do it justice.

The assignment to have a client and be a client have been really nice and I think helpful to be able to think of what to say when giving critique and see how it can be out in the real world when working.