Making of Zack & Reflective Statement

 

Fig.1 - The Making of Zack and Reflective Statement

 

Fig.2 - Beginning of Zack

The beginning process was daunting. I remember not knowing what character I was going to model and freaking out about the process of making the character. Mostly being introduced to Zbrush which I have never touched before, it was software "from another universe." Knowing me, I knew I was good at time management, however, it got harder when the DSP project was in that timetable. I had to put more focus on the DSP as I wanted to create something appealing to the team and the audience. At the end of the day, I was able to succeed in that aspect. After working hard on one project it was hard to get on track with the 'Pipline' Project. So to get back on track, I decided to follow all the tutorials I should have been doing and started modelling a character I was interested in, Kids Next Door. So I started Modeling the character in Zbrush (Fig.1).

Fig.3 - Character Influence Map

Fig.4 - Creating a character Influenced by KND

It was hard to stay motivated to do work every day, so I decided to try and at least complete something every week to help before the deadline. I went through my Influence map again and decided to create a whole different character. At the end of the day, I decided to create a character called Zack with green eyes who is best friends with Code name 4. I decided to use the influence map to create the new character for Codename: Kids Next Door. I decided to go with a freakish hair and a hoodie similar to Code name for which is the character in "fig.4" number 2. Since I drew a pose for Code name 4, I then thought of giving the same pose to this new character.

  

 

Fig.5 - Retopology

I started getting less motivated again as Z-brush was hard for me to get used to. Since there were so many options to remember and the difference between Maya. Thus, after creating Zack's head I brought it into Maya and tried fixing it the way I thought was right. After that, I went back and forth using Z-brush and Maya, which helped a lot as I felt more in control. I decided to use Zbrush for the things that would take me time in Maya and used Maya for the things I found hard to create in Z-brush. After this, I started creating the weapons and the vehicle in Maya as I felt like Maya was easy to mould a hard surface, although again I was able to use Zbrush front and back to get the shape that I wanted. 

Fig.6 - UV

 I started UV'ng the character and hard surfaces which I then took into Sub-painter as shown in my posts in the blog.
Using Substance Painter was the hardest software for me to get used to in my opinion, as it was too similar to photoshop that I wanted to create layers and just paint on the object, however, there is more to do to get the texture you want on your model. Again not feel motivated using Subpainter. I procrastinated. A week later I forced myself and carried on. I decided to use my plane model and export it to Sub-painter. I was then going through Patrick's Tutorials again and was able to get the texture I wanted on the model. After this, I exported the UV's to Maya.

 

Fig.7 - Using Bump Maps

After applying all the textures from Sub-Painter to the Models. I started getting stressed out. As I said during blogging, "I struggled a lot with Bump Mapping." Almost thinking of procrastinating again, I decided to take a day and look at bump mapping tutorials. Thanks to tutorials and youtube I was able to get what I wanted. What helped me was the blog post I previously posted, because I took a picture of a graph showing how I managed to use bump mapping in the class. I have shown in Fig 4, I had more control of texturing which felt good. I was able to texture everything on the models and use Arnold shaders to get the right texture and lighting on the objects.

Fig.8 - Final Render

Finally, after spending soo much time in texturing I was finished. There were many Maya crashes because of the textures and renderings, however, I was able to pull through it and get the project done at the end of the day. I loved the character I designed called Zack. In my opinion, The texturing was a great success as I was able to control bum mapping. I loved the colours that I used and the influence I used to create the character. Posing the character was not what I had in mind when starting the project, which I thought went well as it is my first time using Z-brush. Although I was not used to most of the software introduced to me, I was able to make something out of it. I loved the lighting I used to create the atmosphere, that is my favourite part.
What I would have done differently; would have changed the way I approached the software by giving myself more time in learning them, being more confident in asking for help when needed.    

              Altogether I am amazed and still amazed by what I created, and if this was a 3D Movie or Tv-show of this, I would watch it.