Development of WW: Character Rigging and Texturing

This week main focus was to finish rigs for both of the characters. The soft modification in the good wolf required some fixing, because some parts were collapsing as he is doing general moves. This was solved creating pose deformers.A very useful technique as I found it and am glad we were taught how to use it in our maya classes .

 For the evil wolf , his shield-like structure was asking for a disparate type of movement for his parts. I have created a pre-set animation for all 4 of his legs, so as they move an illusion of the separate muscles moving is suggested.

 The other part of the focus now is the texturing. Here is the doll’s colour pass finished.

 

I also used ambient occlusion bake-in and settings to quickly shape the outlooks. This technique, used for the first time, seems thoroughly useful now.

 

 I have started some developments on the evil wolf’s texture. The tweaked mental ray shader already it has 60 percent of the desired looks, so I’m quite excited what can be done further when all the passes will be solved separately

Good and Evil Wolves Rigs

For the good wolf to work I've followed a fairly basic quadruped rigging. It looks to be enough for the type of animation in The Wolves Within, but few fixes with pose deformers wouls still be needed. Also still waitting are blend shape models for the facial animation.

For the Evil Wolf I followed the base quadruped rig too. However I am pretty sure to go and set-animate the parts and look into some addition of other rigging solutions for finessing of the working of evil wolf.

Scale Relationship and UVs for Evil Wolf

Before going into rigging I wanted to find the scale relationship between the two characters. Making them the same hight, somehow made the evil wolf seem less capable. However, he was already wider and longer than the good wolf. I believe the glowing aura could visually compensate the lack of good wolf's size. I found this scale least conflicting.

Also, and finally, I have the evil wolf's Uvs done. Took longer that expected. But then, he had ..10 times more of details than the previous one.

Week of Modeling

It was of writting dissertation too..

After some while the evil wolf is resolved. It took good two days for body modeling and one for the head. The tricky part was to make it work as armour and as suggestion of body parts, which later have to function.

The good one was modeled last week

If there were lots more time, modeling could go into even finer details. However, I believe Leo's and my ideas for this character in animation should  be  enough. The only question I have at this stage is , does this model need UVs to be layed out? Cause the texture work for metallic ice supposedly will be coming from a more complex maya shader.

Modeling progress:

Also, some fynilising touches to the doll: face, trimming and posing.

youtube converter, limewire

Doll Model

The hand-made doll  for representation of soul. The model is finished in its basic form. I suppose greater detail and some other little props will be brought in Z-Brush.

Good Wolf's Model

The base mesh of the good wolf now is ready. The details of the body will be added in Z-brush and exported as either displacement map or normal map. But before doing this, I’ll model the bad wolf in the same way. So then I’ll have both of them ready for rigging and skinning . We’ll be able to play with them setting for animation, while working on detail maps (displacement, colour, and so on.)

II also add here the progression of modeling. Again, much like in drawing : block out first, detailing later, finessing last.

It required me to learn the anatomy and topology for quadrupeds, to prepare this model. But it then was quite a straight forward process. I’m quite excited the bad wolf is going to be  of totally different approach, looking forward to nailing it :]

Start of WW Production: Shape Translation Test

This is the base layout of the good wolf. For now it serves as a shape test, how drawn designs translate into maya. If after discussions all seem ok, I'll move to detailed modeling. Also, quite clearly, I'll have to research  geometry flow for quadrupeds as deformation in animation depends on it. Both, me and Leo estimated a week for each character's modeling ( texturing excluded ). We shall see how it goes.

Character Fixes

Friday we have discussed designs and if they work from the side and front views , for the wolves. Also, it was clear that the previous soul design was to distinctive where a more general design would suggest easier identification with it.

 

The wolf’s nose wasn’t following design language of the body that was changed. Also, in the front view, had various issues with legs, width, and head. Hopefully overall, now it is working much better. However, front view often tends to look strange, cause we are missing back legs and all.

For the good one, only little changes in leg positioning ( so it doesn’t feel like falling over) and tail proportions.

 More at the Wolves Within site.

Soul Representation Concept

At Wolves Within  discussions lead to development of soul representation concept. This one combines ideas from three other dolls. Also, in Leo's concept I noticed he'd draw it white so I gave it a go and this prooved  to diminish the sinister qualities  "soul " designs  had before, but keeping still the misteriousness.

It was guided, as always, by the reference sheet of native american dolls

Wolves Orthograph Views

I've used orthograph views to resolve the design further and make any changes after discussions with Leo and Justin Wyatt. Also, I should be thanking Justin, Andriana and Dom for their feedback, when I stopped seeing designs objectively.

The bad wolf.

tied with black matter his shield-like body moves lucely, by parts separating and coming together as he moves. When solving his front and side designs, bulky, sharp and mean qualities were kept as he represents Anger, hate, and greed.

The good wolf.

Changes to this one were in legs, referring back to dogs anatomy. It should be expressing that he is peace, hope and serenity.

So, hopefully character fronts are as interesting as the concepts themselves. If these will be 'approved', I'll move to fully resolve them ( back views, 3/4 view for the good wolf, and details) and move to modeling stage.

Soul , Title and Background Designs

At The Wolves Within,  preproduction is  soon to reach its ends.

To wrap up character design a sort of another one is created  for human soul. Native American doll is a representation for it. Sheet of ideas vary from quite typical puppets in native American art to some more loose ideas which would offer themselves  more as a spirit of mysterious nature.

I quite like the one which is formed of floaty cloth. It keeps the idea of using a doll to represent the soul but pushes it at the same time to suggest a less obvious nature of it. I see it working quite charmingly with the light stream idea in the sacred environment

The developed character and environment designs  suggested an  approach for the title : sharp silhouette goes with flowy shape within it, to embody both the bad and good wolves design language.

Next,  a base sheet to present whatever information was needed . Native american ornament shapes and  the relevant colour pallete was arranged in a way to suggest inner space/ our psyche.

 

Lastly, these are some  experiments  for the blog banner:

'The Wolves Within' Development

 Character Fix

Tuesday was a day of feedback on wolf Characters. After discussion with Leo and Phil, I also talked to Justin Wyatt. In short, it was obvious designs needed some problem solving and revisiting.

 For the good one things seemed to go over the top:  decorativeness  and saturated in complimentary colours  were obfuscating the shapes. I've added some mass to his neck and change the 'face make-up' .A little nice touch, suggested by Leo, was to get rid of eye pupils.

In contrast , the bad wolf , presented other set of problems. Mainly regarding shapes of the back  part of the body and how it would work in animation. He was looking stiff as a statue figure. The challange was to figure out how he'd work. So I've come up with this idea, which was kind of evident in the design already, that the bad wolf is tied with an anti-matter/black matter which is holding him in place. So when he moves parts come together and distance away.

I added tail ( finally :D ) and fixed the spine line.

Wolf Terrain Suggestion

I thought to give it a go and create a suggestion of environment to express more clearly what kind of thought I have about it. I find it quite hard to describe it in words.

It is presented in flat view so we see the transitioning from the bad wolf 's affected  environment to the good ones. Also, keeping in mind it is a race from unconscious to conscious , I was imagining the environment would correspondingly  build from 'nothingness' to a fully crowded space.

This concept is also testing the idea for the environment to be quite desaturated in colour. Lighting would be quite colourful: Green (blues, violets) for the bad wolf , golden (whites, oranges) for the good one.

The White and Black Wolves

Last week I have chosen two wolves for each, bad and good one. For the bad one there was a debate, both seemed to have their own strengths.Therefore I tried to compromise the design and came up with this third wolf. I believe it is nicely encompassing ideas of both of the previous wolves.

 

  

 

Friday , we both with Leo have discussed the visual development and approach for character resolution in terms of colour and texture .  So these are close to resolved character designs for both of the wolves .

The dark one was developing quickly and soon I realized it will be quite a challenge to make the good one‘s design as interesting. The idea to make it purely white with only accents of other colours soon proved to be insufficient. Because his also less saturated in shapes in regard to the bad one, so it seemed like he would loose  0:2 if shapes and colour don’t  come across as “complicated” as the bad ones. 

These designs  capture how I’ve imagined them to look like. However at this stage I’m still ready to change/redo designs if our further discussions would ask to do so.

The Selection of 4 Wolf Designs

Discussions of the past 2 weeks have directed development of wolves design to these 4, selected out of.. so far 22 different design ideas for both of the wolves. I hope we could select one of each and I could start concentrating on them two. To solve how they  work together and so on.

Wolves might have 'features' of other animals, for example, a bat. They informed these designs as native Americans have a assigned meanings and signs to almost every common animal. For example, Owl being a bad omen, wolf being a symbol for moral teaching, polar bear being a good omen. It was also very common in their culture to give names of an animal to a person, which he deserved. These reasons lead to considering such other-animal incorporation in to the personalities of two wolves.

 It would be very appreciated if you could express your preferences now.

WW: Character Development

Having received loads of feedback from both, tutors and classmates I went in to refine some of the more successful examples . Mainly clarifying the construction. I believe by this point It will be clear weather these can be taken further or I should try and come up with some new ideas for wolves' designs.

Animatic #6 with A Soundtrack Composed by David Keefe

Lately for The Wolves Within we were arranging to get someone to compose a soundtrack which would have both, Woodkid's - Iron and Native American tribe music feel to it. And to our big pleasure, Dave Keefe, aka Mustard Kid also a CG Arts  student who graduated few year ago, offered his help :]

The soundtrack you'll hear in this animatic, he calls a demo, adding that rithm can be changed, also not all the elements are yet in place.

Having that and some feedback on our latest animatic # 5, another one is piled together to further tackle the problems of rithm and mood.

Environment Thumbnails

Some capturing of ideas for environment. I was thinking in sort of three levels: we start from nothingness ( unconscious) then the bad wolf enters, so the environments he "lights up" is revealed as sinister, as if this is what he'd build. Next takes over the good wolf and we see firm golden-brown-like clifs, (lighting for it would be web-like, but for purposes of thumbnails I didn't go into details) Some key shapes, flow and behaviour of environment is there, remembering it is an innerspace, I played with dinamic and theatrical presentation.

@ The Wolves Within