Texturing Overhaul

OK so to get started with texturing the entire body I have done this simple starter texture. This will kind of be the base from which I will work from, to be easier to know what and where to texture different parts. I have filled in every claw and tooth with the same paint ad leaving the rest blue to fill in with detail later. This of course will look a lot better after I have finished the proper textures.

Texturing the Eye

Now to start with the proper texturing. I started with the eye. Even though the reference shows the Anthropod to have no pupils, just plain brown/orange eyes, I thought I'd give them pupils anyway. As these are remakes of the original characters, I think minor differences like this are OK. Afterall, I am reacreating the characters in my own way. :)



As you can see here I have created a texture of an eye for the Anthropod. I know it's a little dark, but I will brighten it up later. For the overall look thoguh I experimented with different filters and combining the result with the added colours and a pupil on top. It's OK but obviously needs to be brighter.

Oh and another reason I created the pupils was because of this picture, which is a loading screen from X-com apocalypse.



I really like this and I even used it on the Eye UV and it looked REALLY nice but I didn't use it becuase it's meant to be my job to recreate these monsters, not to use what is what is already there.

Simple Rigging Test

Here I experimented with rigging just to see wha the model would look like at the moment. I also did an extremely basic UV texture test.



As you can see in this picture, I have used an extremely basic rig and moved the arms into a position of holding a gun.. that which would be frequent in the game. I also modelled the red mesh to help with the weapon.



Here is another pose, but with a slight bend. As you can see the characters face deforms quite a lot when moved. This is to be expected because of the unusual and difficult design of the character. For this to bend correctly, appropriate weighting will need to be done. I won't be doing this as I wish to finish the texturing and the other character first. I may come back to it later and build a better rig and weight it accordingly for the characters to be put in various poses as the game would have, or even put them in a game engine if possible.. only time will tell.



And this picture is the fast texturing text. I got the UV map and put it in photoshop. As you can see I made most the body and face a cyan sort of colour and the arms a more blue. The reason for this is to prove that it's possible to have to UV maps (face and body) can look seamless together.. which is prooved by the cyan. And the Dark blue arms is to proove that bits can be broken up and look completely different, even though they are from the same UV (arms different than body even though both are from same UV). Oh, and the cream claws were put in for the same reason as the arms. Just to proove again how the texture can be broken up.

The point of the UV was just to show that I did all this in photoshop, and that I didn't use lamberts.

UV Maps

These pictures are of the UV maps I have created for the Anthropod. I have created one for the body, inc. arms and legs and another separate map for the face. I can't remember where but I remember that it is good to have a separate map for your face as this is usually what has the most detail in it.


Body UV



Face UV

Creating the face.

Ok so as I mentioned before.. a character really isn't much without a face. At least not this character. So here is the work up to the created Anthropod Face.



OK so to start off I created a completely seperate model using the create polygon tool on the front plane view. The purpose and idea behind doing this is so I could create the rough outline of the mouth of the face, to see how many polygons it will have and ultimately how to match these up with the main model (merging vertices). The Image above shows what I started of with. I also created a quick cylinder 'tube' and aligned it roughly in place for where the, presumably Anthropod's nostrils, will be. (Weird dripping open tubes under the characters mouth).

The reason for this again, to see how many polygons it has and how it will match up.



In this next image i extruded the edges quickly to give an idea for the thickness and direction the mouth will be going in also. This made it easier to prepare th model for when it will be added to the main model, as it will, of course, need to be going in the same direction as that of the overall head.



This picture is where I have started to bring life to the mouth by bringing more definition and shape to it, and also the nostril.. type.. thing.

With this I literally just moved around all the vertices of the mouth until they were in the right position and the model looked good. With the nostril I extruded several faces and manipulated them outwards for the general shape then extruded them inwards for the hole.

Oh, I also threw in a few teeth too! (Again by extruding, extruding and then extruding)



Here is the mouth on the body!

This took a whiiiiile to get right but in the end I got it in. Because the mouth ended up with over double the amount of polygon edges than the vacant edges on the head it meant I had to break these down with some triangles in between. This ultimately led to a high polygon count. The overall polycount is still quite low for modern computer games characters being well under 2000 polygons.

Oh and obviously as you can see I also created some basic eyes. For these I extruded an bent some faces inwards to create the eye sockets and create a basic sphere for the eye.

And here is the finished thing :)

Quickie

Thought I'd try and paint the model a little. Only using a simple lambert. I did this just too keep my sanity and to get me that little bit closer to the original creature :P I tried to match the colour just as a little simple test to see where my character will be going. And for that little extra bit of motivation.. Because really.. what use is a monster if it had no face :P

hmm, although it might be cool. I may try that in another project, just to see how it works.. Mr NoFace - and the joys of making him talk!

Addingg the feet

Now it is time for the feet! For starters i extruded edges out from the base of the leg and created the rough shape for the toes and bottom of foot.

To speed up modelling time I thought I'd be clever and copy one of the claws from the hands and manipulate it so it roughly fitted into the position of the toe.



I then Merged the vertices from the toe and foot to create a seamless toe and claw.



To speed up modelling again (not that I am lasy, It just made sense to take a shortcut) I mirrored the toe and merged them together so that the end result is the complete foot with claws you see below.



After this it was then a simple job adjusting and tweaking each toe/claw separately to make them different from each other. Because who of us are completely symetrical :P