Mudbox Tools

Sculpt tool

The sculpt tool like most of mudbox’s tools does what it say on the tin it sculpts geometry by adding onto the mesh and conversely can take away from the mesh if CTRL is held while using it. This tool was used on all my meshes in some way and is a mudbox staple.

Smooth tool

The Smooth tool smooths out and flattens out geometry and is very handy at blending in geometry that looks too protruded and will fix it, I used this a lot to keep the organic shape on the geometry I was adding and to clean up and over lapping I had from sculpting.

Grab tool

The Grab tool simply grabs the mesh and you can push or pull it in any direction to help more or stretch things out, this helped a lot when it came to manipulating face and it was also used to pull the back section my characters head into a tail shape.

Projection tool

The projection tool allows you to paint a stencil of any image you want onto a mesh which is really handy and can give you some good effects; I used this lot in my painting process, especially for the corset section of my character

Pinch tool

This tool is used for tightening the edges of geometry to give sharper edges or very harsh angel s on the meshes, this tool is only good for very particular things I found, I personally used this on my models eye brows to shape them sharply.

evaluation

In the end I was happy with my character in terms of design and learning new process’s I know that it could be improved in many ways like Texturing detail and quality and especially in the UV layouts something in which I will defiantly keep in mind for future projects.

I had planned for the character have a holster on her belt and maybe include a gun for it too but in the end the time constraints didn't allow me to do this since it was more important me finishing the actual model and not some extra accessories.

Looking at the final poly count on my character of 23,000 tri’s, I’m happy I only used half the budget because this is a good thing but at the same time also holds the model back due to the fact that only half the budgets worth of detail has gone into this and I could of reached a higher level of detail while still staying inside the budget. But at the same time I like how my character came out in terms of design while only having to use half of the budget so there is some pro and cons to that aspect of my model.

I would defiantly like to do this process again and I think I will improve greatly next time if I improve on my time management which for the project wasn't up to scratch but I am still happy with how the character came out 

High to Low Poly Bake

Once all my pieces were completed I need to finally create my normal maps for the head and body and my character will then be complete, to do this I imported both the high poly model and low poly models of both of these into a Maya scene, I then first selected the low Poly head and moved it to the centre of the world and then did the same with the high poly head once both were sharing the same space I started to use the outliner to easily select what I want.

I then went to rendering and pressed transfer maps while having the low poly mesh selected this will bring up the options box for the high to low poly bake, the first thing I needed was a source mesh to get the detail of so this would be my high poly head once these were set up, I then moved the envelope of the low poly so it covered all the details on the high poly, once this was set up had to select the maps I wanted so I selected a normal which is for the bump and diffuse map for the colour, then I went to Maya common output options and increased the map size so I could get all the detail I need I changed this to 2048 and the high quality 8x8 and set the save file to be a PSD so I had a master copy to edit if I needed to later on.

I then pressed bake and had to wait 40 minutes while this made my maps for me, once this was completed I came back to see my low poly now had all the details and colour of the high poly with only a fraction of the poly count, I then saved this and then moved on and repeated the exact same process with no difference for the body, which gave me these results.

I was happy with how these bakes came out since I wasn’t expecting that amount of detail in the maps and on the low poly. Im glad I did this because it gave me good practice on the baking process and really helped me to understand it better.

Mudbox Painting

Mud box painting is very simple, its like the modelling only you just paint directly onto your 3d model, I thought I would finish the head and body first before anything, so to begin this I had to chose base colour for the skin because I wanted to try and paint it myself to try and improve on my art skills which are not a strength, for the base colour I went for a moderately bright coloured blue for the initial base seeing as how see is an alien and also getting influences by aquatic reptiles, this was painted over the entirety of the Body and Head I then added a new layer so that I didn't mess up my base layer this also allowed for some experimenting with colour but with the ability to be quickly edited, on this second layer I used this to pick out  details on the model  and bring them out by creating shading with the darker colour.

I then added a third layer and for this I decided to paint on a cover for the breast’s that would blend in with the corset that would  be put over when it was painted later, so this was a simple deep brown colour to match the design for the western style clothing, I did the same on the lower part of her body by painting on pants for her to cover her lower half of the body since adding a separate mess for the pants made the legs look to chunky and misshapen so I scrapped them.

Finally I returned to the eyes on the head and got a reference picture of a pair of purple eyes on Google images and saved the image I then imported it as a stencil and used the projection tool to paint the eye straight onto my mesh giving me a result I was really happy with.

Next I decided I would paint my corset and leave my scarf and boots until last because this would bring the outfit she would wear together, again for this I didn't think I could get the detail I wanted for the corset from simply painting alone my skill set isn't high enough yet so I looked for a reference image on Google images to be used for projection and I found one I really liked.

I used this image to again project the colour onto the mesh but I hit a problem with only having the front image, so I had to use the front and paint only certain sections of the stencil to give the illusion of different sides and a back and I believe I did a good job of this considering the image I used.

I then moved onto the Scarf, this was a simple process again I decided to project paint instead of regular painting on this so went and found an image of red knit close up so that it would look like the scarf was that of a red knit. I followed along the length of the scarf projection painting as I went until it was painted from one side to the other I didn't need to paint the inside because it wouldn't be seen and because of the way I did the UV’s it automatically did what it did to the front on the back too.

Finally I had to paint my Cowboy boots, for this I used a mix of both projection and regular painting, for the actual boot section made three layer and painted a base brown colour on one layer, a slightly lighter highlight brown on the second and on the third a darker more burnt brown and I used these to try give the illusion of worn leather with bits of the darker brown used to make scuffs and damage and the highlights to try and show slightly better quality sections considering my skill level in painting and colouring I thought this came out well but it could have been more detailed but due to time constraints I had to move on to the spur attached to the boot for this I used the corset image to project the brown and gold pattern for the breast section of the image onto the leather strap part of the spur and on a separate layer I then using a simple grey base coloured the metal part of the spur section I could get away with this since it was such a small part of the character I didn't need high detail on it because it would just be over looked.

Mudbox Modelling

Every piece I made in Maya has been exported as FBX to see this process visit my unit 9 Blog and read the process I did for my pillar model.

http://harleypendletonunit9.blogspot.co.uk/

 I was now ready to begin the modelling process of high poly modelling in mud box; I only planned to do this on my head and body since the clothing didn't need it I could get the detail from my painting. The first thing I looked at was what kind of detail did want for my head and body and also any of the clothing and accessories hid these if so I didn't need the details, once I knew the details I wanted I started modelling using Mud box’s well-crafted tools, the first thing to do was to create better detail on the head, the shape of being bumped and raised into a head tail like appendage was fine its just need some detail so I began by building up some more of the geometry across the side of her that curved down the back of her neck which was inspired by the back of liara from mass effects neck, this gave me crevices in between in which I thought would look cool if I could make it look like skin was stretched between these to cover them, so I used the fill tool to bridge the gaps across certain positions to give this impression

After I had repeated this process across the head I then moved onto the face for this I decided I needed more details to show the reptilian side of my alien as per my design so went in close and began to grab bit of geometry with a small brush and pull them out and slightly to the side to give the impression of scales I only did this across half the face because one of the accessories I had made was a face scarf which would of covered the over details.

Next was the body since most of this was covered by clothing or accessories I simply created some extra shape and geometry across the neck and shoulders using the sculpt tool to just build them up and then I also created a belly button using the knife tool to give the thin indent and then while holding CTRL using the sculpt tool to lower the geometry giving a belly button.

The UV Process

The First thing I began Uving was my head and body first of all I separated these two and decided to do them separately because UVing isn't my strong suit so thought I would make things easier for myself, once the head was separated I pressed the button to show only selected so that I could only see the head which made the UV’ing process easier, I then project the UV’s using Planar mapping against the z axis because that’s the way my character was facing this gave me a flat UV image of the face on top of the back of the head, so I then selected edges  from the neck up to the top of the sides of the head and hit split UV’s this unlocked the two sides of the edges I had selected, creating a seem line, once I had did this I then selected all the UV’s an pressed unfold this unwrapped my head gave me a UV set like this  

Then came the body this was basically the same process but instead of doing the whole body I separated the body into sections like arms, hands, legs, feet and torso from here I then used the same process for the individual sections so this was projecting on one of the face and then creating seem lines to unfold the UV’s on this process worked out well and I didn't have a problem using it for all my pieces just some pieces I had to vary the process slightly like the hands I had to run a seem line on the outside of the thumb and round all the inside sections of the fingers and ending at the tip of the pinkie finger so that the hand unfolded on the edge opposite to the thumb. I repeated this process for all the clothing pieces too since I knew it works and I'm not proficient in UV’ing but these also worked out well with little to no problems.

Continuing the Modelling process

I got the general shape the last time I was 3D modelling, I now am making some of the more built up geometry there is not a lot of this being as that she is humanoid but with only one key difference being that there is a pulled out section of head that doubles as hair, inspired by characters like buu from Dragonball Z, Liara from Mass effect and bib fortuna from Star Wars.

I got the general shape by pulling on the back of the head using soft select this created a base for my extra geometry I then expanded on this by edge looping to create extra edges and using these to give the shape of the tail section of the head. With this completed the modelling process for the body and head was finished and I could then begin making the extra features of the character like clothing and accessories.

I began this by creating a pair of cowboy boots to create these I duplicated the bodies’ legs so that I had a starting point and started to cut into the geometry on the leg to get eh general shape I then deleted out the extra faces, I then using the soft selection tool manipulated the shape to make it look like a boot more than a foot.

Once I got the general shape I then went on to add extras onto the boots, I started to create a set of spurs to go onto the boots, I created this by adding in a Taurus shape and manipulating this so that it sat around the boot, and once that the strap was in place I then used the extrude too to pull out the spur section, once this was done I went about creating a cog shape which would be put in the middle to create the spur section of the boots.

Next I then began creating the scarf for my character this was an easy process because it was a simple cylinder turned 90 degrees on its side and then scaled it on its depth to make it thin like a scarf but while not using a plane otherwise one side of the UV’s would not be visible. Once this general shape was created I then had to add subdivisions because I would be using the Bend deformer to create the shape and without divisions it wouldn't bend because it has no edges to bend from. So I then added the subdivisions and then used the Bend deformer to manipulate the geometry. This gave me the wrapped up look that I wanted from my scarf this was now ready for UVing. The UVing process I was leaving until I had created all my geometry first.

The next on my list was the creation of the Corset I wanted on my model I wasn't too sure where to begin with making this piece, so I duplicated the body out and cut out the general shape I wanted into the mesh using the multi cut tool which allowed me to make edges very easily and keep them organic in shape, once I got the general outline for the corset on the shape of the body I cut out the faces that weren't being used then slightly scaled the rest of the object up so it sat over the body so it looked like clothes. This turned out better than I thought it would especially since I wasn’t sure about how I could go about the creation, this was now also ready for UVing like the rest.