Entry 9: Puppet Master Modelling Part 2

So, carrying on from the last entry:

4: The Body

For the body I started by applying a turbosmooth modifier so that I could ascertain how it would look with higher topology. Then, to make sure that this change was visible whilst the lower poly was edited, I turned on the the iterations mode, which you can tell by the orange wire mesh over the original white mesh in the image below.

Using the above method I went on to edit the topology of the lower poly mesh, creating smoother topology flow and sorting out any issues such as overlapping vertices or smoothing errors. I added in parts to the mesh such as the coats collar as you say in the previous image to better match up with the turnaround drawings.

The arms were also reattached to the boy to make animation easier for the animators despite my original thoughts on having them de-attached. Additionally animation considerations for topology were added in such as the knee joints to allow for smooth bending motions.

I eventually ended up with this lower poly mesh as you can see below. Also provided is the high poly version.

With this done all I had to do was clean up any n-gons, further topology issues and design problems. What I mean by this, for example, with the Puppet Masters hood, was for when the head would eventually be placed, you partially be able to see inside the coat, which would ruin the structure of the character to any person playing the game. This was solved by simply extruding some polygons down into the coat.

With these last few issues fixed, I green lighted the body and added it to the finalised pieces of the model.

5: The Head

I found that the head was one of the more trickier parts of the Puppet Master to model, as trying to get the topology correct with the face I had designed was challenging.

I began by taking the original blockout head and turbosmoothing in order to gain a little more topology to play around with. I would then half the face in order to work only on one side, and mirror it further on in the process.

My first few attempts involved using the cut tool in line mode to create the shapes for the mouths and eyes. Once done, I would then extrude them inwards to create hole shapes, and would then attempt to clean up the topology afterwards.

I wasn't particular happy with the first few attempts, as the topology made the head's surface look a little bumpy and uneven.

Eventually though after a few more attempts I got a toplogy flow that worked relatively well for the design. And since I find out there were no plans to give the character talking animations, I settled on the toplogy flow as shown below.

I mirrored the head, stitched the verts down the centre together, and greenlighted the head for the progress model. I also made a few extursions from the neck down to create part of the shirt the PM wears underneath his coat, in so sticking with the concept and hiding the empty shell within his coat.

6: The clothe straps

The last part of the modelling I had to deal with was the straps that go across the Puppet Masters buttons and on his shoulders.

These were fairly simple to do. I started by taking a thin box shape, adding roughly five edge loops, then turbosmoothing it. I followed this up by applying a bend modifier, bending it in the right direction, and messing around with verts to match it up to the body as closely as possible.

The final pieces ended up like this:

I then greenlighted them and added them to the progress model.

At this stage the model was finished! With everything modelled, I went on to do final checks with the x-view mode, looking for things like overlapping edges, any last topology issues and doing checks before fbx export such as resetting x-forms and scaling the character to the correct size. I also optimised some of the pieces as the poly count was a little high, so I removed lines and verts to ease this up a little.

Here below you can see the final model with colours that better match up to the concept art.

With this done for now, I'm not required to do any immediate further work according to my team leads until after the Christmas break. With this in mind I will deal with other work deadlines I have and then come back to produce new work for this project in the new year.

Entry 8: Puppet Master Modelling Part 1

Since at the time of my last entry most of my deadlines had been hit, I was allowed to focus on other module deadlines, which is why its been a while since I lasted posted on the blog.

However, I have since completed the low poly modelling stage for the Puppet Master. This first post of two will show how I created his parts and the procedures that were followed to create him.

1: The Hat

So, carrying on from where we left off with the blockout model I created:

I decided to focus on the the simpler clothes of this character in order to get them out of the way first. I started off with the hat, which originally looked like this:

As you can see it was pretty basic at this point. The first step was to cut it in half, and extrude the polys upwards in the inner part of the hat. The inner ones are highlighted in the image below.

It took a little time, mainly in order to make sure the inner verts lined up with the outer ones closely. Once this was done, I mirrored the hat piece, attached the pieces together, and welded the verts so that the model would bow be complete, as you saw in the first image.

From here I want on to turbosmooth the hat in order to get a better shape for it. I liked the smoother shape it had acquired, however I felt that it it was too high poly with 1,120 polys and 2,240 tris.

I therefore went on to reduce the amount of polys the hat had, making 3 different versions: the original high poly, a medium poly, and a low poly hat. You can see the low and the high poly compared below:

The shape is lost slightly in the low poly, but not by a huge amount. I was much happier with the new 432 poly and 864 tri counts. To create the lower I removed a lot of the polygons I created for the inside part, as this wouldn't be seen by the player, and many of the loops on the outer layer.

Happy with the hat, I added it to the original blockout and applied a green material to it, to remind me that this piece was finished for now and that I could now move on to the next part. So in a way it acted as a progress bar of sorts, loading more of the green until the model was finished.

2: The buttons and bells

With this done the next parts I focused on where the yet to be created buttons found on the puppet Masters coat, and the bell attached to his head protrusion.

I began with the main buttons for his coat. I wanted to create ones with a slight spherical feel to them, instead of the flat ones that I used in my concept and turnaround.

The first step was to create a capsule from the extended shape selection and delete everything except the top spherical part.

Then went on to add in extra lines and using the extrusion tool both inwards and outwards in order to create the shapes I wanted.

The bottom section was capped, with lines and verts added in that joined up in the middle, and extruded this circle upwards to create the space for the clip that would attach the button to the coat.

For the clip, I originally attempted to create via extruding it and shaping it from the button itself. However, whenever I got close to completing it, an error would always occur which messed up the topology and could not be fixed:

So instead I created the clip piece separately and attached it to the button instead, which finished off this piece.

For the buttons on the coats arms, I simply created a cylinder, gave it a short height, added a few lines and chamfered them to get a circular effect.

Finally, for the tail bell I wasn't quite sure how to proceed at first. I wanted to created a proper bell, for example like one a cat would have, instead of my basic design within the concept. I had reference images of these kinds of bells whilst modelling the part in order to make it easier.

Progression of the tail bell. 

I started off with a sphere, and chopped it in half, making a small extrusion at the top for connecting it to the head protrusion.

However I quickly found this wasn't effective for what I was designing. So i made another sphere, chopped off the top, and extrude inwards. This made more sense, however I then had to move the verts around to make it match the shape of the outer layer.

I created a copy from the finished piece attached it, and stitched the two pieces together to  complete the bell shape. I decided not to create the ball piece that goes inside, as the puppet master, instead leaving it as a hollow bell to add to the air of mystery the character has.

With the bell complete, I added all the pieces to it, further adding to the finished green pieces on the models.

3: The Arms and Hands

Since I was planning to do the straps that are on the puppet masters torso and shoulders till later when the model was more developed, I went on to model the his arms and hands.

I started with the arms, which I previously left attached due to not knowing if they would work well topology wise when attached to the bodies.

The arm piece was relatively straightforward to do. I added topolgy to the elbow to make it more visible and to allow it to stretch and bend for animation purposes. I then capped the open space, extruded it inwards, and added geometry to make it spherical

I did this due to the fact the possibility of the puppet master's hands popping off was discussed in order to follow and control his puppet characters.

At this stage it was finished, however it wasn't highlighted green as of yet due to the fact I was considering attaching it to the main body later, so for now it was left as it was.

With this out of the way, I moved on to hands. In reflection out of all the pieces on this post so far, the hands were probably the most difficult to make. Hands aren't my strongest point when it comes to 3D modelling in Max, so it took a few attempts to get right.

I started off by taking the hand from the original blockout and adding in additional geometry. I then turbosmoothed it, however I wasn't happy with the result that it created, and decide to try a different method instead.

For my second attempt I followed a tutorial online, which although gave some nice looking geometry, also caused issues when it came to turbosmoothing and attempting to add in additional lines for geometry. It did however allow me to work out how to do the part of the glove the hand slips into. Again. I wasn't happy, and proceeded to try a different method out.

For the last attempt I found a different tutorial which worked perfectly for the style I wanted to go with, in which it allowed me to create a cartoony hand with space to create working geometry for animation purposes. You can see the initial version and the final edited version below:

With these finished I added them to my work in progress model.

Now as you can see at this point the model was about half way done. In the next post I'm going to show you the work for the final steps for the puppet masters head, torso and coat straps.