Arm of the Lady

Hi, heres a update on the lady
Yay the arm is much better and the metal plates overlap into her torso.
She now has eye lashes and mouth geo

Week 11: The Facts

Heres a script that changes the grid to udk scale it just for ease further down the road ill build a ui for it and make it all pretty but as of now there is simply just no need for it. Further down the road ill make more special features but this script is useful enough. The notes are there so you can customize the sub divs and whatnot.
So feel free to use or distribute , non shall stop you do as you please!



import maya.cmds as cmds
cmds.text(l = "Grid spacing of Kirlis")
#To toggle the grid display of the grid (in all views):
currState = cmds.grid( toggle=True, q=True )
cmds.grid( toggle=(currState == 0) )

# To change the grid spacing and subdivisions:
cmds.grid( spacing=256, d=16 )
# To set the defaults for inches
cmds.grid( default=True, spacing='1in', size='1ft', divisions=4 )
# To change the size of the grid to 5000x5000, extending 10 units
# in each direction:
cmds.grid( spacing=5000 )

Here is lady Z's texture atlas

 

She is a vast improvement over her predecessor in terms of design and execution. She has even saved polycount currently she under 14k .(check my earlier posts for her pervious iteration)

What Worked

She was basically a texture test to myself creating a outfit design based solely on hand painted textures, no real photos.

The pillow emboss tool in Photoshop is a great tool , easy for painting hard surface objects.

The character design I am proud of, combining many of my favorites genres and styles

The face is simple yet effective

She stayed true to my original concept art

Her life support module (back was very fun to make) the painted spec really made it pop visually while keeping her back visually appealing

Her holster and harness make great contrast with the rest of her outfit

the fixed seams on the designs

I was pleased with the hair (it was a fun mudbox/ photoshop exercise)

 

What didn't Work

A lot of detail was lost in the normal bake

she isn't game ready ( no mouth geo)......yet

some textures not given enough love (circular parts on the back)pillow and emboss will help 

 possible asymmetry on her back, perhaps a result of splicing a reflected copy(will use old mesh if necessary

her arm; In mubox; the shaders really help with contrast and creating shadows,  but unfortunately never rely on a shader , especially if it isn't in a game engine, it will definitely need another pass ie spec and greebels.

 

 

All of these problems stem from time management as I am a disgustingly busy person. I will address and fix these problem this weekend after work (its personal now). As I will continue to update this blog and continue my work and rig Lady Z and Cherno in the upcoming weeks.

See you soon,

Nick

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello Good people,
Heres the long awaited update for the scripting half. I worked  on two scripts this week
The Grid spacer of kirlis
And the Finalization of kirlis
They were made to help speed up the transition from maya to udk.
The grid spacer creates the udk scale at the click of the button, it doesn't do anything with the mesh (its best left up to the discretion to the modeler).
The finalization script is to help modelers make sure the history is deleted the normal are correct and the ngons and non manifold geo is addressed(not fixed but addressed). The scripts need some troubleshooting but no worries they will be released soon, very soon.

Hey yall,
I've balancing a lot of things and projects (while starting up a company a lot of things u[p in the air).

A lady at work got fired, so ive been working a lot more, more money less art and less updates.
Her textures are almost finished excluding boots and mechanical arm, which will be completed by the end of the week. I cleaned up the texture map as there were artifacts from her previous iterations.
Most of the detail have been form fitting to emphasize that she is indeed a girl   (easiest way would be increasing her curves since she has a very moderate bust size), while working some people referred to her as a guy at that point I needed a change

 

Also I used a custom brush alpha for her hair (in mudbox the  stroke + stamp tool makes great custom hair).  However the default color for transparency is a distracting tan color (where nothing is painted) which shows up very prominently against her platinum hair. And speaking of her hair as it was an alpha brush naturally it was white but I decided to stick with that color as it contrasts with the rest of her outfit but matches the clasps on her belts and harness. It also emphasizes the whole cyber goth  aesthetic I am going for I might make another texture for black hair with possibly blue in the future.

 

I touched up her back life support module painting spec into it as no normal maps have been used. Updates will continue .

 

Heres an update I spent some time baking the normals, but I am not satisfied with the results of the bake. The bake lost almost all of its details and many artifacts shown up ill continue to rework the zbrush sculpt to make sure to not loose the detail

I might need to re sculpt the arm with a full retopo as the normal looked like stamps and not her muscles character right arm). Since then I been re painting her and fixing her seams and adding more detail.

Hello All,
Heres a quick late night update of  my character
Theres been many redesigns, a lot of moving and allocating uv shells
I started sculpting her her earlier the normal are mostly just for her arms as one is organic (character left) while the other is mechanical (based on musculature character right).

I also stated panel loops as an experiment  (good tool I never end up using it zbrush hard surface is suspect nothing I cant do in maya faster)
her texture has been cleaned up (no screen cap available) is a just to get a base color on her and erase the old AO bake borders, thankfully, mudbox has a steady stroke tool option (sorry photoshop).
All her new parts have been neatly placed on 2 uv shells two 2048s.

Heres a quick update.
She maybe half machine but she is all woman, that's enough for obscure references.
Ill be re compiling her with all her new uv parts and make sure they fit with the old texture map. this will make her like a Frankenstein's monster of 3d parts, a mechanical one.