Dichotomy Character project post mortem

What went well?

Idea generation

I think that coming up with characters went well. Using the bashing kiting technique from the sentry gun project, to make fast Silhouette

Rigging

I think I got the weighting right for all parts of my character. So when moving parts of the body, there was no random verts moving in other places.

What didn’t go well?

 Modelling

 I rushed the modelling and did not think about the topology right. That is why the shoulders did not 

look or work right.

Final Concept

The shading and lighting were very poorly done plus there was not much detail.

Presentations

I did not plan at all what to talk about and that is why I struggled to do the presentation.

What did I learn?

Envelop weighting  

What would I do different next time?

I would take more time when modelling a character and make sure I get the topology right.

I would do a more realistic character then a stylized one.

Not collapse the skin modifiers

Learn how to unwrap a character the right way.

Be more ready for a presentation

Week 11, Year 2 Ops should not have done that

So it’s the last week of term before the Christmas holydays and I still need to model, texture and rig my character. I really rushed the modelling and texturing. I try to go with a low poly just to make things quicker, so I could spend more time on rigging. Unwrapping did not take too long as well. I mostly struggled with the head because of the shape of it.

Rigging my character took a lot of time and a lot of fine tuning to try and get it right. As I was rigging I found that I had that I had model the shoulder of my character really badly and it was made worse with the shoulder pads. The arms could not move right and look very weird if I tried to stick the arms out in front of the character but the big mistake I made was the when I was rigging I collapse the skin modifier and then carried on working. By the time I realized what I did it was too late and I could not undo and I had not made a backup before I started rigging. There was not enough time to try and fix it, so I just left it and carried on and imported it into engine.

I’m happy that’s its over now but a little mad at myself because I know I could have done so much better, if I had just been thinking about it more and just not trying to rush it. It would have also been much easier if I had not done stylized, I think because there is more reference marital for realistic modelling.

Over the holydays I need to really think about what I need to think about what I need to improve to help with my work.       

Week 10, Year 2 Stylized was maybe a bad idea

So carrying on from last week I needed to finish my final concept for my character. I found this to be very hard and took a lot of time out of my modelling. I finally got it to a part where I was happy with it but I knew it was not a great peace of work but still help me see what my character could look like at the end. Modelling my character I found to be very hard as well because I was trying to rush it as much as I could because the deadline was meant to be at the end of this week, luckily it got pushed to next week, what I’m very happy about because I was really starting to get worried if I would finish my character or not.

Looking back at it now I think that trying to do a stylized character was maybe a bad idea because to do stylize right you need to understand how it would look if it was realistic and then exaggerate parts to give it that more stylized look. I’m not that good at realistic in the first place so I don’t know why I tried to do a stylized character.

What was I thinking