Resub 4.2 - modeling continued, inspiration

After a lot of annoying issues in the first bit, I finally got the skin to work decently well - I realized later that the model might have benefitted from additional polygons, but the damage was done already.

Next I went on to create some eye controllers, but this gave me a lot of pause as well - I could get the eyes to follow the Nurb circle controller, but not the head, or the head, but not the controller. It seemed a bit insurmountable as the controllers overrode each other. However, after a trip to friendly old 4chan, I learned that if I grouped the eyes and used the group for one control, then it would finally work.
















I feel like I should talk a bit about my inspiration for this game - the gameplay comes from an old PS1 game called Future Cop LAPD or something:


(moddb)

The game, which I only ever played in multiplayer really, had 2 players squaring off against eachother, while building armies of either tanks or helicopters to attack the opponents base. The model I've created would in this case take the place of the tank, and the entire setting would be fantasy, and a lot more lighthearted and bright.

Graphics-wise, I've always been partial to big flat colours and exaggerated geometry, which I guess started with Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft, which were good-looking because of their textures and art-styles.
Later games such as the upcoming Yooka-Laylee, and even Torchlight 2 and Wildstar have also been inspirations:
Yooka-Laylee:



(Playtonic Games)

Torchlight 2:
7
(Runic games)

Wildstar:



(Wildstar Online)

While it is hard to see from the Torchlight screenshot, the cartoony style of each has always appealed to me.

Resub 4 - modelling

I have been working on a 3D model for the Developed Project, and as always with 3D models, I've encountered multiple hurdles, which I'll try to describe here:

I did several rough sketch concepts of the character first, some of which are seen here: 

note: the developed project follows the Red vs Blue, here personified by the red and blue lumberjack vests of the two players.

I modeled out the character using primitives and extrusions, but was unsure which bits should be 'combine' into the model, and which should be taken directly from the original mesh. This gave a few issues later with rigging and skinning.

I unwrapped the model as best I could, this time using several different mappings - I unwrapped the legs as cylinders first, then tried stitching them together with the cylinder from the torso, but I could not get that to work, so I believe I in the end just unwrapped everything as one cylinder, and then cut the legs open. The 'combined' teeth were textured apart, as were the eyes and eyebrows.

I was quite happy with the skin, and with bumb mapping it looked quite decent I thought, at least for what is supposed to be a footsoldier in the final game. I had some problems with texturing the eyeball, as trying for a spherical mapping made the eye ellipsical. I usually just map it as a plane, and after researching online found that this was something that was actually done - I was worried that the iris on the back of the eyeball would cause problems later, but perhaps not.

Rigging has always given me a lot of issues as I have never really learned how to do it. I started out with his, knees and feet, then mirrored the joints while including one joint for the mouth and one for the head (the mouth would then hinge the entirety of the head), but I soon had to change this as the legs gave all sorts of issues, and I realized I needed more joints for the head controls. I went to work using the weight painting tool, but I never really got it to work: I remembered reading that the influence value would not go above 1, and so I could not understand the issues I was facing until I read that it was possible to go beyond this value if certain parameters were set - which they were.

After fixing this by flooding the vertices, I realized the eyes needed bones of their own, and so I needed to unbind the skin again.

To be continued...

Resub 3 - Nostalgia and Memory

My idea for the Nostalgia and memory, which I've elected to work more on, has been quite a challenge - Mainly the camera system, which, when parented to a gameObject but needing to refrain from inheriting some of its parameters while inheriting others, caused a lot of problems. I had a lot of issues with using different colliders for the car too - box collider was totally ruined by anything like an angled surface, and wheel colliders, which could function amiably according to online tutorials, did not give me the control I wanted. Furthermore, using Addforce, with my admittedly small amount of knowledge about it, introduced a ridiculous amount of unrealistic handling and floating. Additionally, achieving the right kind of drag on flat surfaces vs angled surfaces, while maybe realistic, did not handle in a way I would expect from a racing-game, and especially not like the games that inspired it. To work around this, I decided to Translate in the Update function according to a speed variable, which, while fixing handling and steering, may have introduced gravity anomalies.

Here is a screenshot of the game in its current state - placeholder graphics.

Resub 2 - Masters Studies

In order to get a better sense of dynamic posing, lighting and composition, I researched different artists, with recommendations by university staff, and one of the ones I found was Frank Frazetta, who illustrated a lot of the old Conan the Barbarian-stories (I'm owrking my way through the book at the same time).

The pictures are saturated with very contrasting and glaring, dramatic colours, and some have quite violent postures and imagery. Here are a few examples from my reference folder:



I have tried developing a sense of the very contrasting light and dark forms, but I am having difficulty with it.

Resub 1 - Colour studies

Obs: I have had to plan several blogposts ahead without internet access, which is why they are coming in a short amount of time.

I was directed to the following video from a post by a Facebook friend of mine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQfF-P70V2Q

Basically, the video is about techniques to do masters studies, and how much benefit an aspiring artist can get from doing these, in terms of things like composition and being able to accurately view and see colours with your eyes. This seems to me to tie in with 'symbol'-drawing, and I think I need a lot of training in order to see stuff correctly, but now I have a way to do that! I like how an exercise like this is structured - find an image or shot (even from a movie) you like, and try to replicate it with simple colours, to build a backlog or subconscious understanding of good composition and use of colours.

This is a picture of the first colour-study I did - I chose tropical images for benefiting my major project which takes place in those areas.