the last 2 weeks of work...wow it's been a long way, these last couple of weeks have been dedicated to finalising the character models as well as the animatic, plus figuring out what we plan on doing throughout the break and the next trimester.
in terms of finalising the character, i would say he is fairly finalised in terms of modelling, i haven't touched on any of the texturing or rigging as i planned on doing those throughout the break. but here is where i stand with the character-
i have had some fixes to make to his body overall, mainly to his arms and face, i also added in the teeth and made some proxy eyeballs just to get an idea of how he will look while...looking. based on feedback i received from my professor, i redesigned his hand to look more plant-like, here is how it looks so far.
i had some fun while making his hand, i used he model of the hand i had before and just cut it up to make it look like leaves, i am planning on adding some roots on the inside to make it look like it's being held together.
i do plan on meeting with my other professor regarding rigging this hand, i'm pretty sure the same rules will apply but i just need to be sure! the roots might be acting as a "glove" which means they need to have the skin wrap modifier on them, but we will see.
in terms of animatic, we have the rough one done, which will act as a new storyboard to go off of, it is still very stoic, but we get an idea of how the cameras are situated and some basic poses for our characters. in the coming break weeks, we will be focusing on finalising our characters in terms of textures and rigs, and the weeks after those (which will be our second part of the major project unit) will be focused on refining the animations and, hopefully, the beginning of the rendering progress.
i will start texturing my character in the coming week, so i have been doing some research on how to approach the process of texturing a plant, as they have some sophisticated details to keep in mind. one of the details i really want to perfect is the petals, i want the light to go through them and in terms, show the veins inside of the petals. yes, a skin shader is the way to go, but i have tried to do this while messing around with some textures for the character, and the result i wanted didn't present itself still. that will be my personal journey however, i do want to figure that out myself.
One thing i did want to check out is how other people approach plant texturing processes, i wanted to learn and see if i can add something of my own to it. i found 3 artists that stuck out to me, one would be an artist named Brent Le Blanc on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aioMlsvVXrw , the way he approached it was that he got a low poly model, one with no details sculpted in, and made the veins using textures only. in terms of animated shorts, this is a more time and effort efficient way of doing things, replacing heavy details with textures is definitely something i am looking for.
Baking displacement maps also works fine, as shown in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9n-4Oh5O0A by artist Han Solo, his method is solely based on baking the texture and relying on it to show off the details in the leaves he made (apart from the diffuse map) which could also work as baking a displacement map reduces the poly count by a lot, making the model animation friendly.
The third method i found was by artist Seokmin Son https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N71NGJmmpX0 on Youtube, his method is a mixture of both, his leaves have some detail but he emphasises them through normal maps on Substance Painter. Based on the model i have, i think i would be taking the first technique into consideration, as my models are fairly clean and low poly, based on previous experience, having a very high poly model for an animated short doesn't end well, so my teammate and i agreed on some form of stylised techniques for the models. i will be hand painting the veins and grooves on the model, as i have worked on a flower character in the past, and it worked out quite nicely
i had quite a lot of fun texturing this little guy, which was for a game in my previous trimesters, so i have some experience with making flowers, i do however harness some new knowledge from my more advanced classes, which will help me make my current model more eye catchy and higher in quality (a majority of the work will be from the skin shaders).
overall, i am looking forwards to the upcoming weeks, i can't wait to see our characters come to life, the most part i am excited about is the baby bud, i absolutely had to take on the task of modelling that little guy.
this unit has been quite fun, it was longer than i'm used to, especially considering it was almost completely pre-production. I'm happy that i had a decent experience in a team, as most of my previous team experiences have been below disappointing, with the projects not even being completed. going solo still would have been a better option for me because i don't do well when working within a group, but i feel a nice bond between me and my current teammate, hope that bleeds into the next trimester as well.
this will be my last blog for this trimester, i hope that the future will be kind to our project, and i hope i graduate with polished piece to go on my portfolio.