Hair Hair Hair!

Here the battle of creating hair begins!

Next step after getting volume to the hair was to develop the shape and style of the hair. To do this the hair controlled by CV curves. Its my job to gradually build up the shape by moving the curves to create the desired effect.

Once I got the hair in a good style I started to develop the hair system abit more. Below is an image of the settings that were used to create the hair. At the moment I feel the shape needs refining and that I need to try get rid of the baldness, as I think thats t do with the spread and the thinning of the hair.

So with a few tweaks, you can see a big change. I start by trying to just get a good amount of volume to the hair so that it doesn't look like thick clumps. Both images to the left show that already there seems to be progress with a few tweaks to the settings.

Here is an image (right) of what the hair looks like straight out of default settings. As you can see, I got alot of work to do. The settings are very basic and seem to be so the render time is low.

The fight with clothes: Base Mesh v01

Another render showing the base mesh updates for both characters! The meshes have been cleaned up and uv'ed. These will now be added to the rig and I'll start developing displacement maps.

Both Characters clothes V01

Here are some updates showing the base meshes and proportions of both intern and Zombie. I have already started to look at adding in the rips and tears to the zombie as we wanting him to have a rugged scruffy feel. Next step to create some displacements and skin details! At this moment in time I want to add displacement details to the intern but this is something that could change along the line.

Character update: Zombie

Below shows the first look at the proportions of the Zombie. I wanted to get a ruff shape blocked out fast so Greg can get on with rigging the character. We are referencing so we will be able start previs and test animations with the rig before I even get a animation ready mesh ready.

Below are two images showing the two proxy meshes I created for Greg so he could get the rig started. Theres no joints in the mesh so painting weights is not really needed, this saves alot of time as the rig will chop and change and repainting the weights over and over again will cause a lack of quality and attention to detail.

So what colour will our Zombie be? We have no idea! we are wanting to come away from green but obviously that always causes problems as different colours look odd and out of place. We plan to develop this over the next week and see what colour we think works best.

Below shows the latest Zombie head, this time rendered out of Maya to get the true shape and proportions as Zbrush doesn't always give the right perspective to what a Maya camera would give. I'm fairly happy with the outcome and plan to retopologise it next then move on to details as we want to give abit more surface detail to the Zombie so Zbrush will be used to create them. The render below also shows some shader development I am making as I want to create a shader that represents skin and gives us control in post production!

The Intern

The Intern! As time is short and we are on the clock. This is the concept art given to me by Nick. I have then gone straight into Zbrush and tried to develop the character that way!

First look, Im not to happy with. I plan to reshape it completely as the eyes are two far apart. I have chosen to keep the idea of hair systems for the hair for our characters, from what I learnt from Spellbound I'm sure I will be able to develop a style for the intern.

First look at Going Down!

So here is the new idea! The film is named Going Down. The story is based around a working late Intern who has a sudden encounter with a Zombie in a lift.

Here are some first sculpts I have done to develop the character of the Zombie. I have tried to give a few different shapes to give the group something to choose from. We have decided to use 2. Below shows the chosen design.

I have chosen to do the Zombie first as we plan to add Displacement maps (DSP) to give it that little bit more detail. This will create problems along the way but we are confident it will work!

Idea change!

I'm sad to say that Spellbound concept will be taken no further. We have come to a group decision that we will not be continuing along with the film and that we plan to develop another idea.

The reasons behind the idea change is that we felt that the story wasn't strong enough or that we would not be able to get the story across under 2 mins and that the idea had become out of hand. We loved the characters so much we tried to base many different stories around them but none of them were strong enough.

We feel that we have learnt alot from this project and will take all what we learn onto the next project!