Concept Session warm up

Two quick sketches done in today's session of concept art. I am happy with them for the time they we're done in.

Cyborg Project #6 - Maps

I thought I'd post the final maps/textures that I exported from quixel. I adjusted them slightly without Quixel just to add a few extra things.

Cyborg Project #5 - 3D Modelling

I found 3D modelling my cyborg to be daunting. I really enjoyed it though and have learnt much about what to do and what not to do. I went through many variations of 3D models but this was the first one I was happy with. I did not at first notice the black areas on the model. I later discovered what caused this.

I rigged and posed it and while the rig wasn't great I was happy with what I had.

Then I made a UV map but at the time it was not showing me the correct red to blue colours, so I got the sizing on it wrong. I found this out when I made 2048 maps and put them into Quixel. I do not have any screenshots of this but it looked poor.

The cause of the large ugly black areas was because I had a smooth mesh display on the flesh part of the cyborg. This is the bad modelling I had done that caused the smooth display to go weird. I ended up painstakingly making these one sided polygons 3 dimensional. The result was worth it in the end. No more black areas.

This is the ID map I made of the updated model. I also added extra polygons to allow for the yellow areas. I had to export this as an fbx and import it into a new scene because no matter what I did I could not get the bake of the map to not have shadows. Importing it into a new scene fixed this but meant the entire mesh was triangulated.

I updated the UV map so that this time everything was more or less the same size. Unfortunately, fixing the smooth mesh display caused my UV map to mesh up and I could no longer unfold things perfectly or symmetrically. So there are some slight errors in the mapping. None the less, doing this was a good idea. Also, I decided to up the resolution of the maps I made to 4096 to get better textures. This was a good idea.

This is what the mesh and final textures I made looks like in Quixel. I was not very adept at Quixel at the time but I am much more confident using it now. I really like the way this ended up.

Now. One of the troubles I had with putting the exported maps from Quixel back into Maya was that I must have exported them in the wrong format. When I went to put them into the DX11 shader I realised that there is no gloss map in it. I ended up using the gloss map as a reflection mask, using a forest picture for the reflection map. I am annoyed by this because it still does not look like it did in Quixel. I also tried putting it into Unity but it ended up looking even worse than this.

This time when I rigged it I made sure to do it properly. However, I made a mistake and the arms became attached to the waist. So it means I had to resize the bones for the final pose. This irritates me because I wanted it to be easy to use. On the other hand, this is the best rig I have ever made and I have learnt so much from this.

Here is the final pose in Maya with the textures applied. The pose may not look as animated as the first and this is because I had trouble getting all parts of the rig to work with me. The final model has 8552 triangles, which I am quite pleased with. If I ever figure it out how to fix the textures I will put this into a game engine like Unity or Unreal with a nice animation to boot. Overall I am very happy with this project went and can't wait to do more like it!

Cyborg Project #04 - Model Sheets

Here are the model sheets for my cyborg. I made these on my iPad. I tried to get as much of the concept into it but reduced the amount of detail so that it would not be too hard to model.

Cyborg Project #3 - Final Concept & Story

Here is the final concept that I have done for the Cyborg. While the background may not be fully fleshed out, my focus for this was the cyborg's design. I am very happy with how it turned out. Below is the rough I did for this soon after the previous further developments. I tried to combine the ideas I likes from each of these concepts and this is the result. As you can probably tell, the rough has lenses on it's face. Only when I started turning this into the final did I decide not to give it eyes but instead large bat-like ears.  

Anyway, now that I have the concept done I have made a story for it.

Name:
Subject DNA-07

Story:
[From the progress log of the chief scientist working on Project DNA before the incident] -

LOG 234: After many failed attempts we have finally reached a successful bond between flesh and machine. Subject DNA-07 is the first embryo to survive the procedure. Now we must carry out the first set of tests on the subject to see how durable it is.
LOG 237: The other scientists good mood has been broken. Today DNA-07 killed a handler. As such they all refused to continue with the tests. They do not realise that we cannot afford any delays in our progress! If we fail to meet the deadline then I will be a dead man. The government has grown impatient. They want their weapon.
LOG 253: The remaining handlers have fled into the jungle. The other scientists are questioning my decision to continue the tests. What do a few lives matter. This is science! No sacrifice, no success.
LOG 254: I have run out of time. My fate is sealed. I have but one option left. If I am to die, then it will be at the hand of my creation. However, I will not leave without giving my superiors what they want. DNA-07's smell and hearing have heightened since we removed it's ability to see. The letters I have received should have enough scent on for DNA-07 to seek out those who want my head. That and a little additional programming should do the trick. This is my final entry. Farewell.

[He proceeded to reprogram the cyborg, feed it his superiors scent and free it from it's holding cell. It destroyed him. Most of his body is still missing. DNA-07 is also missing but a covered up attack on a government building has lead conspiracy theorists to believe DNA-07 was responsible.]

Cyborg Project #2 - Developing Ideas

I have taken the ideas from the initial ideas that I had and made some more rough designs. I am really liking the direction I am taking with this. I think that I will make a few more roughs using ideas from all of these. I like the general style of the top left guy but really like the spines of the bottom one. I really like the different style of the guy on the left and the way the machinery is almost keeping the creature imprisoned.

Cyborg Project #1 - Initial ideas

For the summer break we have been set a project. The project is to design a cyborg. First, design the cyborg in 2D. Then create model sheets to make it in 3D. Finally we must texture it using Photoshop and Quixel. I am very excited about this project. When I first heard the brief I thought of the 'Gievers' in Maze Runner and the Alien Wolf creatures in Transformers 4. I think I will design something along these lines but I have many ideas that I will also try.

To start off, I collected some imagery and compiled a moodboard. I will use more images than these for reference as I design.

Now that I have some idea of the styles I want to experiment with I decided to do some quick roughs. These are not very refined but helped me to eliminate some of the ideas I had. I thought about doing a humanoid creature but decided against it when I realised that it could end up being quite generic, which I don't want. I tried doing these lumbering type creatures which are interesting but I'm not sure if I want to continue developing them.

The next lot of sketches I did were for me to decide what sort of creature I wanted to use as a cyborg. At first I tried a frog like creature but changed my focus to look at lizards. I also decided to focus on the head as I was finding it hard to come up with one in the individual roughs. I really like the head ideas but now I need to find a body to fit them. As I based the heads on snakes and lizards I thought I would try bodies with long tails. I will continue developing this idea.