21/03/2011 Character and Prop hand in date and fully up to date

Today and over the last week I have been working to the final deadline for my 3D character and my 3D prop. My prop was fully modelled it was just the texturing left to do and this would not take too much time to do. Therefore over the week I worked on my 3D character and my main things to do with my character was to model the ears for my head, assemble the entire character together and to start work on the armour and detail.

Here is an image of my glove for my character. This is an image of when the glove is in LPM and when it will be placed on my character it will be mesh smoothed to add more detail. I chose to create this hand model by not using the joan of arc tutorial mainly because the tutorial was very complicated for a simple task and I did not like the end result. Therefore I used an image of a hand for a basic outline and I simply started off with a 2D plane and made a 2D hand to start off. I then used the cut tool to create more detail on the hand, e.g. adding lines to show where the knuckles will be extruded and where the armour on the glove will be extruded. After I made the basic 2D hand I used the extrude tool to make the hand 3D. I then beveled the faces on the side of the hand so that the fingers where not simply cuboids. After I had fiddled with the vertices and the bevel tool I then used the combination of extrude and bevel tools to create the knuckle armour and the back of the hand armour. After I had finished the main hand I extruded from the wrist to make the model into a glove instead of a hand model. After I had beveled and moved more vertices I had a final glove model ready to be attached to my 3D character.

 Above is an image of my final textured character. I simply attached the glove model onto my 3D character and then I started work on the armour. How I created the armour was that I selected the part that I wanted armour to be over and I used the detach tool and made it into its own object. I then used the modifier Push to scale out the armour from the skin without disrupting the skin model at all. I then simply attached the new armour model to the main character object. Then to make the armour look like it was being worn I extruded the outer edges of the armour inwards and then beveled and this made the armour look detailed and generally I was very pleased with the outcome. I then work on the eyes and instead of following the joan of arc eye tutorial guide I decided to try my own way of texturing an eye model. I used a human eye as a reference image and I simply selected the sclera part and changed the ID of it to a certain number and I did the same with the iris and the pupil. I then went to the materials part and I made a multi-sub object instead of a standard material mainly because I could have one material for my entire character. Therefore I put the ID for the sclera part of the eye and changed the colour to a white colour.

Here shows the material editor and how it looks if you use a Multi-sub object material. It is very simple to use and allows for easy texturing. Also shown in the image is the ID and colours for the iris part of the eye and the pupil. Also in the same material I create the skin colour and I simply used the joan of arc skin tutorial to create a dark skin colour however with the proper lighting has a certain grey texture within the skin colour to make the skin look realistic. I also made the silver texture for my armour using the material editor and using a simple photoshop texture that I created to make different blends of silver work well and make the armour look realisitc. Once I finished the texturing then my 3D character was completely finished and I started work on texturing on my 3D prop.

Here is my final rendered and textured 3D prop which as you can tell is a sword. Earlier in the blog I describe how I textured the sword however I changed my theme from a ceremonial sword to a simple dark and bloody sword and I used simple shading colours and a blood texture to texture my sword. I plan next week to start work on my environment and my character animation using Cryptic AR.