Just a quick update on the progress of the Barbarian mesh. I've finalised the base mesh so I can start texturing, but before I do he needs to be sent off to be rigged.

 

 Originally I was going to rig both the Barbarian and the Dragon, but as I have never done it before and I want the rigs to be of the highest standard achievable, I thought it better to have them done by someone has experience.  Therefore I will be sending the Dragon to a former student of Glamorgan Univesity, and the Barbarian will be done by a student in my class who is very talented at rigging.

Today I finally took the base mesh into ZBrush for the first time, the generic face really needed to go! I've used reference to get the right looking face that I'm going for. I want to make him look kind of skin head polish looking. 

I brought him back into Maya to see what he looks like low geometry...I'm happy so far!

Here's the sculpts from ZBrush, just trying to get the facial form right...

I've spent a bit of time doing all the fiddly stuff like belt buckles a body straps, and trying to get the to hung properly. So far I have been using the same technique of selecting certain faces and duplicating them to get the right shape without the headache of having to shape them every time, which has saved me quite a bit of time.

I just quickly colored the different poly groups to get a better feel for the colors.

I decided today that I would make a start on the Barbarian build, I havn't finished the dragon yet but what is left to do can be done later on, it's more important that I get a good start on my next project.

I've built a generic base mesh and extruded faces from various areas of the body to get the tight fitting body armour and shoulder pad.

 

Yesterday we went location hunting for the VFX short film. We diced to go to the Brecon Beacons for the day and explore the landscape for a suitable local. it was a long day, and a longer, very steep climb up the highest mountain, but we did because we are men! 

Although we didn't find exactly what we were looking for it gave us an idea of what we can achieve when filming. So it was successful!

I've been making some good headway with the texturing of the dragon. I watched an Eat 3D tutorial on hand painting your textures in ZBrush so I'm giving it a go! At the moment I think I'll use what I've done so far as a base texture, as there needs to be a lot more detail and time put in, but it's starting to come together. It's nice to see it shaping up right.

Just quick post. I spent a little bit of time this morning making a helmet for the dragon, however I dont think I will continue working on is as I feel it ruins the look.

Good news, I've given myself more work to do! not only I'm I co-directing a CG short film, I'm also co-directing a VFX short film! 

Myself and the other two students I'm co-directing with were approached by a VFX student and asked whether we would be interested in creating our film into a VFX short instead. We could not because we had already done so much work on the CG short, but to compromise we agreed to make a roughly 20 second long VFX short parallel to the CG short.

I have been assigned to draw up the story-boards, they are not complete but it was just something quick to get the story across.

I thought that I should try out a bit of rigging to see what I've gotten myself into! I'm using 'The Set-up Machine' as it is apparently easy to pick up for those that have no experience as a rigger. 

Here I have set-up the bone structure underneath the mesh, it was very easy to get the hang of it once I had a play around.

I encountered a problem with the mesh not connecting to the rig, but I then realised I hadn't told the rig to use the mesh to rig to!

Right, so after posting my progress so far on 'CG Coach' I had some realy good feedback on a few things that I'd overlooked. 

I originally had the horns curving downwards, but it was pointed out that in real life, if the horns were in that position the dragon wouldn't be able to eat, because the horns would be in the way! Which I completely didn't realise, so now that curve upwards.

The head is a bit too flat and the top for how wide it is, so I can either make it more rounded at the top, or make it narrower. I think I will make it more narrow as I feel it will give a better effect.

The neck was too short and tapered, it get chunkier as it got towards the shoulders. this made it feel detached from the rest of the body, so I've made i a bit longer and gotten rid of the taper.

Over the past few days I've been sculpting the high detail definition into the dragon. I've used a mixture of the basic brushes, clay, and slash, as well as alphas to the rough skin texture and feel. It still needs a lot of tidying up, especially around the neck and torso areas, but it's starting to shape up nicely.

I'm trying to get the different skin surfaces of his chest, torso and stomach to work well together. however it is proving to be rather difficult. The stomach feels a bit too wrinkly, perhaps and the neck needs to blend in with the chest more sublty.

i spent a long time yesterday on getting the right look and feel of the leg, adding the tough skin areas on the tops of the feet and shin have worked well, I used an image of a T-Rex as reference.

I've spent a bit of time playing around with what sort of definition I'd like in his face and body, as I've mentioned before I'm trying to get an alternate dragon design. So instead of covering him in scales I'll cover him mostly in thick leathery skin and make his chest almost exoskeletal, and have the crystal in the centre of his chest, like a glowing heart.

His eyebrows feel a bit too low to me, and his nostrils could also do with a bit more definition.

I'm trying to get him to look lean and strong so I've mapped in some muscles, they are a bit too defined at the moment (he feels a bit like a body building dragon!) but I can tone them down using the layer opacity feature.

Dragon Build Cont...

At the moment I'm trying to get the shape of the body and face to fit well together. I've been testing out whether  or not to add little spikes in various places on his face, I'm not really too happy about the result however. It feels like he has jewelry across his eyebrows which is not the look that I'm going for! 

I've also spent a while shaping his teeth, I wasted a lot of time trying to get the gums in the right position and then add the teeth. I then realised that dragons don't have gums...

Getting the shape of his chest has been a bit of a challenge as It kind of feels like a human torso. However I did not want to go for a traditional dragon shaped torso, so I'll play around with it and see what I can do.

Dragon Build - Part 2

Yesterday I finished Unwrapping and moved on to sculpting the surface detail.

I unwrapped the UV's using Roadkill as it is a very user friendly piece of software, and enabled to get the job done rather swiftly. Although it has it's quirky moments and the navigation can be irritating at times.

UV Layout

Originally I was going to have a crystal that protruded quite far from his chest, but after giving it some thought I decided I will have it in chest, like a heart. I will have it glowing yellow/orange, and veins will visible originating from the crystal glowing the same colour.

Dragon Build - Part 1

Let me start with a confession, as truth is the core of any meaningful relationship.  

I am in the early stages of production for the cinematic that myself and two classmates are co-directing. "Production stage?!" I hear you ask, yes, the pre-production is an ancient relic in my minds eye. On hindsight it probably would have been valuable to have blogged my progress with regards to the pre-production...but choices were made and actions taken which ultimately lead me to the position that I now find myself in.

However there is a saying which goes "better late than never", and if there ever was a time that I would be grateful for that saying to exist, it would be now.

So to get up to date, I am designing, building and rigging the dragon and barbarian which will feature in the cinematic I am co-directing. I will also be lighting all the scenes and dabble in FX.

Dragon Model Sheet

I am currently unwrapping the dragon using Roadkill, from there I will go into the surface detail (using ZBrush) and then rig it using 'The Set-up Machine' and 'The Face Machine'.  

A few pics from todays modelling, I build a set of teeth in Maya and shaped then in ZBrush, I also used the same process for fitting the eye.