Portfolio

 Here is some work which I am proud of and willing to show from the last few years. 

A drawing I submitted for a competition at an art society. 

An image I created which I use as a profile picture for social media.

A secret santa submission for an art society, it had to be done in under an hour. 

A render of my Space Trooper from my FMP. 

A panel from a comic strip I created as apart of a project in my second Year at University. 

A character portrait of the comic character. 

My Logo which I use to tag work outside of University.

Evaluation

I had fun during this Final project, I got to work on an area I like and use tools which I was unfamiliar with at first but learned quickly to use. 

The first model I set out to create was the Space Trooper which was inspired by Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 setting, more specifically a human faction called the Imperial Guard. I am happy with how the clothes and armour turned out for this character, I feel putting the model through substance painter really improved the overall look and quality as the materials allowed for more detail with a leather like appearance on the pouches and custom graffiti on the helmet. The look of the gold on the helmet and belt as well as the symbols on the armour are some of my favourite parts of the character. My main let down with the character is the minimal amount of sculpting used, whilst it was not necessary on most of the character's appearance I felt I could have done more with with the character's face and add more than just some scars. I also could of added deep cuts and scratches to the armour however I was able to add bullet marks to the chest piece using a very useful brush in substance painter. 

The second model I set out to create was the Knight which was inspired by Ubisoft's For Honor. I am satisfied with how the armour and clothes turned out, though I wish I could have added more to make the armour more interesting and fantasy-like. I like how the golden bits on the armour turned out, this was a last minute addition and I feel it adds more to the armour and stops it from looking bland. I prefer the work on the facial hair on this character compared to the Space Trooper as I used a different brush which I think resembles light facial hair much better than the brush I used on the Trooper. I liked how the chainmail looked on the character, I think it turned out really well and it was convenient that Substance Painter has a material specifically for chainmail, though it did require some scale adjustment to look right. My main problem with this character is the lack of sculpting on the face, whilst the Space Trooper only had the scars sculpted this character has done which keeps his face looking generic, I also feel his armour is a bit too clean and shiny, I feel I should have gone for a more gritty approach when texturing the Knight. 

My Third and final character I set out to create was my Logo Character which was based off of my personal logo which I use to mark my work. The main challenge with this character was the fact he has a skull for a head which needed to be made from scratch, luckily I found many only tutorials which helped in this process. I kept this character simplistic on purpose as I didn't want him to be easy to look at easily recognisable. I feel I met this aim as whilst he does not have many items attached to his person he does have a distinct look with a pilot outfit and glowing fiery orange and red eyes. The leg pouch and golden skull and wings badge add some detail without over complicating the design and I feel the addition of materials such as leather and gold add some detail and keep him looking interesting, I feel simple colours may have made him boring and too cartoon like. I kept him low poly on purpose to keep his design simple and so it could be used in games and animations without worry, however I feel I could have increased the poly count more to make the edges on the character more smooth. I also want to play around more with the collar to make it more soft and woollen like a real pilots jackets. 

For all three characters I was relatively happy with how they turned out, despite some setbacks with inverted mesh and software crashes I feel I have done well. One thing I wish to improve on in future projects is UV unwrapping as I feel I could have unwrapped the models better as the unwrapping I did caused some decals to not be used on the models due to mistakes in the unwrapping and material assigning. I also want to make a more conscious effort to learn ZBrush and sculpt as much as I can in future projects as I feel this project could have benefited greatly if I had dedicated more time to sculpting the clothes and faces in ZBrush.   

Overall I really enjoyed this project, I feel I learned much and really put my skills to the test. Whilst some of my characters did not have the uniqueness I wanted them to have I feel I achieved what I set out to do and will be able to perform even better on future projects. I will take what I have learned about design and materials and also make an effort to further increase my understanding of 3D modelling and Substance Painter. I learned much about Substance painter during this project and it was arguably the software I had the most fun using as adding materials and colours can really help bring an otherwise plain model to life.  

Final Products

 Pilot Renders

Knight Renders

Space Trooper Renders

Texturing Character 3: Logo Character

 For the Logo Character which I will henceforth refer to as the "Pilot" he had some very simple colours. His design was kept simple as he is a branding character and I didn't want his design to be too complicated and be easy to look at. 

I used Substance Painter's post processing tools to give his goggles a glowing affect, this also had the added effect of making the gold skull and wings badge more shiny as well. I used leather materials for the jacket, gloves and boots and fabric for the trousers, hat and collar. 

I used bone materials for the skull and teeth and used a special brush which created a zipper texture along the zipper part of the jacket. I did not use any alphas like I did in my previous models as I didn't think any of the available ones fit the character's design, also I wanted to keep his appearance simple so using more symbols on this clothes beyond on the skull and wings would have complicated it too much. 

Texturing Character 2: Knight

 The Knight had some brighter colours than the Space Trooper, I also experimented with a different brush for the facial hair and tried some different materials which I hadn't used before.

I found that Substance Painter has a Chainmail material which was very convenient for this character as his Shirt, coif and trousers are all chainmail, I had to resize the material so the metal rings were not too big and replicate this for each part that had it. I also many leather materials as well for the boots, belt, gloves and sheath. 

Using a black mask on the armour pieces I was able to apply a layer of gold which is only visible over the areas with an alpha placed, this allowed me to add gold parts to the armour giving it a more fancy and fantasy like design. I also used an alpha on the back of the Knight's robe to have a templar style cross so the back would not remain empty. I also used a "fur" brush on the facial hair to show a light beard. 

Texturing Character 1: Space Trooper

 The space trooper had many dark and dirty colours on his character. Due to this I often used a fill layer to fill the entirety of the mesh part with the main colour and material while using a black mask to hide it on any areas with a different material, however this character had many individual mesh parts so a black mask was not always needed, for example the fatigues did not use a black mask. I did however make use of layers to add dirt and bullet marks on the armour and clothes as well as to add alphas (decals) and other freehand details such as the red stripe on the cigarette carton. 

I used various brushes to apply different effects, this can be seen with the dirt and blood on the clothes and faceplate. I also made use of alphas to have decals and other symbols on the character as well as text on the characters armour and flame thrower tank. 

To apply some facial hair I used a brush with a material which was darker and slightly bumpy, this gives off the appearance of some darker light stubble which I felt suited the character as soldiers are not often allowed full beards.

UV Unwrapping and Material Assigning in Maya

 UV wrapping was done by selecting the chosen part of the model and opening Maya's UV editor. 

Once open the mesh diagram inside the editor was deleted. A new one would then be generated using the "Automatic" UV unwrap function in the editor. 

This would unwrap the UV better than it had initially, many of the UVs were fine to use, however not all were perfect so required clean up. This could range from simply sewing faces together or having to move each individual line on the UV to ensure it lined up properly so the textures would apply without anomalies occurring during texturing. 

Materials were then assigned to each of the mesh parts, as with Substance painter if any mesh has the exact same material (E.g. Lambert1) then its textures would apply to both meshes which is not ideal as we do not one leather texture to be put on something like metal armour or vice versa. However the same materials could be used to parts which are duplicated, for example the pouches used on the space trooper will have the same textures so having them be the same material would save time as I would not have to texture each one individually. 

Blinn was the choice material for any mesh with a shiny surface, this was used on most meshes which I intended to have metal textures placed on them. This included the Armour on the knight, the goggles on the logo character (pilot) and the skull and wings insignia on the Space Trooper. 

Lambert was used on meshes which were not shiny, this included cloth such as the knight's robe or logo character (pilot)'s jacket as well as harder surfaces like the Space Trooper's helmet and body armour.