3D-I Character modeling and texturing
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So it’s been a while since the last post. During that time we’ve been entering the world of character modeling and texturing, both very new to me. For our third assignment in the 3D-I-course we had to both work according to another classmate’s concept art and art direction as well as direct the person bringing our own concept art into 3D. For my concept art I got this guy, named “Peanut”:
I discovered fairly quickly that some elements about this design, while cartoonishly sweet and appealing in 2D, did not quite work out in 3D. For the face I started out with getting some practice with the help of a digitalTutors tutorial and my own concept.
It didn’t get finished but it made it much easier to work on my assigned concept. As mentioned, some things just didn’t look as appealing in 3D as in 2D, so with my art director’s permission I went ahead and added some extra definition on the body and in the face and adjusted some proportions to make it more reminiscent of traditional human anatomy. The final model came out at 3190 triangles, which I probably could have pushed down a notch but since it was within the limit and the model looked good, it didn’t seem worth it.
The difficulties with this model were in the texturing rather than the modeling. I hadn’t really worked much with conveying materials like fur and different types of cloth before so it took some experimenting and fussing to make that work. The jeans are probably the most interesting part of the diffuse texture. Since the character was described as an outdoorsy, carpenter-type of character, naturally that should be reflected in his clothing. So I added varied types of wear and tear, visible stitches, patches and dirtstains to the shorts. They look like they belong to someone who patches his own clothing (the character lives by himself) and takes care of his things rather than just throw them away. The rest of the body got colour variations, bandages and details like scratches on the nails to keep it interesting.
With all textures done it still took some poking back and forth with the normalmap and light settings within Unreal Engine to hit that sweet spot for the character (my first try had too much fine detail making the character look like it was a grandparent’s creepy porcelain figurine rather than a fluffy, living creature).
It came out pretty decent in the end.  |
