Assignment 2A Low Poly Character

Character Synopsis

This story follows a young hitman on a quest of vengeance to seek revenge on the enforcement officer that gave him his iconic scar over his eye. The story begins with the hitman travelling around the galaxy just after breaking out of prison with the goal of attracting as much attention from enforcement agents as possible in the hopes for drawing out the officer that scared his handsome face.

Eye for an Eye Elijah is the main antagonist for this story. He is a well-known hitman that travels the land making a living from whatever jobs that he can find, or that find him. Elijah is known for his crafty mind, ruggedly handsome looks and his impeccable aim. Elijah still travels the land in his prison uniform after escaping years ago to obtain as much attention from enforcement as possible. He does this in the hopes of one day running into the Officer that gave him his signature scar over his eye. There are two main characteristics that make Elijah easily identifiable. These being the scar over his eye and his old dirty prison outfit. Apart from this Elijah’s appearance fits the role of a handsome criminal. Elijah also cares two futuristic pistols which represents his trait of impeccable aim as they are his main weapons. The story follows Elijah as he has just recently escaped prison, this means he is currently very broke so his gear is quite old and damaged and his appearance is relatively dirty. Elijah has always thought his best trait is his handsome appearance so he is fuelled by rage to find the foe that captured and scared him.

Character Design

After creating a character with a story research now had to be gathered to start designing the character described in the short story and the synopsis. To gather helpful references, it can help to divide them into 5 main categories being Facial features, Hair, clothing, form and limbs (Davies, 2020). References that fit the correct criteria were found and are presented below.

Now that I had some inspiration for the character its proportion and silhouette had to be decided. I wanted the character to be charming but also dangerous looking, the shape of the body can help portray this (BeginnerDrawingCourse, 2019) so different body types were experimented.

The character already had weapons to apply to his trait of being an accurate hitman but his face had no reference to who he was. Different facial expressions/ properties were then sketched to better apply to his characteristics of being handsome yet scarred (Ryan, 2020).

To better understand the character, different poses were sketched using action lines to help better indicate the characters movement and how actions affect their body (Eridey, n.d.).

The final step was to give the character some colour. Initially I tended to have majority of the colour on the colour as orange since it applies to the prison escape story. By following colour theory, I was able to pick other contrasting colours that fit within the range of warm and cool tones (Naghdi, 2021).

Character Modelling

The modelling process started with creating a rough outline of the desired body shape by altering edges and vertices to fit the pre-defined shape I had sketched and inserted into Maya to be used as a reference. The basic shape was modelled with real human anatomy in mind so that arms and legs would move naturally when the character had to be rigged and animated. This meant that the edges around the body had to represent joint positions like shoulders, hips and the neck. After the body and head were modelled to a profile that I was pleased with it was time for more advanced parts like the hands, feet and clothing items. For the clothing, the body was duplicated and then specific faces were extruded to create the clothing items which where a shirt, pants, belt and chest armour. After a few attempts suitable hands were modelled and then attached to the arms. The hair was also modelled to the desired design by adjusting multiple vertices. This process is shown below in a time-lapse and specific component are also presented. The process of modelling a character is very new to me however my skill in Maya allowed me to create a desired look with relative ease. The only issue was the final Polycount was very high over the limit at 2873, decreasing this many polygons would be an issue later on.

A Simple Gun prop was also modelled and held in each hand to better fit the character’s theme, the modelling process for this gun is presented in a time-lapse below.

Prior to making UV Maps the polygon count had to be decreased below the limit of 2000. This was done by firstly deleing unnecessary faces that aren’t seen such as the ones one the body below the shirt and the back of the head under the hair. Next unnecessary edges and vertices were removed to reduce the polygon count for parts with little detail such as the chest armour and the boots. As I originally went so far over the polygon limit it was difficult and time consuming to reduce the amount without sacrificing quality. However, the polygon count was reduced from 2873 to 1971 and the model was now ready for UV mapping and Texturing.

UV Mapping

UV Mapping worked well for this piece of assessment with minimal warping except for some small warping on the front of the face. Since the character had many odd shapes that I wasn’t used to cutting up like the shirt and arm/ hands some UV maps took a few attempts to get to a point I was happy with. The finished UV maps are presented below.

Texturing

Photoshop was used to make all the textures which included the body, shirt, pants, belt, chest armour, face, hair and guns. The shirt and pants just had a orange base colour and a speckled brush was used to add the effect of dirt and sand around the edges. This effect was used on most Textures to fit the desert like environment he will be placed into for the next assessment. I was happy with all the textures however I would have liked to ad more detail to the face, however due to time constraints I wasn’t able to.

Lighting and Rendering

Now that the model was complete it was time for the scene to be lit and rendered. The week 11 Tutorial was followed to add a simple backdrop and a key light, Fil light and the back light.

The model was then rendered in 5 positions showing all angles and perspectives. These are presented below

Reference List

1. Davies, H. (2020). Choosing References to Inspire Your Character Design | Blog | Domestika. Retrieved from https://www.domestika.org/en/blog/4207-choosing-references-to-inspire-your-character-design
2. BeginnerDrawingCourse. (2019). 7 Tips for Character Design - Drawing Better Characters — THE BEGINNER DRAWING COURSE. Retrieved from https://www.thebeginnerdrawingcourse.com/blogforartists/2019/11/14/7-tips-for-character-design-drawing-better-characters
3. Ryan. (2020). Fundamentals & Basics of Character Design | Creation Process & How-To Tips. Retrieved from https://www.idtech.com/blog/fundamentals-of-character-design
4. Eridey. Bring Energy and Life to Your Poses!. Retrieved from https://www.clipstudio.net/how-to-draw/archives/156164 (Eridey, n.d.)
5. Naghdi, A. (2021). color character palette, Complete guide on theory & practice + examples. Retrieved from https://dreamfarmstudios.com/blog/color-theory-for-character-design/

Assignment 2B - Basic Character Rigging and Posing

Character Rig

For Assessment 2-part B the model for One eyed Elijah was moved into a new scene ready for rigging. The rigging process consisted of placing Skeleton joints in the appropriate areas and connecting them. The week 12 demo was followed to ensure the process was done correctly. The process was quick and simple and no extra research was needed to complete the desired Rig. The demo specified the importance of accurately naming the joints, I followed this advice which did made skinning my character and checking the weights on joints easier. The complete rig is presented below.

At the start of this assessment, I had to decide what parts of the model I wanted to rig. After the Torso and main limbs were rigged, I decided to also rig the fingers to give me the option of having my character only hold one or no of his weapons. Cause of this decision I knew I would need a way to attach the models’ weapons to the Rig so this YouTube tutorial was found and noted for future reference.

The model was imported with the character holding the weapons and having the fingers wrapped around the handle/ trigger instead of laid out flat. This made rigging them accurately very difficult and time consuming since it was hard to find the correct position to place the middle two joints on each finger since the curves made it hard to gauge length.

As mentioned prior rigging the fingers was very time consuming and ended up being unnecessary as I later decided that I wanted the character to hold both weapons in the final pose as it better related to the story it was designed from. Importing the rig correctly with the fingers laid out or better planning at the beginning of the assignment could have saved me a lot of vital time. A Time-lapse is presented below which shows the entire Rigging process.

Skinning Character

Now that the character had a Rig, I was pleased with it was time to apply a skin allowing the rig to move the correct parts of the character accurately. Prior to attempting this part, a combination of both the week 12 and 13 Demos were watched so I could have a basic understanding of the process. The first attempt of skinning the character was very difficult and time consuming, the method showed in the demo videos was followed but due to how my character was modelled it was unsuccessful. Due to the character having multiple layers of clothing items and skin whenever a joint would move too far the internal polygons would collide with the outside polygons creating blackspots.

Two strategies were used to try and fix this problem. The first being moving specific parts of the model to the side to make painting the skin weights on the inside easier. Parts of the model had to temporarily be moved aside since the inside could not be painted even if the polygons in the way were hidden. This strategy was very time consuming and unsuccessful. The second strategy was to smooth or alter the opacity of the polygons that collided through as a joint was moved. This strategy was quick but also unsuccessful as it tended to cause the inside polygons on the other side of the joint be exposed. A time-lapse of this failed skinning attempt is presented below.

Due to how my model was created I knew I needed a new method if my character was to be skinned correctly and accurately. A large amount of research was done till this Tutorial was found showing a way of skinning a character piece by piece by selecting vertices. I knew this would solve the majority of my problems since the inside and outside polygons would be weighted equally at each joint.

This new method was much more successful and I was able to skin all necessary joints giving them accurate movement. Both hips however do fold into the body when they are extended forward or backwards to far, I was unable to add much smoothing around the joints as it created the inside polygons collide through again. This new method made skinning the character very simple and quick, a time-lapse of this successful attempt is shown below.

Controllers and Calisthenics Test

Now that the character had an accurate skin applied it was time to create controllers for each necessary joint. The week 13 Demo was re-watched and a helpful Tutorial for creating joint controllers in Maya was viewed prior to starting the process.

To make posing the character easier in future steps the controller colours and shape were changed to match specific limps. This process of adding controllers to each joint was simple and quick and allowed me to accurately control each necessary joint.

Now that the joint controllers had been applied it was time to make a simple calisthenics animation to display the characters movement. I was unfamiliar with this process so research was done to gather advice. A textbook on Producing Animation was found and helped to explain the process and reasoning to making a calisthenics animation test.

I wanted to demonstrate a large range of motion for each joint with this calisthenics animation test while also test the movements that would likely be used when posing the character. This involved demonstrating the characters leg and body movement with a squat and then testing the individual range of motion for the Torso, chest, head, shoulders, forearms and wrists.

Rendering, Posing and Lighting

The Rigged character was then imported into my Mos Eisley inspired environment ready for posing. Since the character is an action character, I wanted the pose to reflect this by presenting him in the moment of a dangerous feat. The pose takes inspiration from the scene in Fast and Furious 7 were Paul walker surfs on top of a moving car’s hood.

With this Inspiration the character was then posed on top of the spaceship I modelled earlier this semester. When posing the character, I tried to add emphasis on the force pushing back on him by placing him on one knee and tilting his body back. The lighting was then adjusted to place the shadows behind the character and a spot light was added to reduce shadows on the characters face.

The scene was now ready to be rendered. The resolution settings of 1024 by 576 was applied and the camera was placed in a close-up view of the character with the house and spaceship shown behind. The final render is presented below.

References

• Arata, D. (2017). Maya Weight Painting Tutorial (The Inside-out method). from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu73Yqgju14&list=LL&index=1

• Hermes, M. (2018). Maya 2018 Rigging / Animation tutorial : Have your character hold objects. from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qm0v9Dm1FQ&list=LL&index=4

• Walker, P. (2015). Fast and Furious 7 [Film]. Original Films.

• Winder, C., & Dowlatabadi, Z. (2021). Producing Animation (2nd ed., pp. 196-197). Focal Press.

• DIGA Hub. (2020). Create IK/FK Character Controller, Driven Key, Reverse Foot Rig, Constrains, and more in Maya 2020. from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOoPmaCXu2I