Start of head sculpt.

Using photos of myself as reference i have created this head sculpt and plan to turn it into a realistic representation of a human. I think that it is important to be able to accurately represent the human form before i start dabbling with aliens or monsters, to give my work a correct underlying anatomy. 

Also with the uncanny valley in mind, creating something scary requires slight variations from what we know and recognise, so surely being able to produce a realistic face will show me where i can bend and break the rules in further work.

Starting with a sphere i shape it into a head shape then place two spheres inside it to be the eyes. 

This is a technique that may seem obvious but is vastly superior to make the eyes as a separate subtool, meaning i can easily paint and rotate them separate of the rest of the head and can work the eyelids without deforming the eye.

At the moment I'm quite happy with the results, the eyes are a bit strange and the head is still a bit square but I'm happy about the proportions and the ears.

Emotion in my artwork

Thinking about what i want to get out of this project, its not necessarily just to create creatures but to make my work more relevant and professional looking. When i look at sculpts that i have done and the renders i have submitted for former modules they lack the life, story and thought that so many images i admire do.

To this end i am going to make a head sculpt and try to bring it to life, make it more interesting than just a blank expression, and try to give it some character. Both through the sculpt itself and the lighting and presentation i want it to be far more professional looking.

Shift Towards Anatomy, Game Design, Sounds and Environment

After the past few weeks of research and experimentation i have discovere that though characters can be scary, the main thing that relates to how effective they are is not the design itself but the way it is presented in its environment and the way that it acts, the soundtrack accompanying the game, and innumerable other factors. This is why designs like this :

A concrete blob with a smiley face, can be in one of the most popular and allegedly scariest indie games of recent years (SCP Containment Breach)

 As i dont have much interest in exploring environment modelling or musical composition, i am slowly shifting the aim of this module to be comfortable creating solid creatures, with strong anatomy and good zbrush modelling.

Vertical Slice Fear Study

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134848/scary_game_findings_a_study_of_.php

This study by Vertical Slice seeks to find the scariest game on the Xbox 360.

They hooked 6 test subjects up to measure their biometrics as they played Dead Space 2, Alan Wake, Resident Evil 5 and Condemned. The games were played in a different order by all participants and were played in an environment that was made to be as close to that of a typical gamer as possible. 

The results showed that "casual" gamers found scripted events and combat more frightening whereas so called "Hardcore" gamers found the open areas of games more frightening and combat was less exhilerating. The study also showed that the game scariest for both Core and Casual players was Dead Space 2.

Here is a selection of conclusions drawn from their study.

-Actual Combat is not as scary as the threat of combat.

-The first confrontation is almost always the scariest.

-Gore in isolation can be provocative, but not scary. In some cases the grotesque can make the scene scarier, providing there are other factors contributing.

-Heightened tension can be created by a potent atmosphere. This will keep the player engaged and ultimately make the scares bigger.

Artists to take influence from

I found a few inspirational artists to take influence from.

The first is a creature artist called Keith Thompson (http://www.keiththompsonart.com), Here are some of his works.

He uses alot of animal anatomy in his works and some of his most disturbing really show off his anatomical knowledge. He also features alot of creatures that combine mechanichal and biological designs.

I sketched one of the creatures he had drawn because i found it so interesting, although this is simply a copy of his work it gives me a good idea of how i could incorporate animal anatomy into my designs.

The Next artist is a more traditional one. Although his works are not specifically character or creature design, i find the work of Francis Bacon very inspiring.

This image is very unsettling to look at just because of the amount of emotion on the persons face, and the parts of the face he is and is not showing. By only showing the mouth it leaves alot of mystery in the picture and although you cant see the eyes you know that it is staring straight at you. 

Lying Figure in a Mirror - This picture was the Inspiration behind the Lying Figure creature in Silent Hill i had in a previous post. The human figure in this painting is deformed beyond recognition but it is still oddly chilling.

Another thing to take from these works by Francis Bacon are the colour tones, the dark purples and blues in the skin tone giving them a cold complexion, contrasting with the warm but muted backgrounds, leaving detail to the imagination and contrasting with the focus of the paintings.

Categorisation of Successful Creatures

Here i identify themes and successful features of creatures from different franchises and try to relate them to the fears from my previous post.

This is the design for the Lying Figure from Silent Hill 2. It is a predominantly human creature, and is supposed to show a figure contorted in agony. It does this by joining the arms and head to the torso with thick sheets of skin, almost like a strait jacket.

Relating this back to the primary fears i explored in my previous post this creature is relevant to the fears of "Mutilation" by being a deformed human, though it shows no overtly agressive features. It also relates to "Loss of Autonomy" with its constricted movement and few limbs.

One of the gatherers from Amnesia: The Dark Descent. For the majority of the game you will never be this close to one of the monsters, but its physical appearance is still important. It has a long extended mouth and humanistic face, its body is that of a human but it is grotesquely proportioned.

Relating back to the 5 fears this one mainly applys to "Mutilation" as it both has the classic mutilated human shape, but also seems dangerous.

A Necromorph from Dead Space. Again a predominantly human shape, however this one has serious changes to its anatomy and looks far more dangerous that the previous examples. This is because of the spikes and extended limbs.

The Necromorph mostly relates to "Mutilation" because of its spikes and teeth. It could also be relevant to "Extinction" because of its inherant danger.

Scarlett from Silent Hill : Homecoming. After the development of Silent Hill moved out of Japan a lot of the character designs really went down hill, but this is one of the more succesful ones of the more recent games. It is based on a doll that has been possessed and has turned into a horrific representation of the girl it used to belong to. It has long extended limbs, and a strange posture simmilar to an insect. It still has some distinctly human elements such as the face and hands, but the head is misshapen.

This fits heavily into "Mutilation" as it looks dangerous and in pain.

The Thing. This is a very interesting monster, using parts of anatomy from both humans and animals combined to make somethign disturbing to look at, even though you cant really tell what it is your looking at. It has allot of elements of combining animal anatomy into creature design which is something id be interested in looking into.

Fits mostly into Mutilation because it is so grotesque and dangerous looking.

Regan from The Exorcist. Different from the others, she is scary because seh is something that is seen as non threatening acting in a very peculiar way. She is a child, seen as safe and unintimidating, but suddenly has a grotesque appearance and is acting agressively and insane.

From the five principal fears ive had a hard time categorising this one, but im going with "Mutilation" again because she poses a threat to your health, physically and shows mutialtion of the mind.

Common themes in creatures or characters to inspire fear in the viewer seem to be 

- Simmilarity to humans

-Combined anatomy with humans and animals

-Taking something that is seen as being safe and making it dangerous

-Stretching or contorting human anatomy to shapes it shouldnt be

-Making more aggresive creatures with growths or spikes

Categorising Fear

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brainsnacks/201203/the-only-five-basic-fears-we-all-live

Research into the basic psychology of fear, in this article on Psychology Today, Karl Albrecht expresses his ideas that there are only 5 natural fears.

Death (Heights, or the ocean)

Pain or Mutilation (The fear of insect, bugs or anything poisonous that could affect the human condition)

Loss of Autonomy (Being trapped, enveloped, imprisoned, can be applied both the the body, and to relationships or social standing) 

Seperation (Abandonment, Isolation)

Humiliation or "Ego Death" (Personal Worth)

According to him any other fears can be applied to these over arching categories.

I can use these basic ideas to influence parts of character designs, such as the fear of abandonment could include a creature with no mouth, tortured and unable to speak. Or a creature with a severely limited range of movement, for the lack of autonomy. 

Initial Research into Characters

Picking up from last year i have looked into one of the most well renowned horror games of all time, Silent Hill 2 , known for its immersive settings and horrifying creatures.

Part of what makes the creatures so horrifying is that they all relate to the main character. The premise of the game is that the town is torturing the main character for ending his terminally ill wifes life, and all of the creatures reinforce this point. The nurses are there to show sexual frustration with his wifes permanent illness or the "lying figure" a human entombed in what appears to be a straight jacket of skin, writhing in agony, the inner turmoil and guilt of the main character.

This shows the importance of incorporating story into creature design, and is a good example of story telling through character design.

In this short video documentary at 26:40 a character designer and cgi director Takayoshi Sato talks about if you want to "shake the heart" of the viewer you need to identify the players inner motives and exploit them. He says that not a day goes by when people dont think about sex and death, so he combines the two motifs in his designs to create terrifying visuals.

Creative Research, My Starting Point.

In this research project i'm hoping to continue from last year, exploring the link between the provocation of fear and my art .

Last semester i focussed heavily on creature design, and though it is still a large part of my plans for this semester i am also widening my horizons within the same subject matter, looking at paintings, surrealist work, creature designs, sculpture and digital 3D work.

These examples seem to use a very simmilar method for water simulation, also allowing for terain modification.

My Rig and Tool Demo Movie

The Link will take you to my final movie that i will be submitting alongside my report.

Final Tool

This is the final tool UI

It only allows one window open at a time, and doesn't let you scale the window.

The features are:

Create or remove a point, orient or parent offset between objects

Create, group and orient a control shape of various Nurb Curve shapes

Change the colour of selected nurb curve shapes.

Hopefully this will vastly speed up any future rigging i perform and allow me to quickly and easily change nurb colour without going through the sub menus of the object.

Revised Tool

The tool was overly complex and the colour slider was proving difficult for changing control shapes, so rather than that i have opted to make it a single column UI to take up less screen space and to have only a limited number of colours available through buttons.

Pseudo Code for Tool

For the tool i want to keep it quite simple due to time constraints and coding skill. The idea for my tool is a control shape generator, with a choice of different objects, and the ability to change the colour of the object.

The slider may not work and i may have to make more buttons with a few given colours like red , green blue and yellow.

So for this im wanting to use a Grid Layout

Create the window

Create the Layout

Add the Buttons

Add the Colour Selector

Add the Close Option

The buttons will work like this

Get Joint Name

Take the name stub

Create the selected shape

Parent it to the joint

Zero out the translations and rotation

Unparent

The colour change will work like this

Unparent the display override from the layer if it is

set the display over ride on

set the colour value

Day 9 - Daemon Extraction

Daemon Extraction -  The first time i have done one of these in ages. This one was only 10 minuites, more of an exploration of pose and idea.

Finished Facial Rig

My Finished Facial Rig and added UI

I feel that this was a major step forward in my Rigging abilities, it is a suitable facial rig for games engines as it has no blend shape reliance, and is easy to use. 

The control circles in the boxes are locked into the boundaries and relate to joints spread across the face. The top 6 are eyebrow controls, middle four are cheeks and nose, and the bottom section is the mouth. If i had more time i would add Text labels to the sections to make it more clear and also move eye and jaw controls to the UI to make it more streamlined.

An example of the facial rig in action.

Final Body Rig

The Final Body Rig is complete.

The Left and Right side are colour coordinated to allow animators to easily identify each side in complex animations. The Spline spine rig is implemented, the Custom attributes have been added to the hand controllers, which have in turn been constrained to the wrist controller to keep them together.

The 3IK foot joint works well and allows a variety of movements and rotations. The Rig is clear, simple and works well and i think it definitely meets the requirements of the brief for making a rig.

In Progress UI

This image show a WIP UI that i am putting on my models face. The rectangles will have Nurb Circles bound inside them and they will be linked with set driven keys to the facial joints.

It has been really eye opening creating the UI as it is a lot closer to the rigging that i have already done than i thought it would be. The way that it is all simply bound attributes and curves is a revelation as before i thought that even a UI like this would require atleast some coding.

Facial Rigging Tutorial

This is a tutorial for facial rigging using joints and making a UI for it. Hopefully i can get this done on my model, but if not it will still give me a greater knowledge of where to go next.

The Rig So Far

This is the model i have been working on rigging. It is a civilian model ripped from D.M.C (Devil May Cry) Its topology is sufficient to rig to a good standard and it consists of multiple sub meshes allowing the skinning to work well.

The model also has a mouth bag to facilitate facial rigging and the watch on the wrist will be an interesting "Accesory" to skin without any distortion. So far i have added and oriented the skeleton, set up an IK foot control, Added set driven keys for the fingers and hands, and added the IK spline spine.
The control shapes have been added for all areas except from the face and head and i am currently working on rigging and assigning joints to the face.

Final Turntables and Rig Video

Or for Higher Quality visit Vimeo at 

https://vimeo.com/84354610

Final Evaluation of the Module

Final Evaluation

I feel that what i have produced for this module meets the requirements of the brief, the character somewhat represents the celtic influences, but certainly appears brutish and antagonistic. The design is quite boring and i think that i should defiantly have spent more time on the design stage to ensure a more interesting and stronger character. Despite the design ending up somewhat lack lustre i think that what i managed to do with it technically is a big improvement from my previous 3D work. The sculpt is something that i am proud of and the high and low poly models fit the shape and topology requirements well. For a next step i feel i need to further increase my sculpting skill to allow me to make more complicated designs more quickly and more efficiently.

The textures on the model are good, but limited. My lack of experience in the area definitely shows with the limited variety and poor execution of the specular map. However i think that the maps do a sufficient job in showing the detail required. Whether they are up to current gen console levels... i dont think so, but its an improvement over my previous work. If i were to go back and re map the model i would give slightly more room to the top of the shoulder pads, as if you get close enough to the face to see the extra detail there, the shoulders stand out as being low res.

I feel the final presentation of the model is adequate to the brief, and the rig demonstration shows that the rig is fully useable and quite robust.

Evaluation of Posing and Rendering.

Posing and Rendering

The final poses were added into a marmoset toolbag scene. This is useful because it allows for a high level of polish in presentation but still runs in real time like a game engine, allowing for an accurate demonstration of the quality of the model and textures as they would be seen in game.

A simple light set up was used, bright enough to apply shine to the straps and paint, but not so bright that the model appeared shiny or plastic. The turn tables were recording using Screenflow since Marmoset Toolbag 2 no longer has built in video recording. I think this has given me the opportunity for a very high quality and well presented turn table, and i feel that i have achieved that. In future i would look more into the lighting of the presented character. The pose of the final meshes is also adequate, as it shows a suitable range of movement in the mesh to show it is fully capable of a walk or run animation without distortion.

 Test Pose

Close Up of Face

High Poly in Marmoset

In a more washed out Light Set Up

Low Poly Model In Marmoset

 Low Poly With Topology

Evaluation of rigging

Rigging

Rather than just adding a simple rig i wanted to try and create a more advanced rig for the model, one that could be used to animate it for a game, rather than just pose it.

I tried to keep the joint count relatively low, and i also didn't use any blend shapes so that a wider range of engines could be used. The main points in building the rig were

-Add skeleton

-Fix LRA

- Add Control Shapes and Joint constraints.

- Add IK handles to the arms and legs/feet

- Parent controls to affect the relative joints and other controls

- Weight paint the skin.

An important part of the rig is trying to maintain the shape of the armour, and i feel i was very successful in this. By looking at videos on digital tutors and youtube i noticed that additional joints could be used to "anchor" the armour polygons to the correct location and stop distortion.

The eyes and mouth also worked well because when adding the meshed together i made certain to maintain the separations in the mesh. 

The hands have set driven keys in for the index finger bend and the rest of the fingers/thumb, this sped up the process but still gave me all of the freedom i needed with the pose i used.

The skin painting was moderately successful, on the whole it worked well, but underneath the arm the leather strap still distorts quite a lot. I feel that this is more of a failure in my choice not to make them a separate object than that of my weight painting though, as that area moves a significant amount and it doesn't have enough edge loops. As i used the same rig on the low poly model, it probably has too many joints for use in a mobile game, but i did not have time to make a separate rig for it.

The Rig Applied to the High Poly Model

Posed High Poly Model

Rig applied to Low Poly Model

Evaluation of Texturing Proccess

Texturing my model was a relatively easy process as i had most of the detail for the final maps on my sculpt. I started by taking the retopologized objects into maya and UV mapping them, with a combination of the built in UV unwrapping, and the program Headus UV Layout. This stream lined my process a lot and made unwrapping the models fairly painless. The only parts i had difficulty were with the hands, but iteration between the programs stopped me having overlapping UV's.

I then re exported the unwrapped objects back into topogun and baked out Normal, Colour and Cavity maps at 2K each for every part of the model. Then i combined the maps in photoshop to give me a single texture for the whole model. The cavity map was applied as a multiply layer onto the colour map to reduce texture space whilst simultaneously adding depth to the model. The normal map was scaled down to 1K and then i made a specularity map for each model. I did this by making the colour map black and white and then using the dodge and burn tool on areas i think should be shinier or matte. The normal maps were also tidied up on areas that didnt bake well, especially the leather around the shoes, which were full of errors

To make the model more professional i wanted to have Ambient occlusion baked onto the maps, rather than taken care of in Marmoset Toolbag or in the game engine. This both speeds up rendering and makes it look better on a low powered machine such as a mobile platform that could not render AO in real time.

From the maps that i have produced my texturing skills have increased dramatically over the last semester. However i feel there is still a long way to go before i am at a professional level. I need to research more into different types of maps, and how i could use them in my model. Also if i were to do it again i would have perhaps lowered the resolution of the normal and specularity maps to allow me to add more types of map. I would also look into more advanced ways of producing my specularity map other than just the cheap and easy "Make it black and white" method.

High Poly Maps

Low Poly Maps

Evaluation of Retopologizing.

Retopologizing

Having made my sculpted model, i exported all of the parts from ZBrush into Topogun to begin the remeshing process. I tried to keep the polycount low then add more as i could, focussing more on the silhouette rather than detail. This allowed me to build up the model quickly and efficiently. The areas i had trouble with were the hands and the neck, because i had to merge a high poly area such as the face into a lower density section of mesh. 

 The facial topology should be sufficient to allow expressions and distortion in the future, and the body has sufficient topology for free movement without excessive distortion. I also added a mouthbag to the model in maya aswell allowing me to open and close the models mouth.

This is the finished high poly model in maya, the silhouette of the model is the same as the high poly sculpt, so it will look similar when normal mapped and textured.

This is the finished low poly model with the normal map applied,

I feel that my retopologized models are suitable for the hand in, they are within the poly count, have sufficient topology to be animated and the objects are still separate allowing for accurate distortion of the body without bending the metal. To improve upon the model i could add the torso and legs together to remove any risk of the body poking through the trousers or vice versa. I could also have made the chest straps have topology on the high poly rather than just a normal map, to make them stand out from the body more.

Evaluation of Sculpting.

Sculpting

This pipeline is something i have done before in a second year project, so i have had experience using zbrush before, but the project opened my eyes to many new techniques learnt from digital tutors and youtube tutorials, such as facial sculpting, building features from bone structure, and creating skin textures. 

I started the head with a ball and built up the bone structure of a skull. Then i layered the large muscle groups on the face over it, and finally added skin. i feel like this gave the face a realistic look and expression, and is definitely something that i will take forward into other projects. The face is also slightly asymmetrical, this is to make the face more realistic, but is not asymmetrical enough to complicate the remeshing process. 

After the head was done i modelled the body and projected the head onto the neck, making it into one solid mesh. The armour plates were something i learnt from a zbrush tutorial in sculpting beasts, and consisted of me masking an area of the mesh, extruding it out and using the hard polish and plane brushes to shape it. The straps and belt were done in a similar way.

The skin was textured using the demacian standard tool, various alpha maps, and patience. The pores around the head and face were made bigger to imply a rough shaven face, and the tattoo was added on the back using an alpha stamp. At this point i was trying to include as much detail as possible to reduce the amount of work i would have to do in photoshop later.

The skin colour was built up using multiple layers and alphas, starting by coating the whole body in a deep red then adding brighter skin tones on top , giving the illusion of depth.

Over all i feel the sculpting part of this module was executed very well. I produced a good quality model of exaggerated human anatomy with convincing skin texturing and good poly painting. If i were to do this again i would change the way i made the armour plates, perhaps making them in maya to reinforce the hard edges. It didnt matter too much in this model as the armour wasnt meant to be perfect, but if it had been an example of hard surface sculpting this method would have been messy and unprofessional.