The Ace is on the case!

To practise high detail modelling I decided to make a base mesh of Ace Ventura.

This model turned out to be about 1300 tris and took about two and a half hours for the body and an hour and a half for the head.

However when Msmoothing the model, the loops on the face mess up. Also the loops around the eyes end too abruptly and start crossing the nose.

The points on the jaw do create two pinch points which if I was to animate the characters mouth would be a hinderance. So in future I need to be aware of this.

UDK

This week I have been playing around with UDK to gain a basic understanding of its operations. I quickly mocked up a box version of the concept for my group projects game.

The scale is completely wrong. I should have looked into the Unit scaling for a character in UDK.

Rigging.

Last week I spent a few hours attempting to rig a shoulder since one of my weaknesses is rigging. Here were the results:

It looks kind of ok but there seems to be a increase in mass of the under arm as it stretches up, mostly because the bones are still influencing the chest a little too much as the arm goes up. I will have to do some more experiments as well as investigate how games over come this.

Idle Hands are Adam's Play things.

This evening I thought I'd just give Adam Barton's hand tutorial a quick blast to keep up my 3D skills.

Here is the result:

 

Its not perfect but it took me only 24 minutes to knock out. I could have spent a little longer on sorting out the fingers thicknesses.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

After reviewing my own 3D work from the 2nd year:

Elza Walker

 

• I did not utilise the textures wisely. High resolution textures I should have been able to get more detail into it.
• I did not utilise a specular map or use a normal map effeciently.
• I did not create or render the model to be simpathetic to the concept.

Walter Sobcheck

• Low poly model to create an iconic character.
• Texture very pastel like. Needed to be sharper clearer
• Creases on the shirt weren't observed correctly. Also the unwrap of the shirt should have been straight

RuneScape Troll

• Should have used the full 1000 triangles given for the art test. Around the shoulders would have probably benefitted from more.
• Could have planned the textures better to be more simpathetic to the vertex coloured model as to enhance it.

Pretty much I lack any flare or consideration to the presentation, not giving it any real thought, which I will learn and improve apon.

I have tracked down what I would consider to be a bad model:

• The model lacks any kind of texturing beyond a very basic colour.
• From the look of the model it is too round to be a basic low poly model so hasn't utilised the geometry or simplified the geometry. Its shape is also quite apalling.
• Its presentation is poor. No turn around, texture or wireframe renders to give a basic idea of how this model looks other than the one render on a black background.

 Now for what I would consider a good model. It is the Death Knight model created by Ben Mathis (Poopinmymouth):

• The model utilises all of its geometry well to present this character in a low end spec.
• The background colour does not detract from the clarity of the model presented.
• The layout is easy on the eye and presents all the necessary information without swamping the image.

If I was pushed to say where my work was compared between the good and the bad example, I would be inclined to say my work was 2/5 of the way between the two.

After looking at several presentation sheets I decided to have a crack at making a better presented sheet. Here was the result:

 

With this version I tried creating an interesting yet not distracting background, removing the heavy text that I used to use, relegating it to a smaller font confined to the corners of the page.

This still needs improvement as I feel it is overcrowded but is a lot more interesting than the original image.