Robot Pirates Facial Rigging

After a busy week where not much was done towards this character, I felt it was needed to update on the facial rigging. Last week I was able to finish it, but for no apparent reason I forgot to post it. So here it goes:

While the mouth controls are done with blendshapes into 2 positions, sad and smile. The eyebrows have 3  joint skinned to certain vertices on the eyebrows and than constrained onto 3 point controls, this whole new set up will allow me more freedom when posing the character and and will be able to create a face for any situation.

Eyebrows Set Up

Eyebrows Test

Happy Face

Sad Face

The objective before the end of this weekend is to apply another 2 passes of texturing, one with the actual texturing and some extra detail, then what is left is the dirt.

However in terms of Facial Rigging I still have to control the eyes, it is proving challenging thus far.

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The Day of the Invisible Cannibals from Beyond the Stars- Debut Trailer

The Day of the Invisible Cannibals from Beyond the Stars was the final outcome from a group project done at university. Ruben Martins, Ethan Shilling and Shahbir Hameed formed the fictional studio B3D Studios, and together produced this animation and I'm proud to present it.

Enjoy!

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Robot Pirates Texturing I - Blocking out Colours

Here is a quick update on my Robot Pirate character, rigging is past and what is left to do now is a quick facial rigging to enable the character to smile, and the long task of texturing it. I have started both task and I'm working simultaneously on them, while I created a set-up to begin sculpting the blend-shapes, i have also started to block out colours for the character.

As you can see the character's clothes changed, this was due some previous feedback I have received when designing the character. Character Designer, Justin Wyatt suggested me to vary his colour from the the villain and sidekick colours therefore the blue now comes to play. I do think is working as blue and yellow are two complementary colours.

This is the 1st step of many as I will revisit and apply more passes on this character, a texture pass and retouch pass ( final touches) and dirt pass. Without forgetting the normal and the specular maps.

EDIT**

After a misshapen yesterday, where I deleted the previous blocked out colours, I restart to block colours however this time I took some advice and did a variation for the cloth which follows the original design better.  I have to agree that the red colour fits the character better, however I will do also 2 variations when I model the villain. 

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Robot Pirates Rigging

With skinning done, Rigging was the next stop, the less creative process in a character pipeline, where you create controls in order to ease in the animation stage. although not creative, it is a essential process and without it animation would be almost impossible. I have to say I enjoyed doing some rigging and it was great getting back to understand how rigging works.

In this character, I have used the same rigging set-up, that I did with the Erich Zann Characters, with a variation of rigs in both arms. However, I have been learning a bit more advanced rigging where I am able to use squash and stretch features.

As I feel more confident, I also can begin customise my own rigging set up, where I will vary the rigging according to what characters are or do.

Here is a couple of pictures showing the different rigs: when the character pipeline is finished I will be sharing a few videos testing the rigging, skinning and cloth simulation.

FK Rig                                              IK Rig

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Robot Pirates- Skinning

I have been quite busy figuring out the skinning for this character, indeed it had given me a lot of thought because how it was modelled. Being build in parts and being them hard surface, the challenge was not in the actual skinning and do the weights but how to bind and where to bind. The solution was using a different approach while some pieces and bound to the body, with the weights fully attached to the respective joint, other body parts like the hands are skinned and with the weights painted. Also the accessories were parented to the joints so they move with it.











Finally I have also fixed the shirt to it moves with the rest of the body. everything seems to be working, now onto the rigging.

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Robot Pirates UV Layouts

Just a quick update on the Robot Pirate model. The most boring task in CG has been done on this model, laying out UVs. This time I was feeling more confident on UV Mapping. however they were so many details that took me longer to do it. Though I learnt how to approach different types of geometry instinctively, which will help me in a long run for future projects.

Skinning, Rigging and then Texturing... a step closer to the final model :)

Stay tuned!!

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Robot Pirates Scuplting

With the hero pirate modelled, moved into Zbrush, and started to sculpt the accessories he carries ( all the clothes). Without further ado here is the progress thus far on the Hero Pirate. 

I have to say I love to use Zbrush, because it is such an intuitive an creative tool which allows to get great results. Although the interface can be quite confusing for beginners (like me), as soon as you understand it it can be really simple to work with.

I have also set a day to finish this character and move onto the next. so the deadline is the 13 th of July. by that time I will need to have the rigging, skinning and texturing done, and then it is ready for the turnaround. however no rushing is needed! 

Hope you like! 

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Robot Pirates Modelling IV

For a long time, I haven't updated on my progress with the Robot Pirates, so here it goes:

So from where I left it, modelling is going great, with the head pretty much blocked out, I moved onto adding the hard surface details on the body, such as blots and gauges, not being a games character I was able to be a bit more expensive and spend some polygons on it.I have also blocked out the clothes which will be imported into Zbrush for some organic sculpting.
Finally, I have also modelled the robot's props (gun and dagger) which will be textured and added to the model.

So here is how the model looks like now (sculpting to be done):

Geometry Layer                         Cloth Layer

 Dagger

Gun

More to come now that I move onto Zbrush!

Enjoy!

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