havreberg.com

So I “finished” my head, then I “finished” the body, then I started some other stuff and scrapped it, then I worked on the hands and now I have a nearly complete head and body . By “finished,” I mean locked down the model and planned to make only texture, rigging, or displacement changes. I realized, and I should have sooner, that this can be a bit more flexible than I was thinking. As long as I get a high-res displacement map out of zBrush for a model with similar UVs and proportions, I can have some differences in topology. If I just bring in the new model, apply the displacement map, and correct any issues that arise where the topology is too different or where the map detail is insufficient (which will hopefully be rare), I should be good to go.

So where am I? I can probably call this done even though it has no textures and is not posed. I started a base mesh from scratch and also messed around with my fatbody for a while last night for the monster , but part of me wants to be crazy and push my self portrait around until it matches. Especially considering I forgot the monster has ears. I was tired last night. If I do use the self portrait base mesh, I will have to employ the technique mentioned above of using the same displacement map on meshes with different topology. So I will add geometry for the tail and the horns and put them into an undisplaced spot in the map, then add their details in zBrush. I really hope this works… because I haven’t read any direct mention of it and I am banking on it rather heavily. I have a tendency to do that it seems. Maybe there is an easier way.

So what’s next? Probably adding some geometry for the insides of the mouth and eyes (again), then making a bunch of UV groups… I was thinking I might just use sets because I don’t want to actually lay out the UVs right now, but a) I don’t have to actually lay them out (although somehow it will be tempting), just put them into separate UV tiles, and b) any added geometry has a decent chance of finding its way into the right UV group, whereas I think it would have to be manually added to a set. And I’m going to have to do stuff with UVs later anyways. Parentheses abound.

So… add cavity and eye geometry, make UV groups, turn myself into the monster without a tail or horns, generate displacement map, add tail and horn geometry in maya, detail in zBrush. Assuming the base mesh can hold up, that sounds feasible in the next few days maybe. I hope.

And then? Decide whether I’m going to rig one or both of these, turn the self portrait into the painting portrait , make a new model, fix up the frog, rig the slugs, or what. I’m thinking it will be painting portrait, new model, or rig these suckers.

One last thing. I probably should have dove head first into zBrush a while ago instead of relying on Maya for so much detailing. The idea is that when I rig a model, the more carefully crafted base mesh will speed up or otherwise simplify rigging than would a more generic or boxier base mesh. I don’t know if this is true. It probably has to do more with me being somewhat overwhelmed with the additional freedom that zBrush offers. It is kind of too easy for me to screw up a model. I guess the more time I spend, the less true that will become. Hopefully the next few days will be valuable, because the last few times I tried anything in zBrush the results were somewhat tragic.