FMP: Designing the Colossus 1

The colossus is meant to be a main focus here and at the heart of the whole project.  There are a lot of considerations - I can't just go ahead and make any old rock monster.

The colossus must  be...
* Identifiable - I want people to know it's a colossus and not a pile of rocks
* Animated - I don't just mean moving, but have an energy, and readable manoeuvres/attack patterns
* Integrated with the environment - If it's an ocean fight maybe consider oceanic life & Palette etc
* Mystical & Living elements - an underlying link with humanity through symbols and anatomy.

The colossus should be...
* Interesting -  I want it to be appealing to everyone, including One Direction fans & National Geographic fans
* Detailed - contrasting elements & materials for good read (integrating local lore and backstory)
* Dynamic & Exciting - Give him/her an explosive intro, make it's movements shake the earth
* Characterised - Is it evil or maybe angry?  Is it stoic and defensive?  Is it a girl or a boy maybe?

I have been thinking about the design since my initial FMP proposal and have narrowed it down considerably.  Initially we were thinking about an epicly sized one, but technically that is very hard... Would of been nice though... was considering having the moon/stars move and is actually its eyes as an intro.  A massive waterfall as a belt that dissipates before reaching the ground (Like angel falls).

Anyhow - I'm getting ahead of myself - here's some reference

I want a lumbering biped and like the gorilla-esque form with the long heavy arms and lumbering gaite.  The first picture here has some nice stylization I might rob - but more importantly check the flock of birds surrounding it like an aura - this might look cool and can use a similar process I used to create animated flame particle effects.

Here are some recent thumbnails I drew to help think and plan the design.  I have mentally been taking notes and looking back a lot finding what I like, what would work well and what is just bad.

I have also been doing speed painty things to help get a feel for the character and scene.  Photobashing is an effective way to quickly get concepts out

A bit typical  - but maight work if the player is actually on the island and works their way up - maybe animating arms and bits seperately, which can mean seperate meshes and more detail

"More weather" was some feedback so I went OTT and made this image nearly all weather and abstract marks - Visually pleasing, the atmospheric fog adds distance/scale.  As a monster design it is a brick or a bit like The Thing.  This image raises the question "how the hell do I fight this?" which I dunno how to answer

With these thumbs I am leaning towards a volcanic or fire elemental colossus.  It's just going to be easier to make interesting with exploding magma and glowing lava veins.  I have to make something that is integrated with its environment and think of the event as a whole as well.

On the design below I'm playing with the lava idea and thinking how it could look cool - Would definately add "excitment" and a weapon also.  Also the vents on the back could work as a signal and maybe be visually adapted as wings, possibly adding another stage to the battle.  There is quite a bit to consider and needs addressing ASAP seeming the environment does rely on this design heavily.

Here I am developing a previous thumbnail and adding lava!  I quite like the fundamental design, but is maybe too evil for me.

So, getting closer to a finalized design, I really want to incorporate vegetation into the design though and doesn't really mix well with magma.  I aim to have the design finalized by the end of February (one month), which needs a rig and animation, particle effects, event triggers and all sorts of technical crap.

A couple of others - I prefer the left one - for me is the most interesting so far. And yeah - floating rocks/particles looks nice and is easy.

I have been working on elements like rocks and materials I know I will be using, which will help with the design and modelling process in 3D.  I am also working on the landscape of the level and modular sets to fill this out, but that's another post.

FMP: Templates & other boring stuff

I'm gonna hopefully be throwing out a lot of work over the coming months and have been thinking about solidifying this and presenting it well.

Here is a site that I was very impressed with.  The way I like to present work and see it is clearly - an easy and consistant read is important.  I have fel short before with presentations - I just want to get them out of the way and cram everything onto a single page.  I am quite engaged with my work though and pretty comfortable talking about it in sessions to get help.  Any way  I am aiming to have a decent portfolio at the end of this course, and a real blog or two, and should be working towards that now.

Ok! to present 3D work there are many ways...

* In engine is primarily what I want -If I get that to look great then that's wonderful, which won't be for a little while.

* Program renders - 3DS Max has flexible lighting and materials with mental ray & the Arch & Design material.  Zbrush is ok for WIPs and can render & compress turntables very quickly - requires compositing for best results.

Working on a decent render scene in 3DS Max - Needs specular & diffuse to shine

Zbrush exports compiled in Photoshop - needs a template for presentation! Custom clay material looks ok no UVs

* Marmoset needs a mention as it is one of the few legitimate ways to get Physical Based Rendering, which is going to be used in next gen (UDK4 & Licenced Cry Engine will use these for example).

Marmoset - The diffuse here is a random reference - very quick & easy to create more presets with nDo2

* Composites  - Putting a series of images together in Photoshop is how to get the best results, you can get very good grabs a layer them and paint over using photo-bashing and the like.  I feel this is more important for concepting maybe, but would be an idea for final presentations.

This is my template so far - Nothing spectacular, but unifying a look for the project (maybe needs a project logo)

* Sketchfab is slowly getting more popular - Enabling anyone to embed game ready assets online, this is very nice, especially to show off topology as you can rotate around the model freely with or without wires.

* Youtube, maybe not the most appropriate video hosting site, but very easy to use and popular.  For 3DS Max, Marmoset, and for decent UDK videos you need to compile screen shots.  I have learned to use After Effects a bit - Essential for compressing and combining footage.  It is also very easy to incorporate images into video - which should probably be my ultimate goal for presentations.

It's a judgement call on how far to take each asset... Lots of my work will be technical and problem solving unfortunately... but am thinking about showcasing some custom shaders/textures in UDK and animating the colossus.

The Colossus: Structure

My FMP (final major project) I think is a bit ambitious maybe?  It involves a bit of everything but at its core is a presentation of a colossus type creature.  For this there will of course be a colossus (a giant monster made from earth and such), and also an environment, and even a hero character as well.

This will also have structure, with a beginning, middle and end.  There is a standard pop formula I like to think of…  For pop music three and a half minutes with a slow rise in tension/drama, but with a bridge near or after half way.  They may often come back with extra harmonies to exaggerate the chorus.  This is the basic structure to lots of media – but the bride might be a plot twist or a change of location.  For example in Fight Club the bridge or twist was finding out he was both characters.  In Lord of the Rings it is reaching Rivendale or Braunstone or something.  Anyways it’s good to be aware of this stuff.  My favourite was star trek – always two plots which would tie together in the 3^rd quarter.  In TV there is a slightly different formula to accommodate for adverts. (heres the first link on google explaining the Hollywood formula)

I will incorporate what should be obvious as height changes, a development in palette, a contrast in pace and information density.  I do want to incorporate a little exploration.  A "trick" is to have everything make sense and work together.  I might need a trigger to kill the boss - I don't want this to be a lever on a wall for no reason.  One of the hardest bits is coming up with a strong idea.

One of the tricky things is tying it all together aesthetically and making it not look like crap.  I have been working a little on presentation and creating render scenes and the like.  Another problem is finding inspirations and filtering out the bad ideas or ones that are hard for me to pull off.

I still haven’t decided on a design for the colossus yet, but check out my pinterest moodboard.  I friggin’ love pinterest – it’s like a decent google images that has been filtered by people’s taste and not a machine – It also honours the original poster by facilitating their links.

I have been making little pixel style thumbs for my colossi ideas.  I did this for a few reasons 1) I love and grew up with pixel art (spectrum 48K>Megadrive). 2) Is a great way to minimize detail and focus on form and silhouette. 3) I will use these as a form of markings/carvings, like a language or something in game. 4) I can use to bolster presentation – ie borders/patterns.

I do luurve pre-historic artifacts and art, or whatever is left of it, and is a big influence for me.  I will most likely incorporate lots of these primal idioms through content, shapes, patterns and feel.

Rigology

I thought I would have a go at rigging my character just to see how it all works.  I've been rinsing online lessons from Digital Tutors who specialize in AutoDesk software.  There are learning paths, which involve  hours of lessons and are aimed to give the learner a quick start and broad knowledge of the subject.

So why rig?  "Why not"? is the real question - it's totally boring and technical (not very arty).  There is a site called Mixamo where you can rig a biped in moments with a click, but that way I learn nothing.  I have quite an interest in animation, I remember trying it on deluxe paint on the old Amiga.. but is a little different now.  I have Marvelous Designer, which is a clothing program - This works best with character rigs to dress the mesh up, which is another reason to do this.


 Another way around rigging is posing instead - Zbrush is great for this and should probably be used when in a rush or for concepting.  My hope is it will get quicker and easier each time.  For my project I might use the UDK default player rig - which will mean no animating is needed for the character.

Creating bones

For this project I have created a custom rig, bone by bone - This will be handy for my FMP, and may also open new paths in my workflow.  I learned a lot about hierachies and linking items - There is a parent bone and a child, which effects how they handle.  The root is just below the centre mass at the pelvis.  I found with this method I was tweaking the bones, putting twists in them as I went along.

The most exciting thing about creating bones is naming them!  Every bloody one of them... Which is unfortunately vital.

Skinning

Nothing new here we did skinning in year one, but I feel more confident now & treating rigging with a bit more seriousness.  One thing I have learned about rigging... Hard surfaces = Super easy, Organic surfaces = Easy, draping fabrics and intricate separate objects = well hard.  I think in some engines there are systems for draping and flowing hair & cloth which emulates the natural animation flow.

Animation Controls

It's not Ripley in a power loader - These are the animation controls - move them around to animate the model

This is where the fun starts to happen - We link the bones to "control items" to move each part of the model.  This gives you controllers to simply move around the body in a natural fashion.

This requires correct hierachy and a lot of "constraints" to prevent the character from warping out of shape.  These are getting pretty complicated, creating HI IK (Like IKs but with joint information to include roll) and point chains to create controls is a little confusing - I'm using helpers and the motion tab more than ever.

Even though this leasson I'm going through is "Level 1" it also covers what are called "morph targets" in Zbrush.  These are controllers to store different points and let you slide the value.... err an example is tip-toeing or Footroll - at zero value is relaxed, at maximum is full tip toe, at minimum is weight on heel.  This is really useful and stupidly fiddly to understand in 3DS Max, but what it will mean is control over fingers and the ability to create different grips, and even facial expressions.

Nearly There workwise

Has been a while since my last post.  Today I have been polishing off my projects...

For my vehicle project I had to redo the textures and materials - unfortunately I used the Xoliil 2.0 Shader, which I can't seem to run at uni... This meant a bit of tweaking to the of the textures for the supplied direct X shaders... and putting everything in a new scene to clean up random scene materials that wouldn't go.

I'm also polishing off my rooftop.  I used this opportunity to learn about creating landscapes in UDK, which I will be doing again in my FMP.

Right now I am working on rigging my character from scratch, manually creating the bones instead of using the biped rig.  This is for a few reasons, the most obvious is to pose my character for a better final shot.  Also Marvelous Designer works better with rigs instead of just geometry, which is something I want to learn to use for better sculpting and cloth assets (is also very quick after basics are done).

Going through a "Quick Start" to rigging tutorial series on digital tutors

I have been trying to learn all the bits I want to do during my FMP, which is a combination of character/boss and environment.  I want to be able to fully concentrate my efforts on that after this week.  I plan to be producing decent renders of the created assets as I go during the project aiming for one a week.

Here's my character.  She is meant to be a modern Mongolian archer with a twist.  I am hoping to add a raven as half of the inspiration is from Tibetan falconers (who's birds even hunt wolves).  I've been learning a bit about Physical Based Rendering, which involves the gloss map a lot more and emulates ray/photons in real-time pretty well.  Using Marmoset Toolbag 2 is a lot better than it's predecessor.  Any how here's a turntable of her.