Sunday 20 January 2013

Final Year Project Is A Go!

So, the time has finally come, the final year major project production has begun. I'm so glad to be out of pre-prod and into production, I thought pre-prod turned out okay but I much prefer production as that's where my passions lies.

So the beginning of the production is pretty hectic for me as I have to get two characters and some props in to riggers and animators so they can begin their work. We've timetabled it all in around each other and if things go to plan it should work out perfectly but it does mean I have less time to tweak if anything doesn't go to plan. Still I'm hopeful for this and I'll be working pretty hard on getting these done in time.

The first two things I need to make are the characters, the Fae and the Centaur, as they need to be rigged and sent to the animators as quickly as possible so we can get the animations in game. As the Fae's rigger will be rigging the dragon first I am making the Centaur to begin with so that can be rigged straight away. Then I can hand the Fae over as the dragon has finished being rigged.

So there's the plan. I have until the 28th January to get the centaur modelled and hopefully unwrapped before I pass is on to get rigged, if it is not unwrapped within that time I can quickly unwrap it before it gets skinned.

Here is where the Centaur is so far:





It's far from finished, the head especially needs work, but I have been trying out a new workflow where I switch between 3Ds Max and Mudbox constantly throughout the modelling. I used 3Ds Max to get the shape right as well as smaller details and topology work and then switch to Mudbox to get the forms right and sculpt in details. This method has proved very useful so far so I'll keep using it for now.

I'm going to be working with the riggers and animators closely and taking all their feedback on board especially when it comes up topology but I have spent quite a bit of time so far in trying to get nice flowing edge loops and making sure it will deform correctly.

Things seem to be doing well so far, any luck and we might have a half decent game by the end of it.

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