Advanced 3D | 3D Project

August 26, 2022

Advanced 3D | 3D Project

Naim Zuki

AND222 | Advanced 3D

Chris Mcquillan

28/09/2021 - 26/08/2022

LECTURES

Week 1 | Introduction to Advanced 3D and the following assignments

In the animation and game industry, 3D animations and assets have been gaining popularity over the past couple of decades, from its use in feature animation films, to visual effects, and in various video games. In this era, you'll see 3D artworks practically everywhere you go. So to prepare us for the animation and game industry, AND222 Advanced 3D will cover the basics of creating a 3D character, environment, and prop as a foundation for our future 3D projects in year 3 and all other projects past university.

This module extends over the entirety of Year 2 and there will be a big deadline at the end of the year which involves a 3D character, a 3D environment, a 3D prop, and a performance-based animation practice.

BRIEF

Module Guide: AND222 Advanced 3D

ADVANCED 3D

It was pretty intimidating walking into the animation studio for the first time and seeing everybody pretty much being comfortable using these big drawing tablets. Back in Malaysia, pretty much everybody had little to no experience using any 3D softwares so 2D designs were our strong cards and where we had most practice in.

With that in mind, I had a small talk with Chris letting him know where my current skill level is, especially the fact that I haven't done any drawing for the past 6 months so it might take some time for me to pickup the skill again and be on track with everyone else on the assignments. He reassured me on the expectations and advised me to just go at it with my own pace, which I appreciated.

Idea Exploration

During class, I explored different styles for 3D art and tried my hand at drawing to see where my skills are at right now. The early concept sketches for this assignment mostly involves a very sketchy and ink-spilled style inspired by Su Jian's concept arts. Knowing the characters would be the most difficult for me to execute, I focused solely on character concepts for now

Fig. 1.0, Character Concept Sketch

Fig. 1.01, Character Concept Sketch

Fig. 1.02, Character Concept Sketch

Thinking about the character costumes, I recalled a video that I found from Knight Zhang explaining the thought process that she uses when designing any new characters. So I had a thought about who I wanted this character to be. Should it be leaning towards fictional or historical? What personality will my character have? I mulled over the idea for a few days until I realised that these ideas aren't appealing to me because it doesn't feel personal to me. Realising that, I decided to design a character that would pay homage to my highschool days. The typical white shirt over green pants and a pair of white shoes, it felt like the perfect motivation for me.

Moodboard & Visual Development

The style I was aiming for when thinking about my 3D character leaned more towards a stylised look. I particularly liked this design that I found on twitter.

It had the right balance of stylised elements and realistic proportions. I liked the way the character had that cool oversized tee look and I stuck to that idea while creating my moodboard for my character.

Fig. 1.03, Character concept moodboard, (Image courtesy of various artists)

A lot of concepts was explored at this stage of the project. We were paired with a student from the game development course to help us build more about the story behind our character, environment, and prop. From this activity, I decided that I wanted to create an emotional character with a moody physical outlook, kind of like Max from Life is Strange. For the prop, I figured a pink guitar would look nice considering I know the anatomy of guitars well and that might help me in the modelling process. Finally, to pair the two together, I thought creating a moody and dirty public toilet would fit the moody teenage look.

Fig. 1.04, Guitar Prop Moodboard, (Image courtesy of various sources)

Fig. 1.05, Environment Moodboard, (Images courtesy from various sources)

Character Design

Following Chris' classes on designing a character based on moodboards, I experimented with a lot of different angles, face shapes, gender, hair styles, and most importantly clothing. I realised that my character idea can be vague considering the mundane outlook it had. Thus I had a lot of room to experiment.

Fig. 1.06, Character concept

Fig. 1.07, Character concept

Fig. 1.08, Character concept

Fig. 1.09, Character concept

Fig. 1.10, Character concept

Fig. 1.11, Character concept

Fig. 1.12, Character concept

Fig. 1.13, Character concept

Fig. 1.14, Character concept

Fig. 1.15, Character concept

Fig. 1.17, Character concept

Fig. 1.18, Character concept

Fig. 1.19, Character concept

Fig. 1.20, Character concept

Fig. 1.21, Character concept

Fig. 1.22, Character concept

Fig. 1.23, Character concept

Fig. 1.24, Character concept

Fig. 1.25, Character concept

At this point I've created so many iterations of the same character that I've started to lose sight of the original design. Perhaps I overthink too much about the design process, so I decided that I'd try starting the sculpting process for my character. Now following the ideal character design process, making a character turnaround sheet would speed up the 3D sculpting and modelling process. So I tried my hand at making it.

Fig. 1.26, Character Turnaround Sheet

Unfortunately, making this sheet took about weeks to finish after having to learn proper anatomy for the 3D sculpting process. It was quite frustrating and I am now realising the mistake I made of choosing to make a human character as my first 3D project. But nothing prepared me for the actual modelling process.

I've been trying to use Maya for about month at this point and although I'm making some progress, I felt like the resources and knowledge about Maya aren't as accessible as resources for Blender are. For that, I switched to Blender for the character design process and it flowed much easier.

Fig. 1.27, Character face sculpt first try

This was quite a funny attempt, I think. Although the character was missing some cheek, I think it's got some real character. After a few more failed attempts at the head, I started to understand Blender's sculpting and modelling flow that they've made with their new 3.2 update. So I managed to model a head!

Fig. 1.28, Head sculpt in Blender

Looking up some tutorials online, I experimented with hair for this character. The hardest thing I find about modelling the hair was finding the right balance for both volume and interesting shapes that compliments the character's face. I looked through my sketches and other references for hair and couldn't come up with anything substantial for my character, so I decided to leave that for after I finished sculpting the body.

Fig. 1.29, Failed hair sculpting attempt

Fig. 1.30, Body Sculpt

Fig. 1.31, Body Sculpt

Fig. 1.32, Body Sculpt

Fig. 1.33, Body Sculpt

Fig. 1.34, Body Sculpt

Fig. 1.35, Body Sculpt

Unfortunately at this time in the semester, it was coming to the last third of the time I've had left before the deadline and there was still so much to do and learn for this specific character. All the things including sculpting clothes, texturing skin, and painting skin weights for rigging, it was too much to think about and there just wasn't enough time for me to personally achieve that. It saddened me to abandon this character but the deadline was coming up and it was a lot of effort to create such an organic character.

Going back to the drawing board, I had to manage my expectations and pick a character that would make it for the deadline. Since organic characters are too hard for me, I realised I could make a box-y or robotic character.

Fig. 1.30, New character moodboard

Fig. 1.31, New Character Sketch

Fig. 1.32, New Character Early Modelled Look

After further modelling and refining, I was unable to finish the character and unfortunately had to submit an unfinished 3D model of my character. I tried my best to model it with intention but I didn't have enough time to texture and UV wrap the character.

Environment Design

Not having much time on the clock, I started modelling an environment in blender without having much drawn reference. But I knew enough about how to create natural scenes for environments after growing up around the country side. To make things interesting, I recently recalled the concept of monoliths and how even in simple environments, having one object that stands out from the environment would help with composition a lot. So I tried some ideas with monoliths. I downloaded some free blender assets from different websites to help aid the design process.

Fig. 1.33, Experiments with Geometry Nodes

Fig. 1.34, Environment Draft Model

Fig. 1.35, Adding trees using some free assets online

Fig. 1.36, Experimenting with different shades and camera placement

Geometry nodes made me realise that there is way too much to learn in such a short amount of time. So I had to once more opt out for an even simpler design. But I didn't want this to be a repetition of the character problem, so I put some extra effort to make it presentable for submission.

Fig. 1.37, New Environment Design

Miraculously, I managed to wrap it up nicely for submission and even managed to render this nice photo for the blog. The render took around 2 to 3 hours in total which was worth the wait.

Fig. 1.38, Environment Design Final Render

Prop Design

For prop design, I just thought of giving my lil robot a cool katana because I think he deserves it after being left unfinished like that. So I modelled it out and managed to texture the blade using some free textures from Poliigon.

Fig. 1.39, Katana Model

Fig. 1.40, Katana Model up-close

Fig. 1.41, Katana Model textured

REFLECTION

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Naim Zuki

Advanced 3D | 3D Project

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