Tala

Week 8and 9

Ahhh the work is finally all done! We've made the deadline and are still alive......just. It has been a close call though. Week 8 was stressful because we had to finish all the texturing, while also being slightly behind with our production schedule- Dan R hadn't finished his Zbrushing, due to his brother moving out and taking his PC with him which had the Zbrush he was using on it. He couldn't work at mine because I needed my PC to make my textures as my graphics tablet wont work at Uni. The camp fire, totem pole and cliff also still needed to be built. To solve this, Dan R had to work at Jakes while Jake worked at Uni modelling the remaining items and I worked at home, and more hours than we anticipated had to be put in, to make sure that we would finish on time.


A very low poly model of Tala, with no textures just colourd faces so I could get a rough idea how she was looking. I made this just before I begun to UV map her.

Tala after I had mapped her UVz. I used a checkerd texture at first to make sure that when I applied textures to her, they would look right and not stretched.

The textures that I used to map Tala. I don't think these screenshots really justify how much effort went into texturing her. I know that sounds vain, but hours were spent getting this right and the details are not really shown in these images. Talking about detail getting lost..... due to time and things going wrong technically, certain details of Tala were axed, such as the beads that I gave her and her earings. Her hair also had to go, as for some reason the alpha maps wouldn't work, they kept going pink and Dan C didn't know how to fix them :S ah well, something to work out for our next project.

Myself and Dan Ryan put together the sound these last few days. Again, when you listen it may not sound like much, but sound takes ages to apply in sync, especially with Premiere crashing constantly as we were using too many sound clips!

This project has been a real learning curve for me, and I think for the whole group in general. I've learnt a whole new programme, and really improved on my texturing skills. I have also made my first human character which I am proud of. I was a little dissapointed that Tala looked strange once the normal map had been applied to her. My computer at home that I was using to texture her on, only allowed me to make renders with out the normal map on her, so when I made tests she looked really good. However when I looked at Tala in the animation, I wasn't really impressed on how the bump had made her appear, which is something I would have liked to fix if we'd had more time. I would also change some of her facial animation and the part when it looks like a giant breadstick is being thrown at her head! I think we set ourselves too much work to do for this project, but I am pleased as we have learnt so much. Hopefully, we will learn from our mistakes and can judge next time just how much work we can actually manage, but seeing as we tryed so much new stuff this term, I'm very pleased with the results :D

Week 6 and 7.

Haha, looking back over my last entry I think someone should get a violin out and play it for me! OK, things have gotten better these last two weeks! I think I'll begin this blog with screenshots of my final Zbrush models. Start on a good. OK so they are not the best models in the world, but I'm proud of them. Mainly because they now look like the objects they were meant to, and because I feel I have now conquered the basics of Zbrush. Being a recluse for two weeks has its benefits :S kind of.

The spiky parts sticking out of her hair will hopefully be made from planes and alpha maps that have been Zbrushed, but at the moment it all depends on time. Basically the rest of her hair is a 'lizards tail'- something that can be removed and is not a necessity if time runs out.

The top was one of my favourite items of clothing to make. By the time I had gone onto modelling this I was pretty comfortable with Zbrush.

The jeans have left permanent mental scarring!! These were the objects that I first begun to model in Zbrush because I thought they looked easy and were a main object. The lies!! When I first exported the Maya low poly version into Zbrush I had included the pockets that I had built onto the mesh. As I added more divisions the pockets would just melt and look terrible and I spent ages trying to get them to look right. In the end I had to rebuild her jeans in Maya pocketless and export them back into zbrush and rebuild from scratch. It was only later after I had nearly finished building everything in Zbrush that Dan C worked out how to add more divisions without loosing the shape of the mesh. Ah well, it helped out on a few objects, and is good to know for when I build other objects in the future. And don't get me started on her camel toe!! Disgusting!! And it refused to leave the mesh!! That took ages to rectify!!

The boot was where I learnt how to make folds. This is my favourite object, because like the jeans, it was one of the first items that I made and was really hard, but ended up, I think, looking ok. At first the boot kept appearing as though her legs and feet were deformed and pushing the material of the boot out. After practising for ages with the rake tool and listening to some tips from Dan R, I finally worked out a system that would make pretty decent folds in clothing, which I used for most of the other clothes.

When the mesh was exported into Zbrush the hips really messed up. This didn't greatly effect me as the jeans would cover all of her hips and legs. The only problem was placing the belly button accurately! I think its in the right place now :)

Scar on her stomach. I didn't want Tala to look completely perfect. She's out battling the undead, of course she's going to have battle scars. When I texture her clothes I am going to add mud and slight blood staining to make it more realistic. I hate heroes who are so clean and perfect when they obviously wouldn't be in real life.

Collar bone details added. I realise these probably wont even be seen, but it was good practise once I'd got used to Zbrush.

Fingernails, veins and wrinkles added.

The gun is only basic, which is fine as you only see it from a distance and for not very long. This was made before we worked out how to keep the mesh with hard edges after adding divisions. So this was around my third attempt. It's a basic gun shape and that is all we need. There was no time to start a new model.

The weapons are all pretty smiler style, nothing very fancy, which is why I'm only showing the holster as an example. The main detail will come in the texturing hopefully :)

Custom brushes made in Photoshop:

A scar that I tried for her stomach. It didn't look very good when placed on the mesh. I tried other variations but couldn't get the type of scar I was looking for. In the end I used the same scar I had used for her eye, inverted it and overlapped it on her stomach to get the look I wanted.

Clothing stitching. A little tribute to Tim Burton.

The Plain Hideous!!:



Somehow I got her all pixleated and incredibly fat!!! And the pockets?! Urch :(


Camel toe McGinty! Vile.

Smoothed beyond recognition!

A gun made out of playdough!

The Maya Objects:

The low poly objects that I modelled in Maya. You can see the Zombies head instead of Talas as Dan had already put together Zombie first. As they have the same body it made no difference where I modelled the clothes from.

Because we had to get used to Zbrush, me and Dan had to get used to modelling differently in Maya too. Although it was easy to model the shapes of objects low poly in Maya, it took a few goes to work out what would work best to work with in Zbrush. I realised that was I thought was very low poly in Maya could be made even more low poly to work better in Zbrush. Basically, it was a method of trial and error at first until you got used to the system.

Low poly hair, ear and earring. I really like the ear! It's really low poly but still looks like an ear :) Also, I wanted her ear to look good, as I love ears.. I know that sounds strange, but I find them fascinating for some reason, so I wanted Tala to have nice ears. And I'm naming the hoop in her ear Dan-Ryan after Dan, obviously. The reason being is that he hates the one I have in my ear, as much as I hate the one going through his nose, so giving the main character an earring like this is a little dig at Dan :P

On the subject of the environment..... I gave in and gave Jake my objects :( There is just not enough time. Except for the dream catchers and wind chime. Oh no wait..... he made my dream catcher, his test on whether planes would work was really good so I thought that it should stay :( (the dream catchers called Jared by the way), and the wind chime... well only time will tell if I have time to texture it.

The images that I've been working on to design her clothes. Me and Dan R sat down together to design clothes for our characters. Zombie was quite easy while Tala was hard, which was the opposite to what we had anticipated. Zombie turned out easier because we could be really creative with her, she was very themed and Dan had already got quite a clear vision in his head, where as Tala could be dressed almost anyway, but neither of us could quite figure out how. I had a rummage through my wardrobe after the Internet hadn't given us much inspiration, and luckily found a better result here. I know the images above are really bad, but they got the job done.

This inspired Tala's top. It looks a bit ugly when not on a person, but I like it.

The jeans came from some boots that I have. This was a strange kind of compromise. Dan Ryan really wanted Tala to wear boots but I didn't because I had visions of her looking like the main woman in 'Van Helsing' who totters around after vampires in the tallest heels imaginable. Unfortunately the rest of the group wanted her to wear boots as well. The only boots I really like are the ones Tala is wearing because they look good and are practical, but Dan R doesn't particularly like them... all the more reason for me to include them :P hehe. No, obviously I showed the group my idea for the boots and we all agreed :)

Tutorials that helped me: