last few additions

Just a collection of the last few things that I've skulpted and added to the level. and I guess that it, done...

Neanderthal done

Neanderthal character model is now rigged, skinned and posed. The plasticy feel i was going for came through fine and the dead eye isn't anything to worry about on this kind of model.
 

NB: lighting needs to be re-built

Neanderthal part 4

So I've got all the maps baked out, and textures pretty much done. Took longer than I thought because I had problems in Xnormal with the cage not fitting and then when i did get it to fit, it gave me a load of artifacts all over the texture which took me hours to get rid of.  Then when it came to applying the texture and making sure it looked ok, half the texture just decided not to show up, and I couldn't work out why...

So the only way I could see if anything worked out was by importing the mesh and textures into UDK and this is my current character,

There's no lighting on ir or anything yet, but need to sort out the buggy eyes, the head still needs shrinking and the hands need work too. there are other things like remaining artifacts still around but overall this has turned out ok for it's purpose.

I've also started putting alphas on but I'll probably finish that over the weekend.

Neanderthal part 3

Ok so I diceded that It would be much easier and quicker for me to just make all the seporate parts that I made in max and make them all one mesh, and work on them as one, but then use a larger texture sheet. Purely because I don't know how to use multisub-objects in UDK and simply don't have time now to work out how to.

I didn't go crazy with the amount of topology, I only went as far as 1.25~ million triangles in Zbrush, mainly for exporting and baking time. I'd like to have this infomation as ambient occlusion, cavity and normal maps by tomorrow but with my therapy in the middle of the day I need to keep work time as short as possible, so I can move onto other things. I do ofcourse intend on adding alphas for the hair and for in parts but with them being expensive in terms of memory I need to be conservative with them.

Also, THE HEAD...arrrgh. I'm going to have to scale it a bit in max. I'll bear in mind that it still needs to be bigger than a human head but gosh, it's just too big atm.  

Neanderthal part 2

The next stage after making my naked Neanderthal was to put clothes on it. It's clothes would have been crude hide cuttings strapped to the limbs and body of the Neanderthal so with each section I tried to get this across.

Hide jacket

Hide Gauntlettes

Hide Boots

Generic pelt, most likely a wolf pelt

Hide greaves

Hair

The whole upper body was pretty much designed based on this easlier concept it did, and the lower half on earlier sketches of what I wanted the overall image to look like.

Next stop Z-brush. 

Neanderthal part 1.

So I've finally made a start on my Neanderthal character. Basically what i decided to do was make a character based off human proportions. Then to make the Neanderthal character, I could just work from the human character mesh I made easlier. This would aos give me a direct basis of comparrison to help me get the Neanderthal proportions right.

Once this part of the charaqcter was done, I then used the scuplture of a Neanderthal head (the new version) and attached it to the shoulders of the human character.

Once the head was attached Then becan the process of tweaking the proportions...

A) The overall height of the Neanderthal had to be noticably shorter than a Human at an average hight of 5ft 2. I used my skeleton reaearch to work out exactly where certain parts of the Neanderthal body should line up with a Human's body. The Neanderthal would have been nearer to 6 heads tall than 7.

B) The Neanderthal ribcage was wider than ours and longer, leaving little space between the ribcage and the pelvis near the spine, similar to that of a chimpanzee. With the overall ribcage shape similar to ours however, naturally this would have had an effect on how wide the shoulders would have had to be.

C) Relatively long arms in comparison to that of a human.

D) The Neanderthal femur was considerably shorter than ours, as were the tibia and fibula. The Femur also curved ourwards from the pelvis instead of locking under the pelvis like a Human's does, effecting overall posture which I will have to take into consideration when I rig it.
  

E) The Neanderthal Skull was longer than ours as it housed a Larger brain than ours, however, it had a sloaping forehead, and a low arch.

F) In comparrison to a human it still had quite a slope on it's face with a harsh brow ridge and much wider nose.

G) According to facts and figures, the Neanderthal had teeth larger than ours which would have crouded the jaw slightly, putting a slant on the jaw and not leaving much in the way of a chin. I tried to get this across, i really did, but if I altered the jaw any more in wards it just looked like I was making things up. Also, the neanderthal Larynx would have been further in as their Pharynx wasn't completely vertical like ours is, so I made this feature more subtle than I would a regular human.

 
This was the Final overall comparison of the base mesh. By what I was going for, this is pretty much how I imagined it. Unfortunately, my eyes are saying "omg what have you created, It's proportions are completely wrong!" In the end I decided to stick with the model basted off facts because otherwise you would be able to read something in that room, look at this model and see an instant contradiction. My eyes will just have to get used to it.

26,000+ words

So for the past week or so I've been scrambling through all the rest of my display boards. It may not look like much but these cove the vast majority of my surfaces in the level and in total so far they come to just over 26,000 words. Half of which was in French from my museum visits and needed translating which took up the biggest chunk of the past week. There is one or two pages that still need doing but I'm moving back onto getting the last few assets done now for the Neanderthal room. It's rather quite bare in comparrison to the other rooms atm.

Just as a side not. Some of the images on these slides are digi paints, others are shots from the BBC TV Documentary series "Walking with Cavemen", and yes, I did check that this was not a breach of copyright or my lisence agreement when I bought it. Just so long as I don't turn this into anything other than uni work.