Current Project

PAOLO MALDINI Likeness

WIP#3 First pass at the Face Textures and Material in UE4

(Albedo and Roughness still need a lot of work.)

WIP#2 Secondary+Tertiary Forms, and experimenting with TexturingXYZ

WIP#1 Reference and Primary Forms:

– POLICE DETECTIVE –

WIP#4 Completed Retopo on Shirt and Pants <30k Tris. Test bakes with Temp textures:

WIP#3 Started Retopo on the Shirt! Still need to get the folds on the sleeves.

WIP#2 Testing out trim-sheet texturing on a few of the Utility belt pieces and the Badge:

Displayed at 2048×2048, using about 40% of the UV space so far. Hoping to be able to cram all the other Utility belt gadgets in there too.

AVicente_Detective_Textures_004

WIP#1 Sculpting! About 75% Through the high-poly:

JET BLACK from COWBOY BEBOP:

WIP #4: Some rough lighting/composition ideas using the zbrush sketch model.

JetBlack_WIP_004A_StageLightingIdeas JetBlack_WIP_004C_StageLightingIdeas JetBlack_WIP_004D_ToyRender JetBlack_WIP_004B_StageLightingIdeas

WIP #3: A rough Zbrush sketch to help figure out the overall design:

JetBlack_WIP_002D_SketchSculpt JetBlack_WIP_002A_SketchSculpt JetBlack_WIP_002B_SketchSculpt JetBlack_WIP_002C_SketchSculpt

WIP #2: Trying to figure out the mech-arm design. Playing around with some shapes

JetBlack_WIP_005A_ArmInner JetBlack_WIP_005B_ArmPlates

WIP #1: Built base-mesh from cube in Zbrush, took to marvelous to make the jumpsuit.

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4/21/2017 Quick Screengrab WIP: Figuring out how the GPS radio and the Binoculars will mount onto the character.

ACCs_WIP_01F_GPS_Mounted

4/18/2017 Got a little time to jump back into this!

I set up some quick outdoor lighting and some threw together some rough stand-in materials.

Today I made a little flashlight, a metal canteen, and one of those hiking clips! Here are some WIPs:

ACCs_WIP_01A_Pack ACCs_WIP_01B_Knife

3/14/2017

Modeled out a base mesh for the side bag!

Holster_WIP_01B

3/12/2017

Used the Boot photoscan models and brought them into Marvelous Designer to get them colliding with the bottom of the cargo pants! Also, went ahead and made a baseball t-shirt and some climbing gloves in MD! Here’s some wips:

OutfitAssembly_WIP_01B

3/10/2017:

Scanned some snow hiking boots for the scout character! Will incorporate them into the model to collide with the Cargo Pants in Mavelous Designer!

Boot_Scan_WIP_01

3/8/2017:

Here are some WIPs, 6 Hours in:

Cargo Pants – Marvelous Designer – 3 Hours – WIP:

Vest Jacket – Photoscanned/Sculpted – 3 Hours – WIP CargoPants_WIP_01B Used the Jacket photoscan I made this weekend and reshaped it in Zbrush to fit the torso of my base-mesh. I also cleaned it up some and punched up some of the seams and larger folders. Since I dont have Arm sleeves in the actual photoscanned model, I decided to make it a vest, and he’ll be wearing a long-sleeved thermal shirt underneath, which will be made in Marvelous Designer. Both the pants and the Jacket still need a lot of work, but a good starting point!

Will be scanning Boots tomorrow!

3/6/2017 PHOTOGRAMMETRY RESEARCH

Photoscan to Game-Res Asset – Quick Workflow Test

scanning_day_04a

Prep’d this asset in about 3 working hours! About 45min Shooting/Processing Photography for Photoscan, and about 2 hours Retopo, UVing and Baking maps after Photoscan was done. Still working on refining the workflow, but here’s a quick breakdown of it so far:

01.Photography:

Built a stage within budget with a refurbished D3300, some refurbished Softboxes, a turntable built from left over planks, and some green cardboard! Also used my old TV to check detail focus and exposure. Took about 100 photos for this asset.

scanning_day_04f

02.Photoscan:

Used After Effects to Key out Background from photos, then imported alpha-masked TIFFs to Agisoft Photoscan, and let it do it’s thing! Spent about 5 min cleaning up data between Sparse and Dense point cloud. Final scan model was ~14million Tris

scanning_day_04g

03. Decimation + ZRemesh:

Exported Scan Model to ZBrush. Used Zremesh to bring down to about 24K Tris. Did some quick masking/polygrouping and used UV Master to quickly create some basic islands so different areas would be easy to select once I exported to Maya.

scanning_day_04h

04. Quick Retopo + Quick UVs:

Used a combination of ZRemesher, Mesh > Reduce, and some brute-force retopo to quickly get the polygon count below 6k Tris, while trying to preserve as much of the overall shape as possible. Used the islands set up in ZBrush UVMaster to quickly re-UV. Edge-flow and UV Layout aren’t necessarily optimal, but they’ll work for this run!

scanning_day_04e

05. Baking Maps:

Loaded the 14mil Photoscan model into Xnormal as the Hi-Res, and the 6k Retopo Model as the Low Res to bake out the Normal and Occlussion Maps. Also used a Cage File. Then, to create the Diffuse Map, I imported the texture from Photoscan into Zbrush and used it as Polypaint on the 14mil, then Projected it onto the 6K model.

scanning_day_04d

06. Game Res Asset:

Applied the Normal and AO maps onto our 6K Retopo mesh!

scanning_day_04b scanning_day_04c scanning_day_04a

Of course, the asset would still need a good bit of work to be considered final.

ISSUES: The Edge Flow, Polygon Count, UV Layout, and Baked-Map Quality, could all be improved/optimized. These are things that could all be addressed with a couple more hours of hands-on time. Also, it’d be good to actually have this shaded.

Still, pretty good starting point for 3 Hours of work! (Aprox 4.5 hours if you include Photoscan processing time)

NEXT Steps:

-Continue refining/adding to the workflow to best address issues listed above.

-Add Arms for Mannequin!

-Add Texture to Mannequin surface to make it easier for Photoscan to read and reduce artifacts.

3/2/2017: PHOTOGRAMMETRY RESEARCH

After photographing and processing these jackets about 78-billion-jillion times, I’ve learned a ton!

I’ve been trying to hone-in my photography and processing techniques to get the scans as clean/accurate as possible, and get the workflow and quality as repeatable/efficient as possible.

Built a little table with some spare wood to get everything lifted off the ground:

scanning_day_03a

Also, I found some refurbished Soft-Boxes for $65! Which means much sharper images! My old DIY light setup had to be bounced and scattered through paper and ended up losing a lot of intensity, which meant longer exposures and lower f-stops which gave me a more shallow depth of field. These soft-boxes are AMAZING for the price! Super bright, and sturdy, results in much sharper pictures.

scanning_day_03b

I also grabbed my old TV and plugged the Nikkon in so that I could actually check my focus and all the details AS I photograph, instead of finding out all my pictures are blurry about 20 minutes later, after transferring them over to my machine. It has been a HUGE help and saved me a TON of time.

scanning_day_03c

Models are coming out cleaner and more accurate every round!

Now combing through the Agisoft Photoscan Documentation for helpful tidbits! Should have this process down PAT soon, and hopefully I can move on to actually creating some game assets!

2/20/2017 – PHOTOGRAMMETRY RESEARCH

First attempt! Processed all the photos through After Effects to key out the background, worked really well! I think I’m going to get some green felt to cutout the turntable. Here are some of the photos along with my first scan! Got some good detail, but I think some softer light plus more processing on the photos and a little more Agis-Photoscan know-how will eventually produce even better results! Will be practicing and refining this part of the process a few more times before I move on to actually retopo and producing a finished asset.

scanning_day_02a scanning_day_02b scanning_day_02c

2/19/2017 – PHOTOGRAMMETRY RESEARCH

First set-up and first set of photos!

scanning_day_01