Thursday 27 March 2014

House assets2

Distiller is officially done. I like how it turned out although the metal parts need more work.















It was time to deal with the small assets. Which take little space and twice as much time to make.

I started off with more books and apothecary bottles. The reason why it's taking me so much time is because I always like to create PSD files with about hundred layers. Even though they're all correctly signed and colour labelled, it's hard to keep track of what is where.

I also like accidentally closing the document without saving it.



Wednesday 26 March 2014

House assets

What on earth have I been doing for the past few days?

First of all I finished retopologizing the character.





















It's got 8,018 triangles for now. Originally I was aiming for 20 thousands but I reckon it looks quite alright as it is. I may add more detail like a small weapon, ribbons or other decorations later.
Mesh is unwrapped and ready for baking.

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I also started filling the house with assets. 



A pile of mattresses and duvets. It's meant to refer to Princess and the Pea. I even put a little green pea between the mattresses. If the player looks closely enough he'll see it sticking out. Also the cushions have have a pea pattern on them.


This is how it looks in engine. The lighting will be adjusted. It's quite bright now but it's mostly because I want to see what I'm doing.

After following the advice of resizing the room again, I think of making it a little bit bigger afterall. The bed takes a lot of space and it feels like there's nothing there but the bed..



Next thing on the list is a distiller.



This one is quite old and I reckon it fits in with other assets. I had a hard time figuring out how to reconstruct this texture. In the end I just used made it a hammered metal.












I made high poly models in 3Ds Max and after failing to bake them in Max I used xNormal instead.












This is how it looks so far. I should finish texturing today.

Wednesday 19 March 2014

Polypaint


All the sculpting is officially done... for now. It was time to throw some basic colours on my character. I needed to plan that first though. I want her to look pale but not sickish. 












 

That's it. I am quite pleased with the effect, although I'll need to change all the values in Photoshop later.



















Having that done, I could start retopologizing. Which I hate. With passion. 















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 I found these beautiful buttons on the internet. 



















The one with frog is my favourite. It's simple and it fits the outfit. I cut it out, desaturated and used as Alpha image in Zbrush.



Sculpting clothes and hair

Sculpting the hair was a tedious job. I decided to give it a bit of a Bioshock style.

You're able to differentiate hair strands quite easily. There are lots of highlights and dark tones. It feels like there's a lot going on but all the values cooperate with each other.
















After specifying the final shape I started to add more detail buy putting several layers of strands and gradually decreasing the brush size.























I'm hoping the get a nice Cavity map which will work as a basic diffuse map.





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Clothes are almost done too. I need to add small elements like buttons and ribbons. Then I can happily start retopologizing - the absolutely most horrible thing in the world.







Thursday 13 March 2014

Base sculpt

Base body is done. I'm not sure about the face, will probably alter it later. 





















Time for some clothing. I started off with a shirt.

I wanted to extract the surface in Zbrush but since the mesh has about 11 millions points, it kept crashing. My next try was to bring decimated mesh into 3Ds Max and create a retopologized base using Graphite Modelling Tools.



I put different smoothing group on the edges and applied TurboSmooth modifier.












This was a good solution. But. As soon as I'd export it as an .obj I would loose all the control over edges.

I finally decided to use Topology Brush in Zbrush.


It allows you to draw the edge flow yourself.














After generating the topology I could add automatic crease and thus control the mesh while subdividing.











Two hours later, with the help of Google Images, I had my shirt. All sculpted and ready for baking.













Tuesday 11 March 2014

Back to the character

I suppose it's really about right time to start building my character. I will continue doing small assets for the house along the way, as well as improving on the environment.


I'll repost my designs so I can talk about them a little more.

Firstly I wanted to go for the hood variation. It's got a nice shape to it. Then I thought it would be just too generic. I know it's meant to be fairytale based environment, but I don't want to fall into stereotypes too much.





















Here we have a nice comparison. A typical Red Riding hood type character and a more Slavic version, which I think I like more. It's different and it's got more authenticity to it since it's based on historical resources.  












But why not experiment a little?












Ok, these are my three final designs. I asked my friends around which one they like best. Their opinions vary though so I guess I have to make that decision on my own.










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I already started sculpting base body. I've been doing it gradually from the beginning of the project.



It's really simple and I need to give it some character and better shape.















So I'm going to make her super curvaceous.

Fireplace2


This is the design I decided to go with. It's not quite neat but also not completely random. It'll go nicely with the rest of the room.












I sculpted the stones in Zbrush. There are only four of them, but since the block has 4 long sides, it gives me 16 variations.











Surprisingly Youtube has loads of videos with just fire burning. It's used to create Christmas atmosphere or for relaxation. Now that's just sad.
Anyway it was good because all I need to do was take 8 screenshots, crop them and edit a little bit. Et voilá!



I've never done fire in Cryengie so it took me some time. I still need to fiddle with it. It's too stretched upwards and too thin. There are so many options, I would waste hours to figure everything out.












Saturday 8 March 2014

Fireplace

It's time to make a fireplace. I created a separate pin board on Pinterest.com, where I can collect useful images for the current project.

http://www.pinterest.com/ekrzechka/grimm/


All of them are made of piled up stones and it's exactly what I want to go for.


Friday 7 March 2014

House

It's been a week and it seems like I've done nothing.

Apart from passing the practical driving test. I can legally try to kill pedestrians now! Way to go.






I've made beams for the house with mysterious Slavic drawings carved in.

The entire thing had to be resized multiple times as I want it to be cozy and small.










 I began to make small assets. At some point I reminded myself of Baba Yaga, a witch in Slavic folklore. Her house was standing on chicken legs. Since my house is already buried deep in the ground I figured that perhaps I can make a simple table supported by chicken legs. I quite like the idea. It's quirky.

There are shelves with books and a wooden box with arrows (Bełty in old Polish).


Next thing on my asset list is a dressmaker's mannequin (I finally learnt how to spell mannequin). I wanted to have a cloak on it, that would refer to Red Riding Hood.


I used an old human body base mesh and changed it into a mannequin form.

A cloak is a simple circle shape with Cloth modifier applied.














I got a little stuck with the hood. The best option was be use a sphere and cut holes in it, one for the head and one for the neck.


































This is how it looks in engine. I finished it with a pretty floral pattern, added ambient occlusion and I think I'll leave it for now. I need to add detail map later on.





























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I thought it would be a good idea to post a list of assets I'm planning to build for this house. 


This is what I originally had in mind and the list keeps expanding.