Assets continued

First off, since deciding to model my busts without hair, I've redone my base mesh for the homo ergaster bust, taken it into zbrush and done the high poly sculpt. However, the low poly model does still need to be unwrapped for baking, out the maps.

I've also finished the low poly model for the Homo habilis bust, which I should be able to take into zbrush and have finished for tomorrow to move onto the Homo heidelbergensis bust. Hopefully, by the end of the week I will have all my busts done and be able to start the Homo neanderthalensis full character.

As a break between sessions of modelling the busts, I've been working on assets within the museum, like the display cases, infomation boards and other assets that will be repeated. All of which are unwrapped and have collision meshes so are ready to be exported into UDK.

Busts

So here I started to create another busy, this time for a homo ergaster. When I came to taking it into z-brush however, I quickly realised that it was going to be very difficult in developing a particular hair style that I could use that would be consistent, and it would be a waist of time trying develop a way that would make them all have hair that looked asif it was sculpted, from stone or mayble, and not an attempt to recreate real hair in a 3D program. Further, there is no real accurate or innacurate way to depict hair since it doesn't fossilise, so instead, like actual museums, what I will do is model this skulpture, and the rest, without hair. For the australopithecus afarensis I will return to that later depending on the time I have left after constructing my other assets.

Asset creation 1

So I've began my asset creation. Counting all my assets, it came to over 50 assets that I needed to have finished, and I ideally would like to have all my assets at least modelled by the end of February, which works out at nearlly 2 assets a day. and considering that half my models need zbrush work and baking time, which adds a couple of days to the simplest of models, there is no way that I can get them all done. My priority will be the assets for the main rooms which brings my assets down to 33 assets, which works out to just over one a day. My biggest concern is the busts and character models, but hopefully, if i just work my way through, I can get them all done.

The first assets on my list (going through in alphabetical order) was to remodel my 2sided infomation frame.  

Next up was my bust of an australopithecus. To do this I used a combination of skull references and concepts, getting the general shape and then working in the topology. Getting the topology of a human head on what looks almost like a chimp, was kinda odd, but I think I did a good job.

I then took it into Zbrush straight away to start working on the model. The biggest problem that I had was simply that I modelled the nose asif it would pertrude from the face, but I realised when sculpting, that it didn't. This caused a bit of a problem when trying to get the nose too look as though it blended into the face, but never the less, it actually woirked out ok. However, in Zbrush, the nose was too small.

Once I was happy with the Zbrush, I quickly unwrapped the base mesh, baked out the zbrush detail and applied it to the model to get an Idea of what it's looking like so far. I enlarged the nose which for now will do, and it is looking okish for now but I will return to polishing this when I come back to texturing.

Next model...

Essential B.S.P.

So today was my final deadline for all concepts. however, after doing my last blog, I began working on my next set of concepts but before finishing them, i began to tire of concepting, and instead decided to start making some head way with my bsp for my level, to put my soon to be made assets into, and begin playing around with lighting to know what my assets will look like in the actual scene. for now, i have just modelled the areas of my chite box that i designated to be my "must have" areas.

Once this was done, I then started to work on the lighting and colours that I wanted for each room. The focus was to go for a contrast that would help create an atmosphere of older and new architecture, asif there was an original older building that has had a newer extention built onto it and has a much more modern look.

From there I quickly added some simple and very unpolished tilable textures to the walls and ceiling. again, just to give me a better adea of how things are looking. The lighting itself will most likely change because I want the lights themselves to be directed at assets to create areas of focus and i want to get rid of the dark areas in the ligher rooms.

I will most likely finish up the textures for the walls when I come to the end of my modelling and begin to texture everything, and I intend on doing the very last of my consepting as I go for things that it's relavent for.

next stop, asset creation. In which particular order, as of yet, I have no idea.

Habilis concepts

Below are the display pages done since Thursday and concepts for homo habilis:

                                                 (The two images above still need images)

It appears that I’ve underestimated the amount of time that it takes me to set up these display pages, and without all of my concepts ready to pad them out, trying to do them both at the same time is slowing down my concepting massively, and if I carry on doing both, I will fail my deadline for the 27th. So for now, I will stop doing my display pages, and carry on just doing more detailed concepts, particularly on the finer details on what the rooms themselves will look like. On Monday the 30th jan, I want to be able to start modelling my assets. The sooner I get those out of the way, the better. I know full well that texturing by far takes me the longest amount of time, so I need to account for this.

Final australopithecus concepts

Sinse the start of the new semester, it has been my aim to get all of my concepting, including the infomation boards (even though they're technically tectures), completely finished within the first two weeks, which would bring me up to the 27th Jan. this far, I have completely finished my section on the australopithecus concepts and I am ready to model that particular area of the level. By sunday, 22nd, i intend to have all the homo habilis concepts and infomation boards completed, to be uploaded to the blog.

 

All the infomation actuall on the infomation boards is a combination of all my resources, mostly learnt, which i've enjoyed doing more than I thought i would, despite my love for pre-history, and writen in my own lovely little way. The other concepts are of  of a family of australopithecines, a reconstruction of what I think a neanderthalensis would look like vs the 1911 visualisation, an initial idea for the reception area, and finally the australopithicus afarensis skeleton known as "Lucy".

Technical details

Before the end of our semester, we were tasked with writing up out technical specification and write out an asset list.

Details of the technical spec will be posted below, but before I could properly do this, or write my asset list, i needed to have a completed layout and white box design. For this I worked on more asset designs, and made several more quick 3D models to give me an idea of the amount of triangles major assets will use. From those I then made my white box, which then gave me an indication of how many times those assets would be duplicated. I then made an estimate on the triangles that all the assets would take and work out a rough idea of how i could group assets into texture sheets and how much each texture sheet would take. I then gave myself a little space extra to compensate for any miscalculations I may have done resulting in my technical limitations of:

105,000 triangles
100MB of texture space.