Gladiator Modelling + Texturing
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Now I
have a solid concept to follow, I need to create the base body mesh and armour
for the character.
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Creating
a solid foundation will ensure that the details on the character won’t impact
the overall aesthetic design and will ensure that I don’t exceed the tris
budget overall.
Body Modelling:
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I
followed the tutorials on black board when creating the head and body for my
character, so I will not cover each individual step I took. The main changes I
made to the face was feminising features like slimming the jaw and adjusting
the lips size, as well as adding a prominent nose bridge typical of roman
genetic features.
·
The body
type was standard; however, I made the body type more athletic to suit a
gladiator. She has straight featured and strong shoulders and legs.
·
I later added
hands and a basic hair style of a bun with plaits headed to the back of the
head, which is different to my gladiator concept of long hair since I thought
it might be more applicable for someone who is fighting.
·
I made a
mistake when scaling the head to the body – where I did not count the heads
right and this made quite a funny version of the gladiator.
|
First Blockout |
|
Hair and Hands added to the model |
|
Error scaling head to body |
Armour Modelling:
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Once the
body was modelled, I began modelling the armour. The armour had to be simple as
I blocked it out to fit the reference and I could add small details through
texturing.
·
Initially,
I made a single snake using the path deform modifier I learnt over my Christmas
break and then duplicated it all over the underside of the chest plate.
·
These
snakes were really tris intensive, and after getting critique I realised that
they would be an absolute pain later to weight paint, so I later transformed
that area to just have a flat plane that I could texture later.
·
I also
added some basic props of a spear and the shield which could also be textured
later.
|
Armour and Props block out |
|
Layered Skirts |
|
Triple skirts, replaced snakes |
Texturing:
·
For this
section I unwrapped the model and optimised the tri count by removing unseen
faces of the body of the model. This included the section behind the chest plate
the sections covered by hair and the faces under the feet.
·
I
unwrapped the model onto my two designated sheets, one for the body and one for
the armour pieces. Similarly, the armour pieces had their inside faces removed
to reduce the tris count. Once it was all unwrapped, I began texturing. Photoshop
texturing is not my forte personally; I struggle with making recognisable
materials and the low poly aspect of this project meant that a stylised character
was most likely more successful than my attempt at pseudo realism.
·
The part I
am most happy with has got to be the scales on the chest plate. I managed to
make those quickly though making the general scale/feather outline, and then
adding both a bevel and a drop shadow to the texture which naturally made it
look like layers of scales. That bevel/drop shadow trick worked great for
elements like the new version of snakes under the chest plate, and the straps
at the side of the chest plate.
·
I also
later decided to remove the modelled eyebrows I made and instead opted to draw
them in texture. This changed the facial expression to be more intimidating, which
was a welcome change. I also added
·
I left
the texturing at this stage after adding a dirt pass to the whole model,
however I likely will approach the texturing again to adjust in a few days.
|
Unwrap of the body + tris optimisation |
|
First render of top textures |
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“Final” texture |
Final Conclusions:
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I am
quite torn about my character now. Hand painted textures are a weakness of
mine, and I am unsure whether I have successfully made an aesthetically
pleasing character from this.
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Next will
be to rig and skin the character ready for unreal lighting and presentation.
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