Modelling Process - Quasar

 

Making my base mesh -

My very first step in the model making pipeline is making a base mesh, You can do this in a few ways, either in Zbrush with the Zspheres function, or making a base mesh in a 3D modelling software such as Maya or Blender. For me I decided to make my base mesh in Maya. Personally, I find Z spheres very difficult to use and I don't like how they are very restrictive in terms of the shapes i can make with them, I much prefer the modelling process Maya offers and how I can make a wider variety of shapes with the primitives, extrude tool, and the ability to push and pull edges and vertices to my liking. For most of my model, I extruded cylinders to build up the arm and leg shapes, i used the same process for the torso and tail. For the head it was a little more tricky as my character has a long wedge shaped skull, for this i used a cube and utilized the transform and scale options to move some edges to get that nice triangular shape, I also had to place in some edge loops to build the gap from the nose tip to the chin. I also used edge loops to get a nice bulge on the fat pad where the thumb joint is, and also for the jagged shape of her Antennae. For the feet, I moved vertices on an extruded cylinder to build the ball of the foot as well as where the toes would lie. As this character has bare feet, I thought this tweaking of the basic mesh shapes would better help me judge where the toes should be when it comes to sculpting. I also decided to add in the bracelet to my base mesh, this is because I really have trouble getting the primitives in Z brush to work for me, and using Maya is just much less stressful. You will notice I did not include the hair on this model, this was a deliberate choice as I was unsure if we would be covering hair cards in this module, if we don't end up doing them, I think i will go back into maya and very simply model in that big ponytail and fringe piece as separate subtools, and using the subtool master plugin, just bring them in and model on top. I will be using a similar technique with the banners which i did not model in to begin with because i wanted to have another go at using the extract function. By adding them in later, it means i can get a nice shawl shape without the front banner pieces getting in the way. By the end of the first week, this is what my final Base mesh looks like, Next week I will be importing this into Zbrush to begin smoothing the body out and refining some features like the face, tail, hands and feet. I made sure to export as both an FBX and and OBJ before i closed the program that way i can bring my model over to Zbrush.

Sculpting the body and face -

To sculpt the face I first added in more geometry using the z Remesher on double, then I used the smoothing tool to make the surface smooth to then add details on to. The main tools I used were the clay build-up, pinch and dam standard tool to sculpt the shape of the face. I mostly tried to keep a very animalistic face structure as the creature I am sculpting does not exist in nature but is quite similar to wolves and sharks. An issue I came across was that I cannot use the symmetry tool as I accidentally misaligned the base mesh in Maya slightly off centre of the grid. I did try to go back and fix it but as I deleted history and froze transformations, there was nothing I could do. This means that I now have to replicate details by hand, this isn't too bad though as the hair will cover one half of the face so I can get away with slight imperfections. However this is something I am going to remember to check if I do this again in the future, the symmetry tool would have allowed me to model much quicker and get an overall nicer looking sculpt. When I used the Z remesher, it did lose some of the details in the bracelet shape so I will have to rebuild it, I will probably do this step later on down the line so that I can focus on making the arms and hands look good first.

Clothing -

For the clothing I used the extract tool which makes new subtools and masks them from the body underneath, i then used the  clay buildup, pinch and dam standard to make wrinkles depending on the shape of the body underneath. I mostly used t shirt and straight folds for the fabric.

To make the banners that Quasar has on her chest and back, I used  Maya, extruded a cube and mirrored it so that it would be symmetrical. I then used the multi insert to bring in the banner as a new subtool then used the scale & move options to move it into the desired location. Below is how the clothing and banners look so far, next I will need to blend the banners into the clothing and add in the Omega symbols using VDMs.

VDM detailing -

VDM or Vector Displacement Maps are used to put details on a model, in this case I am going to to use them to put the omega symbol onto Quasars clothing. 

I first needed to make the VDM by sculpting my design onto a plane, then once I was happy I clicked the create multi insert brush option to turn my current brush into a VDM. I then placed this on the shirt. I used the Z remesher again to let me smooth out the trouser legs and area around the waist which was bothering me as it didn't look quite how I wanted it to look. I also created VDM for the trim on the trousers just to add a bit more detail to them. I will have to say that I had to make the VDM for the Omega symbol a few times, as I saved it over the Clay buildup brush which I really needed. However I figured out in the end that  I can remove the omega alpha from the brush by clicking the rounded or square option in the alphas tab on the left hand side in the end, I also fixed the issue with the trouser legs and the weird geometry with the Z remesher, though I will have to go back in to add the pleats next week.

Eyes -

For the eyes I did originally use IMMs to get the shape of the eyeball, however I really don't like the lack of precise extrusions that IMMs don't have, so in the end I decided to make the eyeballs in Maya and bring them in as new subtools. The eyeballs are just made of extruded spheres that i oriented within Zbrush. I was also advised to make hemispheres in maya for the eyelids instead of modelling around the eyeball as this would give a much neater result. I tried modelling over the eye in my previous model and I am glad I chose to make the eyelid a separate subtool this time as it looks so much cleaner.

This is my model without the eyelids, which looks a bit creepy.

This is the hemisphere that makes up the eyelid.

And this is how the eyes look on my model.

Fixing the fingers -

Fixing up some of the smaller details on my model, I noticed that some of the fingers had joined together when I had Z-remeshed my model, to fix this I needed to isolate this area by pressing Ctrl -shift - alt then under the modify geometry tool, I selected the delete hidden option. This removed the area I had isolated however did leave holes in my model, this was easy enough to fix by going under the modify topology tab and pressing the close holes option, then i just smoothed them out a bit to hide the area I had cut out.

Fluff -

For the fluff on the face I tried out two different methods, for the eyebrow fluff I wanted them to be a bit more prominent than the cheek fluff so to make it stand out more I decided to model it in Maya first then bring it in as a subtool. I then smoothed it out a bit to blend it into my original model. I did have to add in a bit more geometry to it first by using the Zremesher as it was very hard to manipulate straight from maya.

For the cheeks, I found the drag option in Zbrush allowed me to make some night points and build up a lot of texture, I also decided to do this on the hips and tail and a little on the antennae. I do think this might be troublesome to retopologize however, I'm not quite sure how I am going to do this but I will have a go when I move onto Retopology.

Retopology -

To bring my model into Maya, ready for the Retopology process I first had to Decimate my model to lower the overall poly count. Then I exported my model as an FBX and imported it into Maya. Immediately I saw that something was wrong, there were big patches of dark areas on the model's surface that would not go away even after selecting some faces and inverting them. It turns out at some point I must have accidentally duplicated the clothing subtool and merged it together, overlapping the geometry. Unfortunately there isn't a fix for this, though luckily I had a version of my model without the clothing. I will have to re make the clothes, this is ok because i have omega and banner saved and all i will have to do is re-extract the area again. Honestly this isn't the worst thing, I was generally unhappy with how I made the flared trousers anyway and although I am sad that I will have to redo the shawl, i think this is another good learning curve to always check you haven't duplicated anything in the subtool menu.

Remaking the clothes -

Going back onto my model without the clothing, I masked out the area I wanted to extract and then pressed extracted again, this time making sure that I did not merge any subtools. I did initially remodel the  flares on Maya by using a cylinder that I extruded. I did this so that they would stand further away from the legs and have an overall more defined shape, however I couldn't get this to look the way I wanted it to. However whilst in Maya I realized I could fix the issue with the Asymmetry by using the mirror tool to make my sculpt symmetrical across the X axis. This will save so much time allowing me to both model and use the Quad draw tool with symmetry which is so relieving to know. Finally, back in Zbrush I Re-extracted the clothing and completely remodelled the clothes. I will admit it is a bit simpler than my original sculpt but as i am short on time this is the best i am going to be able to do, at least now i can retopologise much easier.

Retopology part 2-

I then went back into Maya and imported in my new model, setting it as a live surface. I then used the quad draw tool to begin Retopologising. Now I tried to follow the process of creating the "mask" around the eyes then radiating everything else out from that, which worked for a little bit. I then began having big issues with the fluff on the cheeks and eyebrows, and then onto the clothing where no matter where I clicked, I seemed to have issues connecting the new topology. I stepped away from it after 3 hours of having a go at this, returning the next day for another 2 hours of Retopology where things just got worse and worse. By the end of the second day, My model's topology was horrific. I was extremely stressed as not only was I stuck, but i knew I would not have the time to completely redo this to be better, so I asked for some guidance on what to do. It turns out I shouldn't have combined the model and the clothing, and that it would have been better for me to split the model apart anyways as opposed to trying to do it all at once. I didn't know this, and so looking at my model i could see that what I was doing wouldn't have worked no matter how hard I tried. At the end of this session I decided to just step away and reconsider my model as a whole, clearly I am trying to make something WAY out of my current skillset, and with the time we have left, all I can really do is try to make the best out of a bad decision on my behalf and learn from my mistakes. I am a little upset with myself that I made something so difficult, but I'm going to do my best to try to salvage the majority of my work whilst still making something that is more within my level to complete. I hope that the log of my work on this post will help show that I have tried my best to learn new skills and to push myself to do my best, and that my reason for simplifying my model isn't out of laziness or poor planning, but rather a reconsideration to make sure I hit the deadline whilst still learning what will and will not work.

This is what I had by the end of friday, I was so disappointed with what I had done but I knew that trying to fix this was not in my skillset at the moment. The best thing I can do now is start fresh with something more at my level.

Revising my model -

I had a look at my model and tried to identify the main areas that were giving me trouble, the main areas being the clothing, fur, and nose ring of my character. With this information, I removed the clothing subtool, clipped the nose ring, and smoothed out the fur to a more manageable length. I did make sure to save a version of my model as it was with the full detail just to showcase my sculpting abilities, but to help me with the retopology phase this is the best course of action for me. The smoother shapes will me much easier to draw quads over, and as my tutors rightly said, i could have afforded to use less polygons in the facial region. Not only does this help me time wise, but it is a useful tip to know when trying to optimize polygons for games, the smaller the models size whilst retaining detail, the more optimized it will be for implementing into games. I am hoping to pick this back up again on Monday with some advice on how to better retopologize my sculpt. This has been a very frustrating yet ultimately very insightful hurdle to encounter, I'm a little sad that I can't do exactly what I had planned, however I have learnt that I should take smaller steps in learning a new software and that sometimes its best to step away, re-evaluate, cut my losses, and learn from my errors.

Retopology Part 3 -

Attempting the Retopology again, I decided to split my model up into sections so that I wasn't overwhelmed by trying to connect every square up to make the whole body. I started with the head again and this time used far less quads for the nose bridge, I was also advised that i didn't need to go over every detail as a lot of this will be put back into my model during the baking phase. Once i had finished the head [which had significantly less quads than last time] I simply selected my new mesh, clicked object mode, renamed the new mesh in the outliner, and placed it on a new layer just to keep everything concise and organized. Then, Clicking on my base mesh again, I repeated the process for the torso, arms, legs, feet, hands and tail. I am much happier with this low poly mesh, I think it is much more optimized and I have learnt that I do not have to do all my retop on one layer.

UV mapping -

Once i was happy with my low poly mesh, I moved onto UV mapping where I tried my best to hide the seams along areas like the inner arm, lower jaw where the jaw meets the neck, back of the head, and bottom of the tail. I did however use some seams to my advantage, with the nose seam allowing me to make a nice crisp section on the head that will separate the darker and lighter fur.

Here is what my final UVs look like, I tried to lay them out in a manner where it sort of resembles the body parts they belong to, this just makes it much easier on myself when it comes to texturing my model. I think for the future however i should work on reducing the amount of warping to the squares as possible as this will make my texturing look a lot neater.

Baking -

Baking is a vital step in making your sculpt optimized for use in games, A high poly mesh with millions of polygons will not run well in a game so it is important to put all your details onto a lower poly model. Initially, I wanted to try Baking in Maya. I did this by changing the tab at the top to rendering, going under the Lighting/shading option at the top and selecting transfer maps. It is important to have both your high poly and low poly meshes in the scene, then make sure you select your low poly mesh as the target and the high poly as the source. You should then be able to save as a PNG then bake. However as you can see, something very wrong happened as my model turned green and Maya proceeded to crash. Now i didn't know how to fix this, so I decided to move over to Substance painter to try in that software. This also gave me a plethora of errors surrounding mesh normals being missing, and too many polygons on a model. I spent a long time trying to identify the error, looking at mesh normals in Maya, removing stray faces, nothing seemed to work. It turns out there were a few issues going on here, the first issue is that when i removed Quasar's clothing subtool in Zbrush, i had forgotten to remove the mask where i had performed the extract function, this meant that when it came to decimating my model, it only decimated certain areas and left the masked areas really high in polygons which substance painter and presumably Maya did not like. Another issue i came across is for some reason there was a big hole in Quasar's nose, truthfully, I have no idea how this happened, likely it was a mis click but again substance painter was having issues with the missing geometry. This fixed two of the problems, however i noticed my normal map was still showing up with lines which is not something i wanted, I figured this is a problem with my low poly mesh as it lined up with the quads i had placed during the retop phase. To fix this issue i smoothed my model out using the smooth option in Maya, which removed the lines in my normal map and overall made for a much neater look. I then baked and saved my new normal maps as a PNG [we will need to bring this into Maya at the next step]

Your model turning bright green is probably not a good sign, especially as Maya crashed immediately after this.

Here are the normal maps before i smoothed my model , you can see the lines where the unsmoothed geometry is which is not ideal.

Here is the new normal maps with the smoothed low poly mesh.

To add in the normal maps, you need to go back into Maya and bring up your low poly mesh [preferably the smoothed one] and go into the attributes tab. Under your texture, in this case mine is standardsurface1, find the geometry tab and the subsequent bump mapping option. Then bring in your normal map with the file button at the side and adjust the settings as needed. I didn't want the normals to be as strong as the standard option as there was some strange detailing issues around the eyes so i simply turned down the bump filler offset and bump depth until it looked alright. Below shows how normal maps add back in details and information that was visible in the high poly mesh but not the low poly.

Before adding normals

After adding in normals

Texturing -

For texturing, I decided I wanted to draw the textures myself, I really enjoyed doing this for the building alliances project and I wanted to try my hand at it again for this project. To do this, I brought my UV map snapshot into my drawing software [for me this is FireAlpaca] to use the UV map as a guide to place my colours. Much like I would for a 2d drawing, I block in the base colours first so that i know what shapes on the UV map correlate to which area on the model. I like to work with Maya open in the background so that i can keep saving my texture and see it update on the model almost immediately [this would be more efficient with two monitors however i unfortunately only have a graphics tab to work with on my pc at home]. Once i am happy with the base textures, I slowly start adding in details and textures like fur, subtle shading to the limbs and torso, Lighting and any other little details to make the model more visually interesting. I do feel a little sad that I wasn't able to do this for her clothing, I have absolutely learnt a valuable lesson of really understanding what my skillset is before i task myself with something that is far out of my current capabilities. I decided to add the omega symbol onto her chest as a nice little detail that draws my new scaled down model back to my concept art.

This is my model with the flat shading and airbrushed areas, this helps me plan out where to add more definition to details.

Here is my final texture, I made the colours a little more saturated as i think it stands out better on my model.

I made a short video panning around my model to give a closer look at the details, I am quite happy with the texturing and it has made me feel a little bit less sad about this project as a whole. 

Here is the link to my video in case the embed does not work - https://youtu.be/NMyKvkkliDk

Rigging -

Originally I was going to completely rebuild my rig from scratch, I started with the legs and built the IK handle for the leg lift by attaching the Ik from the hip to the ankle joint. I then placed in the stabilizers and foot roll handle on both feet. In the end I remembered i saved my rig from a few weeks back and that I could reuse it for this model. That ended up working really well and saved me a lot of time, however rebuilding the rig did give me the opportunity to freshen up my knowledge of how to build a rig from scratch.

front view of my leg rig

side view detailing the function of the IK handle

All joints and IK handles in the outliner

The foot roll handle that will allow us to rotate the ankle side to side.

Adding in the connections to allow the handles to work

I did notice that I only included the leg rig in my saved file, this wasn't entirely a bad thing as building the spine was much simpler that rebuilding the legs. I placed in my 5 joints, pelvis, lumbar 1, lumbar 2, chest, neck, and head, in accordance to my model's anatomy. I then had to bring in a Nurbs circle which will act as a handle for an easy way to rotate the spine, I placed these handles opposite all the joints then placed the pivot points of the handles over the joint connections.

Below is how the rig looked with these circles. I then had to point orient each handle to each joint, then parent each handle to one another allowing for a smooth curve of the spine when moved. This took a few tried to make sure i selected the handles in the right order, I had this issue a few months ago when we initially did this task and I wasn't able to rectify it at the time. However looking back and now being able to fix the issue, it was as simple as selecting the handles in the wrong order. Moving on i then created the arm rig in a similar manner to how i created the legs, placing an IK handle from the wrist to elbow, then parenting the scapula joint to the chest joint.

As you can see below i actually originally messed up the placement of the joints, starting from the hands as opposed to starting from the scapula, this made it so the rig did not move properly and i had to start over again. I'm very glad i caught this mistake early as this would have been quite bad if i moved straight on to the weight painting stage.

The original incorrect placement of the joints

Updated arm rig with correct placement of the joints

This is how the rig looked at this point , I made sure to parent everything together [arms to chest, spine to pelvis] so that when i selected the central pelvis joint, my entire rig would be selected.

And here's how the rig looks on my model. At this stage I was feeling pretty happy with how everything looked, I will mention i did not add a mouth/jaw handle just because of the shape of my character's head, and for the fact that for this application I will not be needing to open the character's jaw. Something i did think however was adding some joints to the tail so that i could pose it. As a tail is an extension of an animal's spine, i followed the same technique as i did with the spine onto the tail.

Here is how that looked, I made sure to connect the top vertebrae joint of the tail to the central pelvis through the parent button.

Here is the final rig on my model, My next step will be skinning and weight painting to make sure my model does not warp incorrectly when joints are moved.

Weight painting -

This is how the model looked after I had weight painted it. I was having some issues with Maya crashing and the rig disappearing below the grid, i made sure to freeze and delete the history of the rig so I'm unsure why this was happening. This did mean that I wasn't able to get any screenshots of the actual process of weight painting, however I used the interactive skin bind function as it was the easiest of the three options to understand. I am really happy with how i painted the head, it doesnt seem to move at all when i move the joints, however you can see there is still some warping on the arm joints. I might pose my model first then tweak my weight paints as I am unsure where the issues seem to be arising from. I think that using the brush weight paint function or the digit input function would be far more accurate, but with Maya keep crashing and my weight painting seemingly disappearing even after i had saved the file, I didn't want to waste any more time than i already had. This is something I will keep in mind however, and I understand fully that the interactive skin bind is not the most efficient method for games as it does not allow the degree of accuracy as the other options give.

Here are two videos I made demonstrating the weight painting of my rig.

Rendering my turntable -

For the final step of this project I wanted to pose my model and create a turntable to show off the work i had done. The first step was posing my model using my rig, which did identify some areas that needed fixing with my weight painting. Despite saving my project and sending it to myself, I dont know why but my rig was completely messed up like mentioned before and all my weight painting was deleted. I have no idea why it did this, and it meant I had to start over again for the third time which was very frustrating to have to do. I did manage to get my model posed and weight painted fairly well, and from there i decided to create a turntable by entering the animation tab, pressing visualize, turntable, inputting how many frame i wanted, and altering the timeline below so that my animation would loop. I also opened the graph editor to hopefully make my model turn equally, but for some reason the graph line wasn't showing up no matter what I pressed. I researched what might be the issue, but wasn't able to find anything that helped. I decided to render my model as it was with some directional light and a skybox before making the turntable just in case anything else went wrong. I am very glad i did this because Maya did something to my batch render and i have no earthly idea what happened, it spat out the result below before promptly crashing and i had to start my weight paint again for the fourth time which was incredibly soul crushing.

created turntable

Here are the links to the websites and videos i looked to for help rendering, I followed their instructions but still had some issues.

https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2023/ENU/?guid=GUID-8A51B291-706A-434F-B97D-A3720A525E24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZFT3lvgpng

This is the render i was able to salvage before Maya crashed

Honestly, I have no clue what happened here???? this did not look like this in the perspective view. Maya crashed soon after this so either way i definitely did something majorly wrong.

For the fourth time, I reposed my model and weight painted it, I couldnt get it looking as good as it did the first or second time but i did try out a different pose that showed off the leg movement, foot roll, hip movement and neck movement. My tutor suggested for me to bring in a HDRI from online to remove the background in my render, which i applied to my skydome and adjusted the attributes on to remove it from view entirely. One of the mistakes i made was batch rendering instead of sequence rendering, I had completely misremembered this process from last year and once he had brought up sequence render i remembered that i made this mistake last year I'm pretty sure. So fixing my mistake i selected the output folder, exported as PNGs and sequence rendered my model. This time it was a success, no weird warping of the model, no crashing of the program, and an overall higher quality render than before.

I did take a screenshot beforehand because i was scared to death it would crash again.

Here is the model as a flat render

And here is the turntable that i turned into a gif.

Final thoughts-

To say this project has been a learning curve is a MASSIVE understatement, lots of things went wrong and I'm honestly kind of impressed that at every step of the process I seemed to have issues. The frustration, disappointment and tears aside, I am glad I stuck with this model. I've learnt a lot, especially about really considering my skillset and checking my work for mistakes before moving on, silly errors that could have been avoided like accidentally merging subtools, removing the nose on accident, and double checking if i should batch render or sequence render ended up causing me more issues down the line. This could have been avoided by just taking a moment to make sure everything was correct. That being said though, I have learnt a lot from these errors and have a greater appreciation for how models are made for games. I did enjoy sculpting, both for my first model and this model i think Z brush and the 3D pipeline as a whole might be something i look back into in the future, i will admit once i worked through an issue and got something to work i did feel a great sense of achievement and at every stage i tried my hardest to put in my full effort to get things to work. There were several points in this project where i thought this model was completely doomed, that i couldnt continue, and yet to see it like it is now, even if it is a bit janky, i do feel like ive learnt a lot. The 3D pipeline is very different to the 2D pipeline and i think that's something that I would have to get used to, but I can't say for definite that i never want to do this again, I think i could certainly give it another go next year [definitely on a more simplified model though, I think i massively overestimated my abilities and i think i kind of fell into a false sense of security with how my first model turned out].

In all, I think there were some parts of this project that i did better than other parts on, I feel fairly good about my original sculpt and the different techniques i used to get it to look like it did, I enjoyed using VDMS, figuring out how to make the eyes, exploring different brushes to make the hair tufts and making the clothes, and weirdly enough i enjoyed retopology after the first major hiccup. I think theres definitely areas that needed working on especially in the Retop stage, but after i got some feedback on how to better create my retop it definitely looked a lot better. If i had more time i do wish i could have gone back and retopologized the clothing and maybe looked into sculpting some hair. But with all the issues I had at the time, I just don't think I would have had the time to finish the model and demonstrate what i had learned when it came to rigging. 3D is definitely not my strong suit, i think that is pretty clear, but that's ok, and all that tells me is i just need a lot more practice. As i said before, i might try this again next year. I do hope this blog post shows that I have tried my very best and have tried to apply all the knowledge we were taught this year, even if my model isn't the most polished thing in the world.