A much needed update!

It's been a while since I've posted, but I have been working on my piece. It's just about complete, finally, which is great because I really need to begin working on something new.

Some related but unrelated news first. Drum roll please... I finally built my first PC! It took a lot longer than I had originally thought, and a buddy of mine came over to troubleshoot a couple issues, but all in all she's running great. Turns out, I have a problem plugging wires and components in hard enough to the motherboard. For harboring such delicate and expensive electronics, you really have to force your components together. It's scary if you're a first timer like myself. I'll take some pictures and go into more detail in a different post.

Now, on to my update.

Rather than jumping straight into doing texture maps for Sesslyth, I decided to go back and reapply everything I had learned class wise into doing his sidekick, Ezekiel. This was a great chance to refresh what I had just spent 2 months learning through my course.

Left: Ezekiel Base Mesh. Right: Ezekiel detailing (early) in Z-Brush.

I started by creating a very basic low poly base mesh, just as before with Sesslyth, using the orthographic's provided by Michael. Then, after importing it into Z-Brush I began sculpting the details.

Final sculpt.

After a couple weeks, the final sculpt was complete. Now it was time to re-topologize the mesh. I genuinely disliked this step for my last model, and this time around was no different. I used Z-Brush again (even though I promised to do otherwise), and sure enough it became quite cumbersome towards the end.

Ezekiel Re-toplogized Low Poly Mesh shown in Maya's viewport

As I had said in an earlier post, I hate doing UV's. Most CG artist's do. It's tedious, often frustrating, and time consuming work. For Ezekiel, I wanted to test out a plug-in available to Z-Brush called UV Master to save myself some time and headache. What does it do exactly? Well, it does most of the leg work for you.

Essentially the tool analyzes your mesh, and automatically generates a UV layout based on where you tell it to preserve UV's and attract seams. Sounds weird, but it's incredibly simple to use, and only takes seconds to make necessary adjustments. The best part is that the UV map generated is perfectly spaced to allow for minimal stretching. If you'd like to see exactly how the add-on works, check out this video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOoOh5s8RE4

UV layout generated by Z-Brush's UV Master Plug-in.

Could I have spent hours and hours allocating seams exactly where I wanted them and filling my UV space better? Sure. But quite frankly, it didn't seem worth the time, especially for a secondary character like this. This solution was perfect, and the results were more than suitable for what I needed. 

After generating the normal maps via xNormal, it was time to whip up some color maps for this little dude. I started by generating the AO maps, and with the help of my lovely girlfriend, began creating the textures and colors necessary (I'm colorblind and have trouble matching the concept art when it comes to doing color maps. My girlfriend was, and continues to be, a huge help in this process).

Ezekiel Color Map. Size: 1024x1024

Using a really nice alien-like pattern I found online, I tiled and overlaid it in Photoshop, and really liked the results. For real-time rendering, I used Maya's realtime CGFX shader, as seen in the image below.

Ezekiel running in real-time via Maya's viewport. Using CGFX shader to achieve results.

The CGFX shader library is very powerful. This particular shader has an option to use rim lighting, which helps the silhouette stand out tremendously (this technique was used to great effect in games like Team Fortress 2). I also used a glossy specular feature which gave the character a distinctly "wet" look. All in all, I think he turned out nicely.

I'm currently working on the color maps for Sesslyth, and will be posting updates soon.