Dean Read Games Art And Design

My Own Project?

For BA6 we write our own projects and learning outcomes to fit towards a specialist subject we are particularly interested in.

Before we got told about this project I knew I'd want to do something to do with creating a 3D character as I hadn't gone through a character iteration through to a 3D model since BA2. I also wanted to utilize what I'd learnt from baking high details and texturing in BA5 to a organic model instead of a modular environment piece.

With that in mind though what was going to drive me through the project? What should my theme be, my direction? Our project learning outcomes are split into 3 sub-headings to easily categorize what is the purpose of our project.

The first is the easier one, WHAT? For what I simply have to say what I will be doing.

The next is the difficult one, WHY? Why is it I'm doing what I'm doing. This doesn't mean "because I want to further myself etc" But it's to give my project a meaning, if I don't give it a meaning others will read into my work and give it a meaning I didn't intended. Everything I do has a meaning behind it without realising it, but putting this into meaningful words is not as easy as I had thought. When I have this meaning I have my theme and direction.

And The Final one is, HOW? For this I have to say how I will achieve showing the meaning behind my work through my work. With all this in mind I went to work writing my own brief.

My Own Brief And Learning Outcomes.

What?

Create a 3D character model.

Why?

In a world full of technology, are we heading to a new renaissance? Filling homes with

Technology and Virtual reality coming into existence could cause terrible cultural

effects. Medical science is advancing at such a large rate with cloning becoming

increasingly realistic and creating living organs in a tube, simply Because we can. Does

this mean that we should do it though? With this in my mind I will look back to the first

speculations and fears based around advancements in technology and science in

previous renaissances. I can take reference from novels of the time such as

Frankenstein which appeared in London around 1818.

How?

Looking into the history of my home town, Norwich and England as a whole around the early-1800s I will aim to make a game ready character using contemporary practises. The game character will feature appropriate themed clothing and props combined with a visualisation of an ethical theme. I.E: Fear and cultural/religious issues involved around entering new eras in previous centuries, such as twisted abominations and darkness incarnate. I also wish to include influences from appropriate aged medical practises and scientific apparatus.

Research.

Now I had a rough direction the first thing I did was to go to the Bridewell museum in Norwich to find an appropriate time period to keep to. I read the descriptions and checked the years on almost every piece in the museum, after looking around I decided that around the 1820s (about 5 years before and after) would be the main inspiration for this project.

I then went to the Norwich Castle Museum a couple of days later which I found to be very beneficial at gathering resources from around the year 1820. I will go to Strangers Hall and will also organise a day trip to London to look at History museums around there too.

Clothing.

Clothing was one of the biggest Items to research first hand for my character. I was lucky to have collected a fair amount of clothing research considering the size of the 2 museums I had visited. I look forward to adding to it once I've been round a few more museums.

After visiting the Castle museum, Bridewell museum and the V&A museum I felt I had an okay understanding of the time era however I didn't manage to collect as many references of clothing in the exhibitions as I would have liked. For this reason I Googled a few more museums to see if I could find some more photo references, during my search I found an interesting collection of images on Pinterest.

Here is the link: England 1820s Clothing.

Accessories.

As well as looking at clothing I also looked at some Accessories and Props that I could take reference from. Shawls and Bonnets where a popular accessory to most women of this era, I will closely look at some more shawls and the materials used in them next time I take a trip to museums. As well as obvious accessories I looked at broaches and jewellery, and also at metalwork and Pottery of the time.

Scientific and Medicinal Equipment.

The meaning behind my project is heavily based around changes in eras and the advancement of science and medicine through history. I'm going to take influence from the scientific and medical practices of the time as well as the chemistry and biology behind this.

A Starting Base Mesh.

Before I can start my iterations I really wanted to know the starting shape for my characters body and head. I decided to go for a female character as I felt there was more I could do with it in terms of props and would allow me to do an interesting frankenstien-esque story, also it is a new area for me to explore.

The first step for me was to jump into Maya and make a low poly clean body. Making an organic model in Maya was one of the larger challenges of this project and something I was eager to learn to tackle. When I suggested this idea to my tutors they suggested I watched a video on how to make a very low and clean model in Maya.

Taking influence from this video and some reference photos I'd taken I began to make my base mesh. Once the mesh is completed I have a solid base to put a costume over.

Here you can see the development of the body. I constructed it in sections and tried to get the typology to follow the human figure. Once I had all my parts in okay places I took it into Zbrush and started pushing it all around till I had something more anatomically correct.

I managed to keep it at a rather low Tri count and tried to keep it as clean and simple as possible. Keeping it clean means I have something nice to take into Zbrush and start sculpting my details on to.

Using references from the internet, photo references and a study of the female figure during my life drawing session. In this session I was lucky enough to get to draw and study the model at the front, back, left and right angles similar to that of a character model sheet.

I found after my session I had a better understanding of the way the body curved which allowed me to make a more organic looking body. I feel I have almost have enough detail I will need for my model (As my character will be mostly covered by clothes) however I will need to go back and further the details in the elbow, forearms and hands.

Making the lower arm and hands have this extra detail is important for my character model as these are the parts of the body most likely to be seen uncovered. I now have enough detail to make my model look organic when combined with texturing and material attributes. I edited the model a little bit more to really strive for realism, if my base mesh isn't quite right when I put my clothes on I will end up with strange looking results which I want to try to avoid from the start.

With the body all done I needed to make a head. Before BA6 started I began making a low poly head in Maya as practise for the next project. However I thought I would be making a male character then so It didn't quite work for my purposes. Here you can see the process of me making the male head and then converting it into a more feminine and anatomically correct facial structure.

Taking the details from my highest poly mesh I will project that information onto my second lowest mesh using the baking techniques to generate a Normal map I was introduced to at the start of BA5.

Who Is The Character? How Would She Work In A Game?

She would be the main character of a game based around the famous novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Only with my own twists. Like Frankensteins' Monster she is an experiment, brought back by a loved one soon after death. Only un-like frankenstiens monster, she is beautiful not monstrous which brings up many different issues and a completely different outcome to her creation.

Despite looking like a pretty living human many still brand you (playing as her) as a monster and try to kill you, in particular members of the church. Word got out that you where being created and your creator (husband) was killed in front of you moments after being brought back to life. Having no memory of the last few weeks before your death (as your brain was dying) you do not remember dying and believe life was just a normal, happy life and you are the same woman as before. You are aware people criticised your husband for some of his medical practises, but to be killed so violently by a viscous mob led by high members of the church you do not understand.

You manage to escape and spend the rest of the game trying to find somewhere you feel you belong, somewhere safe where people wont be trying to kill you every few minutes. There are few who will help you along your way, being taken in by your beauty and charms, un-aware of what you truly are. However most will turn on you when the truth is discovered. You spend the game defending yourself, hiding and faking your identity. Using charms and looks to get around as many people as you can.

As the game progresses your memory begins to come back to you until you remember what it felt like to die and the feeling of being dead before being pulled back out to the world again. Eventually it all makes sense to you and you end up having to make the moral decision to die or live in solitude until your body and brain completely decay away.

There is no happy ending.

My 3 Main Themes.

For my iterations I will use 3 strong themes related to the advancements of the time period.

Theme 01.

This theme will portray Technology and Electricity development. In the early 1800s the voltaic pile was created, also an attempt at the electric motor was made in 1821. The 19th century was a big time for the development of electricity and magnetism with varying experiments taking place. In the mid/late 1700s public demonstrations of corpses limbs twitching when an electric pulse was sent through them where being displayed which influenced a lot of further experimentation on the capabilities of Electricity, Magnetism and Conductors. (Static Hair, elegant and simple clothing?)

Theme 02.

My next theme will visualise Medicine and Biological advancements. The 19th century was a time when diseases and illnesses was taken very, very seriously. Throughout this time extreme methods where used to tackle sickness, bloodletting and a type of mercury choride called Calomel where used to bleed and burn the toxins from the body. It was thought that a strong illness required a more powerful method of burning it from the body. As well as this the Stethoscope was invented in 1816 in France (Meaning England would have it by 1820s) which is still an important part of sickness analysis today. (Well covered, organic, poison themed clothing?)

Theme 03.

For my final theme I will concentrate on surrounding Death and Body Snatching for experiments. In 1832 the Anatomy Act was put in place, before this the only legal supply of bodies to experiment on and learn from where those sentenced to death and dissections by the court. During the 19th century with all these scientists experimenting bodies where in high demand, this meant an awful lot of body snatching went on through-out this era and the dead became goods for trade. It became so common many families would watch over the grave until it was buried and then continue for many nights, iron coffins became used for more wealthy families and also a framework of iron bars called mortsafes. (Tight curls hair, decorative and dark Raven-esque clothing?)

References:

All 3 of these designs would probably end up being equipment in the game, however I must chose only 1 to do for this project (I will probably do the others during summer holidays).

Modelling Clothes.

To make my clothes I thought I would try a new type of software. During a zbrush session about cloth my lecturer mentioned briefly that Marvellous Designer was a very good piece of software for real time cloth simulation in a realistic way.

With this in my mind I went home and watched some videos on the program, after watching them I decided I really wanted to test out this incredible software.

I got the program (I'm using version 3) and using the videos below as an introduction I began to make my characters clothing. (You may notice my decision in the end for costume design was the middle one as I liked the way the layers of cloth worked together. This did however make it the more difficult one to produce in a new piece of software, but for me that just made it more of a fun experience.)

I started by importing my characters body mesh as an avatar to wrap in clothing. Using the pattern window I created these fabric segments and sewed them together, in the way that you would with fabric in reality and by using varying material properties I got the clothes to simulate over my model.

I'm really pleased with the results, however in the version I'm using I could only bring out my clothing mesh as a triangulated mesh and I would want it in quads for my purposes. I took the model into Zbrush and Zremeshed it into quads so I had cleaner pieces to work with.

The mesh ended up a little messier than I would have liked as I re-meshed some parts without symmetry, In marvellous designer 4 I can change my clothing into a clean quad mesh before exporting it out. I will definitely need to get my hands on the newer version of the software for future use as I really enjoyed the process of making clothing in the program and was blown away by the results.

Extras.

With the basic clothing done It was time to make all the extra little pieces I would need to finish the costume design. I started off by sculpting in all the little details I wanted on my clothing.

I then made all the extra pieces in Maya to create a low poly completed character to generate my high poly pieces from.

I took all my pieces into Zbrush to sculpt some high details onto them, below are some Low/High comparisons of all the pieces I would be adding to the character. For the tassel I made the High poly first using Fibre Mesh in Zbrush then made a cylinder shape to match the shape of the tassels.

With all the separate pieces modelled in a way I was happy with I will now need to generate normal maps from my high poly pieces and put them on the low poly mesh. I started off by doing test bakes for each separate object and when I had generated nice normal maps I pieced them together into my 3 material groups.

Texturing.

I will be using 3 4k texture sheets, one for the skin, one for the clothing and one for props (I have a fair amount of space on the props one for If I decide to add more later) I ended up with rather nice normals from my baking which projected the information from the High to my low poly rather well.

Now I have generated all the fake geometry I wanted It is time for me to add some colours to my character, but what colours?

I didn't know what colour scheme would suite the mood best so I generated some colour studies in Marvelous designer. I tried many, many, many different material and texture combinations but here are the ones that had the most differences for me to decided between.

Although my original Idea for the colour scheme was a gross green/ yellow tinge colour I actually ended up liking the reds the most in terms of colour. My favourite pattern Idea is definitely the dark grey and purple one however the grave robber costume would be this colour scheme and I really wanted something different for my medicine and biology costume. I felt it's a rather colourful subject.

I generated all my diffuse maps in quite a flat way as I knew I would need them to be fairly simple for use in PBR (Physical based rendering), Which was something I wanted to try for this model.

I'm rather happy with the result of the normal maps and diffuse together.It's very shiny right now almost as if it is wet but the lighting information will all be done as part of PBR in the game engine or whatever PBR rendering software I use.

Generating Materials.

I knew I wanted to use the material nodes in UE4 to generate some PBR materials. I'd had a few introductory sessions into it from university and it seemed a fairly simple concept as I had used the material nodes in UE4 to generate some metallic, transparent and emmisive materials for my half life console in BA5.

First of all I made new normal maps taking information I added with the colours of surface texture etc.. by generating HeightMaps, then normal maps and then overlaying them with my origional Normal Maps, I ended up with these.

They haven't changed all that much and I think a bit more surface detail would be better in places, particularly the clothing one. I would like to have much more texture from the type of fabric it is being shown.

Using the Unreal Help documentation I generated the kind of maps I would need to denote the metallics and shiny (or not) properties of my materials. The maps I generated are rather basic and If I had more time and more of an understanding of how these maps worked before I generated them I would definitely put more detail into them, particularly on the etched pieces of metal to make them look much more layered, used and carved into rather than a bit flat.

I realised that the roughness map is where most of the textured surface look comes from rather than the usual diffuse. This is something I will definitely learn from in the future as I feel 3D is the route I will most likely go down.

I will also need to generate my Ambient Occlusion from Maya or using xnormals as I have with my normal maps.

Game Engine.

I took my model into Unreal 4 and started making my materials. The materials I made where relatively simple to produce as I didn't have any really challenging transparency parts or glowing parts. However I did need to make a nice looking glass texture for my bottle.

Using this video I generated my glass material as well as all my others.

With the materials all done I set up some lighting using point lights and adjusted my sky box to create a nicer, darker scene to present my character.

My character came out looking a little flat in game engine. I believe increasing the contrast of my normal map and adding a bit more lighting information to the surface would help with that. I also have not got an ambient occlusion on this version which I feel is the main issue creating that lack of depth. The metal also looks a bit murky and for some reason doesn't have that sheen I'm after.

Although these are a few issues they do not bother me too much as I will be presenting my final in marmoset, this was merely a test of making these PBR materials in Unreal 4 purely for my own development. I feel I've now learnt a lot (I managed to get a nice glass texture and understand the theory behind it and also got some sub surface lighting on my skin) and will take this further forwards next time I make materials in Unreal 4 learning from my mistakes.

Final Renders.

After a while making materials and modelling/sculpting in a variety of programs I was ready to bring it all together to produce a nice looking final model. Choosing a nice background image to do some image based lighting that complimented my model I began to piece together my materials in marmoset.

I did try to make my background scene (HDRI) more themed to the time era with a 1820s town or something similar but all the images I found where too low resolution and didn't compliment my model as much as the default background I used originally.

Here are the renders I will be submitting as well as a turn-table which includes a slight visualisation of the modelling process behind my character.

Posing?

Although I ended up with a fairly nice looking model I felt it was rather lifeless presenting it in the dull 'ol T-pose. Because of this I decided to do a bit of research into posing my character without ruining the geometry too much.

In the end I found Zbrush has some good 'Transpose tools'. Because my character had so many little pieces and wasn't separated into sensible sub tools I went for the rigging option using Zspheres. I'd also had a bit of experience rigging in Maya so was eager to see what Zbrush was like for rigging. I found a very useful video and just gave it a go.

Here you can see my Zsphere skeleton and my character in a rough pose.

I then exported the model in its pose and cleaned up any stretching pieces, particularly the tassels. Unfortunately when I exported the mesh out I realised that my UVs had gone so I couldn't texture my posed model. But this didn't bother me too much as I found you can see the mesh posed rather nicely and almost more clearly without any textures on it.

I went for quite a creepy mid-walk pose. I wanted the still image to show a slow, sad kind of movement and got the foot placement to be somewhat 'zombie-esque' to show the sadness and death around this young, beautiful looking character. I've also pieced together the Stethoscope and Calomel powder to create the defensive weapon she would use to spray toxic gases at attackers within the game.