Josh’s Individual Asset Creation

Roman Style MoodboardFirst of all, I researched the movement of vorticism, followed by a lot of Roman dress, architecture and art. I compiled the most prominent together into a moodboard to draw inspiration from while I later sketched.

Concept sketching - 1Usually, I start out with rather random sketches before moving onto the actual concept designs. These were in preparation for the guard.

Concept sketching - 2The idea of the complete opposite, an old welsh man, popped into my head. It was never used, but it helped quite a lot – all I had to do to create a good guard design was steer clear of rounding the overall shape, and make it less caricatured.

Concept sketching - 3The brief stated that the game would have to be historically accurate. However, artistic interpretation takes priority, so I toyed a bit with the idea of the Roman Guards having monstrous, bird-like heads, representing how the roman empire may have appeared to small welsh villages at the time – dominating monsters, with some qualities of the vulture, and bird of prey rolled into one horrid form, atop an armoured human body.

Concept sketching - 4Here, again, I’m playing around with what styles could work and what could fall flat on its face. Three helms are sketched in the lower right hand corner, the larger ending up being the helm of final guard design.

Concept sketching - 5I previously said I’d try to stay away from caricatures, but just to fly in the face of that statement, I decided to see what I’d end up with if I actually did try caricaturing. I didn’t feel that such unnatural anatomy would do well, so I went down a different path.

Concept sketching - 6A combination of the first (first upper left) and third (second in from upper right) was used for the final guard design, to more contrast with Dwynwen’s sleekness. The guard would be big, with some sharply jagged lines.

Final Roman Guard DesignSince Dwynwen had a blue palette, I decided to give the Guard a red one, giving him a warm scheme in opposition to Dwyn’s. The eyes are covered, as this guard is not meant to be seen as an individual, but more of a single-minded automaton, a mere extension of the Roman Empire.

Roman Guard Place Holder RigI was slightly confused when it came to rigging the place holder guard Todd had created, but I did it anyway, just in case we’d need it down the line. Since my previous rig of Dwynwen did not go down well (even though it was standard), I went for a very simplistic version. The global control is still present as are the reverse foot controls and knee controls, but everything else is controlled via the rotation tool. Nothing could be more simple.

Orthographic - GuardWhen it came time to model the guard, I was first going to simply morph the guard place holder that Todd had previously made. However, this proved insufficient due to the overall shape and lack of vertices in the correct places. I produced this front view of the final guard design to serve as a guide when modelling from scratch. It is grey, as it is Maya ready.

Roman Guard V.2 GeometryThe place holder guard made by Todd I consider to be V.1. The pattern on the armour plate chest was not working, so I discarded that bit. Doing so also served to reduce the poly count, so that’s a plus. This was entirely made from scratch, only working from a front orthographic and the final guard design as reference. Since this includes clothes, I chose to model the limbs and head separate from the torso. They are not actually connected via vertices or edges, and this will serve to grant the illusion that the clothes are not part of the flesh.

Roman Guard V.2 RigThe rig for the Roman Guard V.2 was put together a little differently. The rig for Dwynwen focuses on flexibility, while, here, I focused on rigidness. The guard should animate very mechanically, like a robot. The IKspline and all torso curves were replaced with circle curves constrained to the FKs of the bones to achieve said rigidness. Hopefully, Leah and Lewis have enough experience animating to make proper use of this.

Environmental concepts - 1Producing environmental designs was never a task of mine, but I had a go anyway. Below the top two images is an idea for a sort of shire-like housing, though that would have been historically inaccurate, as would the tunnels in mountains above it. The flower was an idea for a little foliage throughout the level, but it’s not a flower that grows in Wales, so was scrapped.

Environmental concepts - 2This was an idea for a more simplistic look at trees. If it were winter, all the leaves would have been dead and gone, so I wanted to try a way of expressing no leaves without numerous naked branches. In the end, a few scribbles would not keep in tone with the overall design.

Orthographic - Base FemaleThe very first orthographic produced for the project, I drew this to use as a guide when creating the base female geometry. I did not include hair or a face, as that would only serve to complicate matters.

Base Female GeometryDone for practice in preparation for the actual modelling of the PC, creating this was to help remind me how to model in Maya. Of course a tutorial from Digital Tutors was used to help with this. This would serve as the base that would eventually be morphed and edited to become the PC, Dwynwen.

Base Female Geometry – Torque ReadyAn additional task, I was to give James a Torque ready version of the Base Female Geometry to put into engine. I followed a tutorial provided by Mike, but problems were had. The collision mesh was blocking view of the model in Torque. This was never truly remedied until Todd round a way around it with a later version of Dwynwen.

Base Female Geometry - RigI created a full rig for the model for practice. This rig contains a global control, head, neck, chest, hip sway, abs, knee, foot, shoulder, elbow and wrist controls moved by the translate and rotate tools. Also present are foot rolls, automatic fist actions, and an expression connection the twist of the wrist to that of the elbow. This is not a complicated setup for those who know how to animate using normal rigs, but adds a lot of freedom.

Orthographic V.3 - DwynwenLeah had previously created an orthographic of Dwynwen for me to use as a guide when morphing the base female geometry. However, each view was very proportionately different, so I could not use it. She came back with a slightly better editing of it, but it was still not sufficient. I took the time to edit it myself, bringing the proportions more in syncwith one another. However, it was not in the T position, and that was something I could not fix, so I went ahead and began modelling from this version.

Dwynwen V.2 GeometryLet me first explain why this is V.2: the base female is considered V.1, as this was made using that as a base. I managed to get the arms up into the correct position, but the legs were another matter. I could not put them more inward without them messing up the whole surface. Also, the feet were not planted on the ground in the orthographic, so that was another problem. There is no eye in the socket, as I was not sure if the face was to be rigged, and the modelling is a very important aspect when it comes to facial rigging methodology. This version was not rigged, as Leah and Todd wished to edit it first – a large mistake, now that I look back.

Dwynwen V.3 RigThe ploy count of the geometry was reduced dramatically by Leah and Todd, which would mean a lot of trouble down the line. Unfortunately, their over-editing would cause my rig to not function properly due to a lack of vertices. This rig was based on my previous rig for the base female geometry, and thus would have worked if they did not change the geometry so much. Eventually, due to complaints, I axed a lot of the control curves you see here. This made it work better, but only because Todd was no longer confused as to how to manage it. Of course, losing the curves and important controls that went with it caused the animations to look very ridged during the presentation.

Dwynwen V.3b GeometryOver the Easter holidays, I was given the task to recreate the Dwynwen model, and then rig and weight paint it. I did so using the body of V.2 and the head of V.3. By doing this, the body had the vertices to move well when bound to the rig, and the face was edited slightly, getting rid of many unneeded polys, such as the unseen backs of the eyeballs. The poly count was higher, but a much better model was produced.

Dwynwen V.3b RigEssentially, this is the same rig as the one used for V.3. However, there are some differences: the expression in the wrist has been taken out, the shoulder controls have been removed, and the IKs in the arms have been replaced by FK controls. This proved to work well, as the model ended up being very flexible, perfect for Dywnwen’s type of movement.

Horse RigI was instructed to rig a horse model Leah had made, and so I did. I also wrote up a ‘How-To’ completely explaining the rig and how it works. It is entirely controlled through rotation of each individual FK, and was created using reference of a side view of an actual horse skeleton. Each rotational axis was manipulated in component mode for further ease of use when animating.