Character Modelling -- Finished Grey-Box Character.

Here is the finished character model of the game character at 14,222 tris in total.

The clothing was straight forward to make: I had duplicated the body to extract the upper torso to make the top of the dress. I bagan by extruding it downwards to create the scarf-like belt, and kept extruding (now only the front and back) for the skirt . the fromt of the cloth-belt is extruded forwards to show some cloth folding over it's knot and falling.
The black ropes the held the sides of the skirt together had extra edge loops across the skirt so it would be possible to cross them to make the "X" shape.



Model: 6,798 tris.
Clothing: 1,004 tris.
Hair & Feathers: 6,420 tris




I am happy with the way I modeled the chracter, however I feel as if there could've have used my time more efficently to Z-Brush her and model her face from scratch to perhaps get closer to the refrence of the model.

Enviromnt Platforms Consepts

As I was still struggling to do any cave consepts that looked good, I desided to work on the things that would go inside the cave so the environment modeling could move forward. I wanted there to be flouting platforms as it would tie in with the character's legs and enemies. This would also alow for the platforms to be easaly moved and placed wherever they are needed. I also thought of adding a head carving that can shoot fire. I thought this would add to the aesthetic and make the walls less boring. This could also add the the platforming as an extra changeling.

For the lift that would be at the end of the game I tried different looks using the different emaments of the game. The first one was based on more a fantasy look, and the last one more scifi. I then try using emaments of both to make the third, but I still felt it looked very sparse. 

I knew what shape I wanted for the corrodors in the game, so I tryed putting all the emalments together to make sure they worked. My exsacution was defanitly not good, but it helped me visualise how everything links together. 

I wanted to redo the lift to make it look more Aztec and magical. I took inspiration from scifi looking lifts and added stone elamints to get a combined look. This worked much more successfully as I focused on making the shape ferly simplistic so I could focus on getting the lighting a texture right. I used this same posses to make the platforms, and used slimier elements to give them cohesion. I also made the bridge in parts so it matches the rest of the flouting stones look, but also so parts can be added or taken away to the desired length.

The Cave

The cave size is quite large as certain areas needed to be enlarged.

the image below is of the cave fully finished a few more areas need to be upped in the poly-count as to create a more smooth finish in some areas.

 these are some of the view points within the cave. they give a sense of the size of the area in a way.

what the area below will contain is a tree, the platforms and now with the idea of making the game completely stealth based bridges will be added as well. next stage is to make the tree. i have to think more about the area that we are in as well as the story states the cave and world is technology based. so i have to think about the structure of all the rest of the environment. 

this is the Cave without the ground so that you could no longer wall run across the level.

Craig Lang: Scripting Update

I worked on trying to create my own player controller for our character. The reason behind this decision was due to being unable to edit the default Third-Person controller provided by Unity. We originally wanted to add a double jump feature to help create the platforming aspects we were looking for in our gameplay. Unfortunately there were several problems.

The main problem we faced was identifying the player is grounded. Despite the grounded code working the player could still run and jump off the walls within the game. We tried tackling this problem by using physics. The problem still occurred. We therefore tried to create our own physics to allow us more control. This broke the game entirely. The player not only failed to move properly, but the double jump was clunky as well.

The cameras were also an issue as its default rotation and position kept changing every time you entered zoom mode. This happened due to the default rotation and position updated the transformations when the player entered zoom mode. Adjusting the camera orientation so it always was facing forward caused the player to travel in any direction the camera was pointing as they moved forward. This enabled the player to fly.

Due to the list of errors and the deadline fast approaching we decided as a group to return to using the default Third-Person controller provided by Unity. This meant abandoning the double jump feature we originally wanted to implement into the game. 

The result of trying to fix the errors in the Player Controller caused me to full behind in other vital scripts needed for the project. I will need to edit the camera zoom script if I don't want the default transformations to change.

Character Modelling -- Hair Strands and Feathers

The task of the fair and feathers are now next.

Using a brush too, I had to draw on the lengh of the strand from its starting point, and adjust the straighness of the stand accordingy. It was quite difficult drawing strands that aren't follwing a base, so I had to re-import the hair to then draw on the ponytail at rhe top of the head.
When this was done, the hair was imported into Maya, and there, all the UVs for the strands had to be straightened and sorted into 4 groups:

• Long and thin.
• Long and thick.
• Short and thin.
• Short and thick.

This is also the same for the feathers, but only in 3 colour groups.

For the feathers, I removed all the faces of a cube, added divisions and widened the vertexes to form the shape f the feathers. One was made, duplicated/ resized and positioned around the centre of the ponytail.

I initially wanted to Z-Brush the character, but then realised that this process would be too consuming for me since the method for textuing the hair strands alone was somewhat tedious and therefore took up some of my time. From here onwards, bump-maps would be used to texture the surfaces of the game heroine and would hopefully speed up the process.

Computer Terminal and Modular Panels

I've been helping out with the environment art, creating the assets for the sci-fi area of the level. And today I can proudly show off the computer terminal I have created for it!

Up next will be the door and then I hope to begin making the lift and textures.

~ Matt

Character Modelling -- Torso, Head and Arms.

From this point onwards, Ive managed to model the indent of the collar bone by extruding the edges of the mesh like I have currently been doing. Since the head model was already done, I decided to import it, and tweak it to form the character's nose, eye shape and the size of her mouth.

Her ears were very challengeing to model, since there was a lot of refrences that showed diffrent methods. I had extruded the edge loop outwards and then again for the indent of the outer curl of the ear. More inner extrudes were made to a centre point, and one which goes further in.

There was another issue I had with the model. Since the head was imported, it had more edges, as suppoed to the back and the top of the shoulder. The problem was eventually fixed, although from here, I had realised that it would be better modelling my own head or starting from the top.

Hand modelling was consideraly quick, since all was needed to make was the hand was a cube with added divisions, extuding the faces to make the fingers and thumb, and to round off the hands to make them more organic.
From this point, I had remembered to add more extra edge loops for the start of the upper arm, elbow, and wrist for rigging puroses.

Stage 1 for the character is over. Onto the hair and texturing.

Character Modelling -- Legs and Torso

Starting with the character model, I figured the torso would be the best place to begin. So with adding some divisions to the cylinder, I had it cut in half.
This time round, I wanted to focus on building better topology in comparison to last term whilst I was character artist, so having a look at some topology images made it easier to model it with some ease. But with taking into account how much I need to pay attention to it, the more time-consuming it was for me.

But for this, I managed to get the shape for the abdominals, legs, breast shape and collar bone.

The legs were made with cubes with some added divisions and the cornered vertexes were then rounded to get a cylindrical shape for the legs. Spheres were the orbs of the character's leg joint which were the knees and ankles.