Vixon Ambient Occlusion

Vixon Colored

Showing off Annabelle's character modeled by me. I didn't use a comp sheet for this character but that being said I did take a few creative liberties.

Annabelle I'm sure you'll pick up on some of the subtleties I've added quicker than most. I hope you like them and it stays true to the character. If you would like to collaborate in the future on other characters just let me know and I'd be happy to work with you again. 

The character will have at least one more pass for polishing but for the most part this is Vixon interpreted into the 3D using Maya.  AO's to come soon.

Vixon-Basic Shaders

Check out the progress my friends. 

Annabelle Leigh Bowie's Original Character: Vixon

A friend of mine attending Digi-Pen drafted up a quick drawing of one of her original characters. You can see more of her stuff here Annabelle's Work.

I'm working towards being a modeler so I asked her if she would like me to take some time to model her character out. I Played with it for a couple hours last night and this is where I'm at thus far.

 For the face you'll notice I'm modeling the character with her eyes shut. I found a tutorial a few weeks ago that went over facial topology he explained that modeling this way is optimal for riggers, check out his tutorial here> Sergi Caballe It is my first time modeling a character like this but it's turning out very well. Save some pinching issues I'll have to smooth later.

 The torso is coming along smoother than I had originally thought. Her top was simple to form but I'm in the process of playing with the tension folds. I haven't really studied cloth before so I'll be doing some research later when the character is fully modeled. I played with the edge flow a little and managed to find a technique that will describe tension, now it's just a matter of knowing where to place it. Next time I post progress I'll play with some shaders too.

Tr_Helmet_FieldTech_2ndPass

I got my first critique from the player studious people yesterday and among them was senior art director Tramell Ray Isaacs. He critiques everyone but it's still pretty cool.

But here is a look at the current Terran Republic Helmet.

PlanetSide 2 Player Studio

SOE is allowing player generated content. Right now I'm heavily focused on their helmet creation.

This is one of my first entries in the early stages still. The forum is usually very active and I just started posting today so I'm looking forward to some good feedback.

This is the Terran Republic faction, field Tech helmet.

Feel free to comment here. However if you'd like to learn more or comment on the player studio forum go here ----> https://forums.station.sony.com/playerstudio/index.php?threads/tt-helmet-field-tech.11500062240/

Thanks all

Ambient Occlusion Renders

Pre textured character in AO. I like the way he turned out. I'm going to say that the face expression is less than desirable but once rigged he should support several expressions and I'll definitely be playing with his face controls.

I'll be rigging this character as well as sending him to the riggers in my school. Together I'm sure we'll come up with some interesting systems to put on this guy. He's UV'd and ready to go.I may shade and light him but I will certainly be doing a turn table.

The beetle is an adapted character that I referenced from http://lysol-jones.deviantart.com/art/JAPANESE-BUG-FIGHTS-Hiro-78073338 This is a deviant art artist named Lysol-Jones. He has an extremely fun art style and I really like a lot of his characters. Go check him out and thanks for viewing my process.

I'm very happy with look of the character and extremely satisfied with his topology. In my character creation class and my production modeling class we learned several things to look for when creating a character for production as far as topology is concerened. 

• Quaded geometry 
• even spacing
• at least three edgeloops in deforming areas 
• no jittering edges/verts 
• proper facial topology e.g eye loops, mouth loop.
• Do NOT model in dynamic poses 
• Use T-pose, A-Pose, or Y-Pose for production models (rigging is made much easier this way)

Recently through this process I also found that squares are great for deforming topology. I've always known that quaded geo was something to always strive for. I also knew that quaded didn't always mean squares. But when Jen told my about facial rigging and explained her history with very clean square geo verses clean quaded geo the difference it made in the rig, I made it a point to ensure all my deforming areas are as squared as possible. 

FULL BODY!!!

So this is the first time the character has been posted fully put together. I really like how he is turning out. I'm in the final polishing stages now. His torso will most likely be going through on more cannon or so but aside from that I'm just going to polish out some pinching in the character and smooth out warps, and I'll be checking that all his topology is as quaded as possible and without non-manifold issues.

I'll be posting his wireframes after the clean up along with an AO pass to show him off. For my first character I'm really happy with how he turned out. I feel I learned a lot in the process and can't wait for him to be rigged and animated.

more to come soon.

Face Retopology

Like I mentioned earlier I'm planing on making this model production ready. For his face to deform properly he'll require specific edge flow. The images in this post show my work flow as I try and reroute his topology.

The top images have the right edge flow to support deformation however I got the result at the cost of losing the design of my original face. In the bottom images I cut the geometry in half and rerouted the one on the right.

The middle image is the rerouted face. I've got a bit of a pinch around the eye loops causing some warping issues. I'll be cleaning that up and polishing the rest of the model as well.