Hair!
By far, one of the most difficult parts of Grub to model was its hair, mainly due to it colliding with parts of the model and having to rest on top, but in the modelling process, not the rigging process. Even then, I was struggling on the type of method I would use to create this hair, at first I wanted to sculpt it, but it didn’t end up going well, as it ended up being incredibly flat and too hi-poly.
To resolve this problem, I was introduced to a different method, revolving around using modifiers. In this specific example, I’d use curves to outline the shape of my hair strands, then use a modifier to create a mesh around it, so I can reshape it and scale it, it looked like this:
Using this method was much easier, as I could still follow the drawing I had made of Grub’s hair, whilst also being able to go around and create a lot of depth with my models hair, it also looks incredibly smooth as well, which is satisfying. However, this was also an incredibly hi-poly process, and would need to be decimated down the line to keep a similar type of shape.
Decimating did much to my model in terms of reducing poly count, and also stylisitically. I feel the way it looks now is more likely to the game I have chosen to base my design off of for this project, as it still has very low poly aspects to it, and a lot of the detail is in the texturing. On the side though, it is nice to have the model look similar stylistically at points.
Retopology!
One problem that has remained uncontested throughout this project for me, there are way too many polys on my model of Grub. I had previously noted in earlier weeks of this blog, that my topology was quite poor throughout the project, and as a result, I was left with an incredibly unoptimized character, around 170,000-180,000 verts, which was way too high for just a character. So, I had to fix this urgently.
Most of this was done by making use of blender’s ALT select, which selects a whole line of connected edges. I made extensive use of this to reduce polys and edge count, whilst also trying to keep as much detail as possible. For some cases such as the gauntlets and sleeves, I had to merge those manually, as them being separate missed out on detail and caused gaps. I also managed to fix my modifiers for the crown, whilst being able to remove and work with the poly count, so overall it looks much better.
Originally, I was introduced to an addon called Retopoflow from a classmate, however I struggled to use it for this project, and was more than happy to reduce my polycount by just shedding edges that I wouldn’t’ve needed at all for the models detail. On top of this, any detail I do want to rectify, I can just do so in normal mapping when I texture my model. If I had managed my time better with this project, I would’ve tried to make retopoflow work, but considering my problems were easily fixed, it wasn’t ultimately needed.
UV’s! (Part 2)
WIth my models being retopologised, I now needed to re-uv my models, remark seams, and make sure that my UV’s would be bearable to use when it comes to working with the model in substance painter. Luckily this process isn’t too daunting to me now that I had retopologised my model, and now that I made sure I knew how to use ALT select in the most effective fashion.
For now, this is the update I have for my work during the holidays, and I will discuss about rigging, texturing and animating during week 6! A bit of a crunch for the project, but I believe I can do those in a timely fashion if I manage to keep my head down.