3D - Anatomy knowledge and 3D scanning

I've been doing 3D and 2D for about six years now but it was not until a few years ago that I really started thinking more seriously about it. It started out as a hobby when I got involved in the modding community of Warcraft 3. I was always and still am amazed by the user-created content of Warcraft 3. I started out by doing icons for abilities and later moved on to models, this was without no prior knowledge. I learned by reading tutorials and asking around a forum for help which really got me interested into 3D modeling.

These are some of the icons I made for Warcraft 3

My first character model, fully rigged and animated

In my last year of school before university I, with the guidance of my teacher started looking into anatomy and was introduced to a whole new level of both drawing and modeling. I started learning to draw and bought my first wacom which I still have to this day. My anatomy skills in 2D aren't the best but I'm always practicing it to get better. I actually prefer doing environments over characters. Here below are some pictures of my 2D work, I selected some environments, some characters and thumbnails so you can see different things.

Some of my recent environment drawings

Character thumbnails

Some thumbnail practice

I enjoy doing characters and anatomy in 3D using a sculpting program like Zbrush. You get a lot of control over everything and it's easy to spot mistakes or faults. When I draw in 2D however I like to draw environments more than characters. I do draw traditionally regularly to maintain and improve my skill level and this is mostly where I practice my anatomy when I get the chance to. I am not too confident in drawing characters and I probably need to work on that. I feel that I have the knowledge but I need to learn how to apply it.

I think what I need to do now is just make more characters to get a deeper understanding and build a visual library for anatomy. Practice makes perfect and I especially need to work on the construction of characters. I'll look at disney concept art for construction help since they have a really awesome way of doing things.

Another thing we've been doing recently which I've never done before is 3D scanning. 3D scanning is basically a way to put a real life object into the digital world. You do this by taking multiple pictures from different angles and then letting a software construct a model using the pictures you provided. I haven't really tried it before but it's a really awesome and effective way of getting realistic results.

Here above is a 3D scanned head that we started working on in class. You get really nice results from making low polys from 3D scans since they are imported from reality. Just bake the lighting and the texture and you got a really nice model that can look very close to the original 3D scan. I haven't really experimented that much with photogammetry but I'm considering buying a good camera and some lighting tools for 3D scanning. Thanks for reading!

3D - Finishing up

This is my last blog post for this course I've been taking. I'll talk about the creation of my wolf, how it turned out and some final thoughts. Last post I presented my character background and I will now show you what I've done and how it turned out. This was quite a challenge and a brand new experience seeing as it is my first time making an animal.

My first goal was to get the overall shape of the wolf right. I did this by modeling a low poly directly from the concept turnaround by placing it as a plane. The concept turnaround wasn't perfect since the wolf is in a walk cycle and some parts aren't properly lined up. Nonetheless it still is an awesome concept and there's no need to get picky. My main concern was getting the proportions right. When working with organic recognizable creatures such as humans, dogs or cats it's hard to get things right anatomically. Since everyone knows how these look, anatomical faults stands out more. When designing fantasy looking one often tends to exaggerate on certain parts. I had to make it look believeable and still retain the exaggerations of the concept.

The low poly turned out pretty okay for a rough prototype. I made the decision to make a hipoly model in zbrush to try and capture that feeling of authenticity. This was a very time consuming process because this also required me to retopo the model after I was done. I started by just sculpting around in Zbrush to try and find some nice shapes and just refine things.

After playing around for a while I decided it was time to start checking references. I put in a lot of time into the high poly and I constantly alt tabbed to check my references. I would look up things like: "Wolf muscle anatomy", "Wolf paw" and "Wolf profile". I had originally designed a moodboard but I found that my current moodboard was not enough so I googled search like a madman for the entirety of the high poly. One of the big challenges for this model was the fur which I will talk more about later on but when I modeled the high poly I did so with in mind that fur would come on later in the process. I basically modeled the high poly without fur which helped me in modeling the muscles. Since all the reference pictures I looked up were of wolves with thick fur it was hard to find what was underneath all that fur, I had to fill in a lot of empty spaces with my imagination.

Here's the final high poly with some basic poly paint applied to it.

Here's the moodboard of pictures I collected in the pre-production phase

Great, the high poly is completed and now it's time for retopo in 3Dcoat. This was also a time-consuming phase seeing as I wanted to get a good edge flow. I thought I could save time by relying on Zbrush's Zremesher or 3Dcoat's Autopo making the low poly for me but this was what took up the most time. I spent several hours just configuring and trying different things with both programs and I never got good results. I figured it wasn't working out for me so I started doing it manually in 3Dcoat using strokes which is f*cking awesome. You can really plan your edgeflow with 3Dcoat's strokes. So I did some retopoing and I ended up with a pretty neat edgeflow.

Here's how I worked with the strokes function in 3Dcoat, really liking it.

The finished low poly.

Although I liked the edge flow and the retopo I was shocked to find out that I was way over poly budget. Originally I had intented for roughly 2000 tris for the body and the rest on fur and eyeballs, the target was 3000 tris on the finished model. I was already having about 2600 tris on the main body, before the fur and eyeballs were added but there wasn't time enough to change anything so I decided to work with it. The UV mapping on the body went pretty smoothly and there's not much to say about that. I baked the poly paint, normal and lighting information from the high poly now which makes up for my texture.

Low poly, UV mapped and textured

Now for the thing that I struggled with the most, the fur. This was really, really difficult for me. The plan was to use lots of planes, alpha and a good texture to make the fur. I was already running out polys so I didn't really have much to work with. One thing I noticed was that doing fur is really hard. I experimented so much on the fur. Trying different planes from different angles with different textures. I just couldn't get it right and time just ran out. I had to send in an unfinished product which saddens me. I think I have a solid construction but I'm working towards a deadline and I must deliver on time even if it's not finished. So in the midst of all the fur experimenting I had to wrap up and settle on something. I'm dissatisfied with the end result and I know I have a lot more to offer than this. Not everything was shit though, the high poly and the edge flow of the low poly turned out good. I think I captured the organic feel I was going for, it doesn't look completely shit.

All in all I've learned invaluable lessons from these past two assignments. I need to adjust my scope and prioritize better. In these both assignments I've spent way too much time on the high poly when there's not much time available and that's something I will take into consideration for my next model.

So what about the course? This is probably the last post about this 3D I course and I want to talk a little about it. This course has been amazing, my teacher has been amazing and all my fellow classmates have been amazing. Some of my classmates have never used 3D prior to this course and they've worked really hard and produced amazing stuff. I believe everyone have supported eachother really well and the atmosphere has been great overall. As an aspiring 3D artist I have grown over these past 10 weeks and am now stronger than ever. This was all for this course and I hope you'll be reading my blog in the future.

3D - Wolf character

A little while ago I started working on a character model for school. The assignment was to first choose concept art of a character and give it a backstory. After pre-production you are to make a low poly with a good organic edgeflow, maximum 3k tris. It is then to be UV mapped and textured at a 1024x1024 resolution so you're really limited with both tris and resolution.

I haven't completed my model yet but I believe I'm well on my way. As for what concept I chose I felt that I didn't want to do anything I've done before so I ended up looking up animals instead. After looking for a while I found a really cool concept of a feral wolf.  I really like how this looks and I'm looking forward to making the fur. Here below is some pictures and after that is the backstory I planned for the character.

Here's the concept I decided on. While the turn around isn't perfect (the wolf is in a walk cycle and things aren't lined up) I still have a lot to go on.

A quick draw over to plan my edgeflow

Name: Gnaw

Appearance: A gigantic male dire wolf with rugged ink-black fur, rivaling even a grizzly bear in size. A first impression would only describe Gnaw as ferocious, deadly and yet majestic.
A yellow glowing stare that pierces through the night and razorsharp fangs and claws surely you wouldn't want to have a meeting with this wolf.

Huge dire wolves like Gnaw tend to live long lives, longer  than your average human under the right condititions. Though age unknown Gnaw has been around long enough to have tales told and songs sung about him. Even among dire wolves Gnaw is special, he has been around for atleast 90 years.

Gnaw's body is made for combat and hunting, a predator at heart. Under his thick rugged fur lies countless scars from various battles. As one of the most powerful creature on the top of the food chain, Gnaw dislikes being toyed with and controlled. He has an iron will and a strong mental fortitude.

Gnaw wanders around his den in the forest with his four predatory legs. It is not unusual for him to move out of his territory occasionally, usually to hunt new prey or defeat rivals. When hunting he moves swiftly and stealthily, although his huge body makes it harder. Prefers to hunt alone.

Gnaw prefers to eat prey that can fight back, large animals like moose or bears although they do not put up much of a fight. His absolute favourite food though is the blood and flesh of his enemies or rivals. Gnaw wants tough prey like sabre toothes or mammoths and after his victory he eats them in an almost ritual-like manner. His opinions on humans are that they are weak, fragile creature that only act as irritation for the grander matter of things. They attempt to use weapons and fire to drive Gnaw away but it is futile seeing how dwarfed they are by this ferocious dire wolf. Even in larger numbers they eventually flee for their lives, weapons left behind. Although the weapons do make for nice decorations by his lair.

Although he is talented with tactics and has a high intelligence he prefers to play with his prey. If there is no challenge, make one. He gives his enemies a significant advantage in fights and hunts so he can enjoy himself. He is more for physical challenges than intellectual ones and tries not to think too much.

Not much is known about Gnaw, he just simply appeared one day and changed the hierarchy of the forests. Many have tried to best him in combat, all have lost and few land a wound on him. There are times when enemies would come to ambush Gnaw in packs but his combat prowess and intimidation would end up scaring them away although many of his scars were from those ambushes. His biggest secret is what took place before his appearance. His childhood must have had quite the impression on him seeing as he is now.

His main goal in life is much related to his hobby which is fighting with his life on the line and winning. All he really wants is the title of the strongest although a lonewolf it his to himself he must prove his worth. He is continually expanding his territory to prove his worth and defeat new enemies. 

And that's his background, I left a lot of things untold to preserve his mysterious image and let other people fill in the blanks so they can create their own theories. This character would fit very well into a game like Dark Souls as a boss. He is dangerous and intimidating, if he was a boss in a game I'm sure that the player will be backed up into a corner and fighting for his life. You would play as some kind of warrior or knight and Gnaw would be a major obstacle to overcome.

This would fit best on a console as they tend to immerse the player more than sitting on a PC with distractions, also for the comfortable controls. The target audience for this game would be players who enjoys challenges and like exploring the world and learning more about it. I tried to describe the game world I can see Gnaw fitting in below with some crappy rhymes because why not!

Glowing eyes lurking in a dark misty land.

In the forests deep a spider's web so grand.

Wyverns soaring in the sky roaming around mountains of heaven high, 

forests thicker than the darkest blood and fierce rivers just waiting to flood.

This world has a very chaotic eco system as there are many dangerous creatures lurking about, Gnaw being one of them. So in this world Gnaw would be the baddest of the bad and you would probably end up fighting him sooner or later. Well that's it for me, my next post will be more on the actual production of Gnaw. I'll show you the process I'm using in his creation and my final results. Thanks for reading!