This was nice to get a better understanding of how to adjust the render settings and what actually needs adjusting. I did have some issues with the ray tracing shadows, they wouldnt update with the high samples they remained grainy (below I attached the render).
This was the first blocking in of the quick attack, I had to switch to the fk arms as the ik arms were not behaving nicely. I had a lot of fun doing this one, I am going to work on extending this so it is a combo attack because at the moment it goes back into the idle pose (roughly).
I added some sprites with the attack and added an ambient occlusion map to the staff, I also spent sometime fixing some issues with the characters maps so now they work slightly better.
I did the basic idle cycle, next step is to create a longer idle cycle by add some variety and life with render layers.
After that I will be working on creating either a taunt animation or some attacking animation, I want to have some staff spins that are quite stylized like the ones in Nickelodeons TMNT series (at 4:01):
I've done a lot of adjusting to this since the first blocking pass and this is how it is looking at the moment, still room for improvement but I think it looks way better than it did.
Started to block the animation for the characters walk (skip) cycle, there is a lot to adjust but this is the start, looking forward to refining it and adding some extra life into it. At the moment the tangents are all stepped, so there isn't the smooth in betweens yet.
I baked and adjusted normal and ambient occlusion maps for the character, they are actually too big to upload so I will have to shrink them down and upload them with the final diffuse map. The staff still needs extra maps baked, I think that next time I attempt to texture something I will try using dDo and nDo as i have the quixel suite and it appears to be quite a powerful tool.
I carried on working on the characters texture, she is starting to look slightly more fit for purpose after every tweak. I noticed while posing her that I had some skinning flaws around the puffy shoulders so I have started to fix that so they deform better.
Today I finished off the rig and carried on working on the base textures, a demo video of the rig is on my check list, as is a posed turnaround of the character. Here is the base texture so far, a lot of work and detail needed, however she is definitely getting there.
I also spent a little bit of time today modelling and UVing the characters staff, this is how it looks.
getting closer to animating the different actions she would be able to perform in game, really looking forward to getting that started!
I've been working on the rig some more, here is a little progress update. The blink is now done, so that is one head blendshape finished and I am moving onto the other required blendshapes for more control of the face.
The rest of the model is also getting closer to being finished, there is still some extra joints that need to be set up for the bow and hair but rigging is getting closer to being completed.
The dress can now be controlled using either single controls or one that controls them all, it was done by creating a duplicate mesh and creating a rig for that which was then transferred to the dress via a blendshape (the image on the right is the duplicate meshes). The fingers are all working nicely and hold volume well with the double joints.
I decided as I have been trying to explore new work methods with this project, I would try texturing a different way as well. I wanted to use something like Mari to expand my knowledge however due to time and the lack of the software, I decided to try Photoshops 3d painting space. So far it has been alright, it is abit laggy and doesn't have the smoothest results, however you can switch between the Diffuse map and 3d model which makes it useful for a quick visual update.
The base colours are pretty much blocked out, so it is now a case of making her look beautiful, while doing this I am also working on finishing off the rig, which is getting closer to be complete.
I finished off the arm rig today, next up is skinning however I still need to figure out the bow,dress,face and hair rig. The arm rig was much quicker to do than the leg rig as I had gotten used to using the node editor. The arms have a nice counter twist feature that will prevent the sleeve from twisting when the arm does, it also uses double jointed fingers which should help to keep volume when skinned.