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.
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