Skinning

Skinning has been a really fiddly process for me. In fact I think it's my least favourite part of creating my characters. You are ever so close to being able to animate, but still so far from actually getting there due to the painstaking process that is skinning. Very.. very.. irritating.

Maya ended up doing something very strange and distorting my model horribly, which I found out eventually was because some joints had decided to give more than 100% influence over a certain part of the mesh.. Which although doesn't actually make sense, was the issue - which I ended up fixing by typing in the influence each joint was allowed to show on which vertices. I assume it is some sort of bug with the new way maya 2011 has set up the skinning part of it's program.

The above is what happened to the poor white blood cell, which I eventually managed to fix.

Layout Mock-ups

These are just some tests of all the assets put together to make sure that they all fit!

I needed to change to colour balance of the blood vessel to make it much less bright so it didn't clash with the red blood cells and blinded you in the process! I have also tested out the possibility of eventually adding shadows to the characters - it might give more depth to the blood cell and really make everything seem like they're heading towards you.

The colour below is what I have decided on for the colour balance of my game!

I think it really brings out the colours of the other characters without looking too washed out and like creepy flesh...

Here I was just testing out a pink glow over my characters. I thought that if the blood vessel was that colour, then perhaps it would reflect on the characters. However, I don't actually like the look of it over them.. I think they look too washed out. Since I really liked their bright colours, I think i'll stick to that. I have also been testing out some possible effects, like trails of some kind for the characters moving towards you - like the shadows it might give a better sense of depth and where the characters are coming from.

Here I'm just testing out some veiny effects over the blood vessel.

I wanted to see what the red blood cells would look like a little less washed out here. However I think it makes it a bit too dark.

Scoreboard!!! I have decided to have a rotating red blood cell in the corner of the screen by the scoreboard - i suppose just to make the scoreboard seem a bit less plain and boring really! Also, Bubbles!!!!!! I have tested out how bubbles, instead of the previous sparkles could look. I think they go much better with the idea that these characters are actually travelling in liquid, and I like that they are quite subtle here - so they don't take away from the nicely modelled characters, which are the main focus of the game.

Trying out a much more heavy outline for the characters. I think it really does make them stand out, but they look much more flat and super imposed onto the screen.. instead of moving around in what the rendering is trying to make you believe, is a 3D space.

Also, as seen in this version without the background, I have used a tool in photoshop called the dodge tool to put highlights on the characters. The dodge tool brings out the bright colours in the highlighted areas of the image. I think this almost looks like the blood vessel's sparkles are being reflected onto my characters.

This is near enough the final image of my game concept. Eventually I think I will try and go over the frames of my images with the dodge tool to make them look reflective, but for now, I think for the demo that has to be ready for the deadline, this is fine. Once the characters are actually moving in the coding, I think there wont be much of a problem when it comes to the depth of the scene.

Animated Textures

These are tests for the blood vessel textures. I had to keep re-doing them because I couldn't get the movement of the sparkly bit to look as thought they were moving towards you.

I really liked how this was textured and sparkly, but the movement appears to be going around you and not towards you. It's too visually complicated.

For this test I tried to tone it down a lot in terms of the texturing.. and the movement does work, but it looks quite desolate and not as pretty as I wanted it to look.

This test is a lot better. The one problem with this is that I have made it 12 frames per second, which makes the movement much more jittery. I have also had to fix the textures on again because of Maya being annoying and crashing on me, but I will have sorted these issues for the game, which I have to send to Ian the coder right away to be made up!

Mock up of Blood vessel in code!

I have created a series of test images to see how I could make the blood vessel animate in the coding! Of course this is a very crudely drawn set of images.. but it works!

Texturing and Photoshop

These are the textures edited in Photoshop, after the ambient occlusion has been added. I wanted to make sure that everything blended in really well and looked like my concept drawings, so I stippled the photoshop paintbrush, similar to how I created it with my pens, to give the blended effect I wanted.

I have decided to simply put a toon outline over my models to give them a bit more emphasis, and I think it creates a nice unique style - soft textures with dark black outlines.

These are the finished renders of my characters with the textures applied!!!

Ambient Occlusion

Baking the Ambient Occlusion onto the models so the renders could be put onto the photoshop texture files:

I Chose to add Ambient Occlusion to my textures, because it helps make the textures that much more soft, and the shadows more subtle, which is the look i'm going for. These are the layers for putting onto the textures on photoshop:

UV Mapping

These are screen caps from the UV mapping of my characters. Although it seemed pretty daunting, This is actually quite simple to do although a bit fiddly for Floo and the white blood cell, due to all their wiggly bits. All I had to do was to show texture border edges, select the edges around eeach wiggly bit with a line down the middle so it could be spread out (like someone was stretching out a skin), and then smooth them out in the UV map editor, so they were all lined up, ready to be textured.

Real Rigging!

These are the models I ended up creating and I have now created their rigs too!

Floo was relatively simple to do - he has a spine rigged down the middle with extra joints for the wiggly bits round the edge, so I can be really detailed with my animating. The hands also can move away from the body as they are not attached to the body via the mesh at all!

The rig for the White blood cell is special because, he has stretchy arms! This was done as a tricky extra by Toby, as I really wanted to be able to animate his arms stretching! There was some confusing coding involved... The rest is simple - the legs and the mouth are both rigged so they can move freely.

This rig is slightly different. I want to make the blood vessel wiggle around, and possibly animate the contracting - which would mean I would need to be able to animate the scale tool. That is why there is a lattice surrounding the red blood cell, and then the lattice is rigged like a spine, with spine clusters down it, enabling me to modify the movement down each bit of the lattice.

3D Character Models!

These are the first test models of floo and how he could look:

I have tested out how toon shading could possibly look, with the toon outlines and toon colouring. I really like the toon outlines, but I think the colour isn't detailed enough for what I want for my game.

This is what happened after I continued putting more wiggly bits on Floo. I think I got a bit carried away and went a bit overboard with the wiggly bits... so I'm going to cut them down, and make them bigger instead and see how they look. Like this it would be impossible to texture and skin.. It would just be a nightmare. Also, I don't like the eyes being models on top of the rest of the model. I think I'm going to texture the eyes on. Also, I wanted to change how the wiggly bits were attached, because it occurred to me that the textures wouldn't look smooth as the wiggly bits are technically a separate shape to the body. I'm going to combine the wiggly bits next time to make it nice and smooth.

Learning Rigging! 0_0

Since in Specialist Study 1 I wasn't able to animate using my previous character due to my lack of knowledge of rigging, I have decided to learn how to rig, so I can create all my characters from scratch. I have used my old specialist study 1 model to practice rigging on it. The added bonus is that I will have my own humanoid model to animate with for future animation tests, and for putting on my showreel. Toby Rutter is teaching me how to rig my characters and a few other technical pieces of knowledge that I need to know to create my characters for his professional practice model. He has made Maya a lot less daunting and much more manageable!

I have started to rig her by putting all the joints in, in one leg and then duplicating them for the other leg. I have learnt that I have to make sure I don't

change their orientation, otherwise the rig wont work properly.

I am also making sure that I name all the joints correctly so I know what they are when it comes to skinning and editing them if need be. (bn is for the active joints, an be is for the end joints that wont have any influence).

Next I make the spine joints and a neck joint, and then one out the top of the head - making sure there are enough spine joints to allow her to be able to move really naturally when she is connected to the model. Each C represents a spine cluster on the spine, allowing her spine to bend a bit at each of those points, being influenced by the other points.

Creating Nerbs curves to use as controllers for moving the limbs and spine etc. more easily, meaning that I wont have to go in to each joint and move them separately.

The Grand Naming!

I have been going through a long list of names for my game, and it has come down to two options:

Bloodbeat

Hemolysis Crysis

Thinking about these names, I know that Bloodbeat is much more catchy, while Hemolysis Crysis actually medically describes what is happening in my game..

After doing much research, and asking people that I know wont steal the name of my game.. it seems that normal everyday people who don'tknow much about biology weren't sure how to pronounce Hemolysis Crysis, and much preferred the more simple.. Bloodbeat. However, anyone who has done some Biology seems to really appreciate "Hemolysis Crysis".

I think that even though I don't want to put aside any ideals that I have about creating a game that I am really proud of and haven't dumbed down for the sake of the public, I think I need to make it accessible for all ages, and for people that haven't done biology since GCSE.. even though you probably would get the hint with the Hemo bit...

Either way.. I have decided on Bloodbeat! ..I might add.. "Bloodbeat! A Hemolysis Crysis!" to the description however...... just for people who would appreciate the pun...

Character Designs

Character Research:

I have been looking at these microscope images of blood cells and even the black and white microscope images have a glowyness about them which I really like. I think I want to try to create a style that combines a slightly cute and endearing character design, with the glowy textures of these microscope images.

I have found models of blood cells as characters with googly eyes, which I think I need to be careful of, as it is easy to just stick faces on things and call them characters... but I want to have a bit more depth to the characters then just have them look exactly as they should look normally.

My Sketches:

I hope to be able to emulate the stippled, and somewhat bright and glowy texture I used pen to colour on these character sketches. I'll see how the 3D turns out, but I am happy keeping the red blood cells with no features, and only giving the virus (who I have named Floo) and the white blood cell (who I have named Gobbler) specific features each - floo hands and eyes, and the gobbler a mouth. This way I have thought more about the composition of the characters, rather than just sticking a face and googly eyes on them.