Link Project 007

Just a quick post with a turnaround of my Link model so far. Not the best quality, but it gets the job done.

Link Project 006

So at this point, I believe I started creating the hair. I originally planned to simulate hair using Maya's hair system. I tried creating the hair in Zbrush but I couldn't get the volume that I wanted the hair to have. Instead I ended up creating curves in Maya that I would use to create the hair. This was a very long and tedious task and to be honest, it drained my enthusiasm for the project.
So I decided to take a "quick" break from it so I wouldn't get burned out. I thought I could quickly create a SSS (sub-surface scattering) piece (my female portrait project) and put it on my reel. Turned out that the piece took a lot longer than expected. But I think it was for the better. I learned a lot while working on it and it also got me motivated again. With that project finished I came back to this one and made some corrections to my model.
Some of the advice I got from my friend for the clothing was to create a single low poly mesh to base my simulation off of. With that in mind, my problem areas were the belt area and the pants. The belt area would be hard to simulate if I was using one mesh for the tunic so I decided to split it in half.
I also originally had the pants as a separate mesh to simulate over Link's legs. His "pants" are actually tights, so there was no point in simulating them, instead I could just use them as his legs. So I removed Link's legs and merged his pants as his legs. 
Lastly I also decided that the realistic simulated hair wasn't fitting the stylized look. Especially since he didn't have realistic eyebrows. So I refined the block in hair mesh that I made and decided to use that. So far the hair has been very troublesome but I'm getting closer to a result I'm happy with.
For now, here are some progress images.

That's about all for now. I do have one more thing I will be uploading later due to my internet being rather poor lately. This post is pretty close to my current progress. By my next post I should be all caught up.

Until then, thank you for reading and I hope you look forward to my next post.

Link Project 005

As promised here are some screenshots of the rig.

It's not super fancy but it will get the job done. I also thought I would make it a little interesting by creating a master control and a help guide that were Legend of Zelda themed. When I finish this project I plan the also create a real time version that I can give to anyone who would like a copy. I can't promise you that it will be the best rig you've ever used but it's something to play with.

The rig isn't finished yet but it's close. I created fk/ik arms, legs, and a spine. I wanted to test creating a fk/ik spine because in my rigging experience I always seem to have to use a fk spine. The ik spine seems to break whenever it gets too far away from the master control and I still haven't figured out how to fix it. I still have some bugs to work out with the fk/ik spine switch too but so far the fk spine is working.

Next time I will show you the corrections I made to the model and the final sculpt. Also, I plan on posting weekly that way I can have more substance to my post. I think I will try to get a post up every Saturday from now on. So until then, thanks for reading and I hope you look forward to my next post. 

Link Project 004

Hello everyone, sorry for the long absence. Something came up that required my full attention but thankfully I believe the crisis has been averted.

Anyway, I didn't mean for the last post to be so dramatic. Hopefully you didn't think because I got stuck on simulating the clothing that I gave up. No, luckily I have some really talented and good friends who can help me when I get stuck. I simply sent a message and a work file to a friend familiar with simulating clothing and he helped me work it out. Once again, thanks for the help Bugi.

Once I figured out what I needed to do I reset myself and started thinking about different ways I could setup the clothing. I also needed to setup a rig in order to test if the cloth simulation was working properly or not. So I started setting up my base rig with the clothing in mind.

That's all for now, sorry I don't have any W.I.P. pictures for this post but I will have some next time. Now that I have everything taken care of I should be able to get back to regular post. Till then, thank you for reading and I hope you look forward to the next one.

Link Project 003

Now that I had my game plan, I started modeling. With this project I decided that I wanted to challenge myself and simulate clothing. Since I had never attempted simulating clothing and had only seen it done, I just went for it thinking that I was going to simulate everything.I started off by creating my character base in ZBrush. I created links body using ZSpheres then started sculpting.
Here was my result.

I also created a hair block-in that I would base my simulated hair strands off of.

Now that I had my base sculpt done, I imported it into Maya and retopoed the character and made base clothing that I would be able to simulate.

It was here that I started playing around with the dynamics of the clothing to see what I would be able to get away with.

It did not go as planed ...

That's it for today, thanks for reading and I hope you look forward to the next post.

Link Project 002

Back in August I attended Siggraph (a conference for computer graphics), and talked to some recruiters. Some advice I got was adding some live action work to my demo reel. So, I started planning out a live action project. I figured  this would also give me a good chance to work on my generalist skill set and let me explore some things I haven't tried before.
First off, I threw around some ideas of what I wanted to do and ended up settling on creating a Legend of Zelda fan art piece. Here is my concept.

All it states is what I require to create the piece, and I made some quick doodles of what I want to happen.

So with my concept done, I started gathering resources. I really like the way that the wind waker link looks, so I made that my main reference for my model.

So now that I had my main reference, I started the modeling process. Even though I really like the look of my reference, I adapted the character model to my own style. I also wanted to make it a little more realistic to fit the live action setting.

Well that's it for now, thank you for reading and I hope you look forward to the next post.

Link Project 001

Just thought I would make a quick post about my next project. I have started working on it, just haven't gotten around to getting stuff together for making blog post. I will start giving you updates shortly though. Here is a quick teaser of what to expect.

Again please don't hesitate to critique my previous project. Anything helps, that way I know what I need to improve the next time around.

Thanks for reading and I hope you look forward to the next post.