Character Asset 7 – Completion and Evaluation

The previous iteration of the robe looked rather rough, so I remade it as a mesh, rather than using the garment maker modifier on a plane. This also allowed me to add a hood rather easily.

After completing the robe I turbosmoothed it to raise the polycount so it didn’t look so jagged, and applied a skin wrap modifier to it, so it would deform around the character as they moved.

After applying a texture I posed the character into a state intended to be used when they are casting a spell.

Overall, I am moderately pleased with the end result of the character, which is to say that I don’t think it is of overwhelming quality, either in terms of the model or the textures used, but I believe it is serviceable to the game it was created for.

My biggest criticism of the character is of myself, because the original idea for the character was to have a realistically skeletal appearance which in hindsight was an unrealistic goal.

Because of the time it would have taken to model and sculpt even only the visible parts of the body to a high level I had to scale back the character’s design to the simpler appearance it currently has due to the understanding that it ultimately would not have been worth the time taken and effort considering the relatively small role the character has within the scenario level itself. The most noticeable part of this idea is when I sculpted the character’s feet into boots because of how complicated modelling the bones within the feet would have been.

This initial overestimation of what I hoped for the model has left me somewhat disappointed with what I have accomplished, but as I previously said, I believe it is of a passable standard.

Having completed The Necromancer character’s model, the next stage of the project is to create some environment assets.

Character Asset 6

For this entry I continued adding to the character’s design.

This happened in 2 parts- the chain and the robe. Both were somewhat problematic to create.

The chain was made first. The intention was to have the chain wrapped around the character model with each link being a separate object, which moves around and pulls the other links based on physics and the character’s movements. With this in mind the chains were interwoven around the character and they were given cloth properties so that they would simulate physics within Max. A problem immediately presented itself as each of the links exploded apart from each other, presumably because of their small size and very close proximity to the other links.

This meant that I had to connect each link of the chain to each neighbouring link, which increased the poly count for an otherwise simple set of models quite significantly, but in the end the chain did react appropriately when simulating physics.

After this several attempts at the robe were made, which inexplicably each had problems with morphing around the character properly. This was fixed by remaking the robe from scratch, so I evidently made some mistake at somewhere in the process of making it, but i’m not sure where.

For the next entry I will finish the robe.

Character Asset 5

For this entry I transferred the completed mesh from Maya into 3ds Max to work further on the character.

The purpose of changing to a different piece of modelling software is that I am much more comfortable and familiar with Max than I am with Maya.

The first task I had to work on after transferring was altering the UV map for the retopologised mesh so that it could be normal mapped. The UV mapping itself went well, but was still quite a time consuming process.

One noteworthy point about the UV map is that the torso takes up a very small portion of the UV grid compared to its size. This is because it is not a section which the player will be able to see, therefore it seemed sensible to make use of the UV space for other parts of the model which can be seen.

Once I had finished the UV mapping I imported the high-poly version of the character (the original Mudbox sculpt) and generated a normal map for the low-poly model.

The next entry will be about further development of the character.

 

Character Asset 4

Since the last entry I have completed both the retopology of the character and the rigging.

The completion of the retopology was fairly simple, as all that was required was to mirror the mesh and attached the central vertices together to form the completed, symmetrical character model.

When rigging the model one problem I found was that, because of the low-poly nature of the torso, moving the character’s arms would have a large effect on the polys in the armpit area and down the side of the torso. This was somewhat fixed by reducing the effect radius of the bones within the arm, though even when reduced as low as possible, slight movement could still be seen in areas which wouldn’t move. It is my hope that the robe will be enough to obscure the deforming parts of the mesh when the character moves around.

By the next entry I will have transferred the character model to 3ds Max and started UV mapping

 

Character Asset 3

This phase went considerably faster and more smoothly than the previous due to the lack of smaller parts to retopologise.

After completing the arm, I moved on to the torso which was made from a few large polys, due to the lack of detail needed in the area as it would be completely obscured from the player at all times by the robe the character would wear.

I then moved on to the legs, neck, and head, which were the final parts of the model which would have any level of visibility to the player.

For the next entry I will have finished the retopology of the model and will begin rigging the character.

Character Asset 2

After having completed the sculpting of the character model I transferred the character model to Autodesk Maya to create a retopologised version of the model.

I started by working on the right arm of the model with the intention of creating half of the retopologised mesh, then mirroring it because the model is symmetrical to half the production time.

The arm itself was simple to create, however the fingers proved to be frustrating because of the cameras controls and the small size. This lead to having to restart on any given finger several times because of polys or vetices being drawn in the wrong place, such as elsewhere on the model or simply into space.

 

In the next entry I will continue the retopology process of the character.

Character Asset 1

The character is being created in Autodesk’s Mudbox software. The model being used as a base for the character is the default human body.

The plan when modelling the character was that because of the robe which would be covering most of their body, much of the base mesh wouldn’t need to be altered because the player would never be able to see it. This means that only the exposed parts, namely the head, neck, hands and feet would need to be sculpted.

The first part of the character to be sculpted was the head, turning the base head into the skull shape seen in the screenshots above. This stage didn’t take very long to complete and I soon moved on to the characters hands, which were considerably more difficult to sculpt in a way I was happy with after having looked at online images to find how the bones in a human hand are supposed to look. I am happy with the end result, though it took two sessions to complete the hands because I felt they would require a higher level of detail than most of the rest of the model, due to the robe which the character is meant to wear.

After completing the hands I had attempted to sculpt the feet into a skeletal appearance, however the bones in the feet turned out to be much more complicated to replicate than the hands, and given the hands took longer than intended I decided to go for a simpler idea of having the character simply wear boots instead, which took very little time to sculpt.

The next entry will be about transferring the model to Maya, to create a retopologised version of the model.

Character Concept

The first asset to be developed for the game is the boss character who will be seen by the player briefly at the end of the playable scenario.

The character is The Necromancer, who has taken control of the ruins/dungeon that the player must clear to save a nearby town.

The Necromancer is a skeletal figure wearing a long, dark robe over their whole body and wrapped in a series of chains which maintains its life, despite its body having rotted away long ago.

The initial backstory behind this character was fairly simple, having formerly been some sort of evil wizard seeking longer life/immortality who found a semi-successful solution in the form of magic chain which preserved his life, but not his body, meaning over time it still eventually failed and he became the “living” skeletal remains of his former self.

This changed somewhat when coming up with a reason for why the character would be within the dungeon at all as it was planned that the player would be able to find notes and journal entries around the dungeon giving some insight into the backstory.

The newer backstory is that some time ago a disease swept through the town, and one of the afflicted townsfolk went to search the nearby ruins for some answer or cure to the disease as people started to die, but failed to find anything beyond some method to supposedly save themselves, which fails- costing them their sanity and trapping them in a state of undeath which resulted in their skeletal state.

The next entry shall be about the early steps taken in creating the 3d model of the character inside mudbox.

Developer Diary

This blog will be used as a developer diary for the game project being produced for my Game Architecture module.

The design document which this game is to be based upon was created for an earlier assignment can be found attached to this post.

To summarise the GDD, the games concept is a dungeon-crawler/puzzle game in a fantasy setting, inspired by games such as The Legend of Grimrock and Eye of the Beholder, where the player is traversing a dungeon and must overcome the necromancer controlling it to free a town from its tyranny.

This concept is admittedly very simplistic, however the purpose of it is to use it as a method to demonstrate my capabilities in level design, with little focus on storywriting beyond the initial concept.

The game is to be created in the Unreal Engine 4 using software such as the autodesk suite, photoshop, quixel, and logic pro, but will also not be a full length game, but closer to a playable demo showcasing one level of the game leading up to the encounter with the final boss.

The next entry shall be about the concept and design behind the boss character of the game- The Necromancer

GDD