Design Brief
For our game production assignment this spring term, we’ve
been assigned the task of modelling a Gladiator. The project is to be carried
out using the ‘Autodesk 3Ds Max’, ‘Adobe Photoshop’ and ‘Crazybump’ software.
My aims for the project are:
1.
To stay organised and well planned
2.
Create a realistic character
3.
Make an attempt at the ‘baking’ technique for this project.
At the start I didn’t necessarily know which direction my
project would take, which is obvious. This project is my first experience of
modelling a human figure and rigging it as well. Specifically we are to create
“a realistic interpretation of the reference supplied, dressed as a Roman
Gladiator”. According to the
specifications put onto Blackboard the gladiator must be sculpted:
·
With Roman influence
·
Within a 2500 triangle limit,
·
With extra 300 triangles for armour, props and
extras.
·
1024 x
1024 diffuse texture sheet
·
512x 512 texture sheet for weapons and armour
(likewise in specular maps and normal
maps)
·
And rigged with a biped of 28 bones
Research
My research was mainly concentrated around media. I watched episodes
of the Spartacus series, which I had already been watching before the project
thus I was very enthusiastic. What I was able to take from the TV show is,
gladiators tended not to be as well armoured as the Roman soldiers, but there
ferocity in combat were unique.
The Gladiators were essentially groomed killing machines, their lives
were encompassed around death; I would like to portray in my character in some
aspect. Furthermore, in watching a gladiator documentary I have learnt,
gladiators had low social standing due to the fact that they tended to come
from slave or lower glass backgrounds (some did volunteer however). There were
many types of gladiator, each with a unique set of weapons and armour.
Apparently the armour they wore was supposed to represent different enemies of Rome,
from history of fantasy. Moreover the weapons and armour they used was
characteristics of their native culture. There were many types of Roman
gladiators but there are 4 which I put main focus on:
- Equites- Armed with a round shield a spear and a
helmet. Equites used to rife on horseback.
- Retiarius a fighter armed with a trident and a net. Most vulnerable
gladiator. Only a shoulder guard
(galerus his left arm) he is swift and the lead bearing in his net allows him
to use it as a whip or to ensnare his opponents, giving him opportunity to stab
the opponent with his trident or dagger.
- Hoplmachus- carries a small round bronze shield
and a spear. His upper legs are protected by quilt and greaves. His brimmed
helmet has a large plume.
- Tharex(Thracian) carried a small rectangular shield (‘parmula’) and a
slightly curved sword (‘sica’) intended to maim his opponents. He was armoured
with greaves and a ‘manica’ arm-guard)
- Dimachaerus- Dressed like a ‘murmillo’ gladiator
but carried two swords.
- Paegniarius- they specialised in fighting wild
animals and trainers. They only used a whip. They wore no helmet and used
protective leg belts and leg padding (Fascia)) – covering the leg from knee
down. He carried a wooden arm shield on his left ar. The whip length ensures
that he fought best at a distance.
- Lastly, the Murmillo –He is a heavy weighted Fishing gladiator, who
carried a large oblong shaped ‘Scutum’ (large roman shield) and a ‘Gladius’
(the typical roman sword). Both sword and shield would be used as offensive and
defensive weapons. He is heavily
armoured. He wore a leg greave and over-boot on his left leg to protect from
both his opponents and his own shield. The helmet he wore was distinctive for
his ‘large dorsal fin’ helmet, which is reminiscent of the ‘Mormyrs fish’ which his name originates from. He was armed like a Roman legionary soldier. He was
my personal favourite, because fighting skill was regarded highly especially
their shield techniques.
Conceptual Design
Using adobe Photoshop, I produced a few concepts for the
gladiator. The concepts were inspired by the apparel of the types of
gladiator’s that already existed. I drew a sketch of a male which would be the
base template for designing. The concepts did not take too long to complete,
their primary function was to help me choose a design for a gladiator that my
gladiator model will follow. Subsequently, I went with the ‘murmillo’ gladiator
design, it was the design which I was most interested in.
Process
Step 1.
I started the modelling process of the gladiator by
inserting the reference images put on the K drive for reference. I opened the
reference images which I needed onto planes in the 3ds max software. The served
as guidelines for the shape of my gladiatorial figure that I was modelling. The
images were of a muscular life model.
I began to box model my gladiator from head to toe; inserting swift
loops were I thought appropriate. Following this I extruded the limps from the
main body, subsequently repeating the previous process of swift looping and
forming until both arms and legs looked like arms and legs’ then, went round
the figure making sure not a single vert was out of place in accordance to the
reference image. I think I enjoyed modelling the body, although I had to model
the head more tan once, I even used tutorials from youtube.
Step 2.
Following from the previous process, I added topology onto the
figure. I can’t say I enjoyed the process but it was educative. In using the
reference images of topology from the web I have surely attained a better
understanding of the human anatomy. In the case of a low poly gladiator, I’m
not entirely sure that I added enough topology or too much. Despite this, I
kept bouncing between feedback from teachers and 2nd years on how
well my topology is. Feedback from older peers is definitely supportive; I will
continue to keep up communication with older years in between projects.
Step 3.
The next stage was to model the armour, as stated earlier
the figure will take up the ‘Murmillo’ archetypal gladiator appearance. Thus, I
modelled the legionnaire shield, with the sphere centre and the four lightning
bolts. I then modelled his ‘manica’ by copying the figure’s arm into a new
element and likewise with the knee greaves. The sword was the most fun to model
because it was referenced from my favourite movie, 300 Spartans (It is King
Leonidas’ sword). Modelling the armour did prove a difficult task and did not
take too long. In total the armour was
modelled in 554 tri’s. Although the brief stated the gladiator needed to be
modelled with a 300 tri limit for the armour I had an excess tri’s as I hadn’t
used up all of the 2,500 tri count for modelling the gladiator’s body.
Step 4.
Unwrapping was not as challenging as I presumed it would be.
After being briefed by my teacher Steve on how to use the pelt tool to map, I
unwrapped accordingly. When using the pelt tool, you create a seam; we were
instructed to leave the seams in hidden areas. In my gladiator’s case, I put
the seams under from the waist to the armpit and from the armpit under the arm
to the hand. Likewise for the legs, the seam was placed in between the thighs
up to the pelvis area and for the head; the seam went round the neck and to the
highest point of the head.The
eyes and ears were unwrapped separately. I did run into some problems, I found
out that my allocation of shapes on the texture sheet was somewhat inaccurate.
At first the face looked extremely low poly with high poly eyes and ears.
Furthermore there was a lot of overlapping with the shapes in my texture
sheet. Ultimately, I had to re-do the texture sheets for both the body and his armour
multiple times.
Step 5.
The next step was to texture the gladiator; I think of all,
this was the stage was most challenging. This project was my first experience
of texturing a humanoid figure, thus I had to consider curvatures in the
texturing. It was not as easy as the previous projects. To texture the
gladiator’s body I used the reference images of the male model given to use on
the k drive and for the gladiator’s face I used pictures of one my colleagues. For the armour, I went to Jewry Wall museum (a
roman artefact museum) and took many texture references, which you can see on
my gladiator. At first,
I wasn’t sure whether I was going to texture using the pick and paste technique
or paint the texture onto my character. I must say, choosing between the two
lead to panic as I didn’t know which would be most beneficial.
My friend and colleague Jon,
showed me how there would be an issue of spontaneous lighting on my gladiator
body, if I had only used cut and paste images of the male mode. He showed me
how to take away the natural light from the gladiator by using the ‘high pass’
tool in Photoshop. I used this tool and my gladiator has more neutral and
natural lighting to him. I ran into two issues when texturing: one was that a
poor texture sheet led to overlapping of textures, meaning that I had to g back
and forth correcting my texture sheet until it was perfected. Secondly, some of
the textures overlapped themselves, e.g. when doing the front and side of the
torso it left another seam. I had to use the brush and pick tools to overcome
this. Luckily
I was able to make my gladiator look decent, I would have liked to work on it
more but what I’m more proud at what
I’ve learned from doing texturing my gladiator.
Step 6.
After texturing my gladiator I had to add normal and
specular maps. I specular mapped the body well, however for the normal mapping
I had to re-do several times. A colleague of mine told me to create a
height-map on Photoshop of my diffuse texture at first, that way I could create
the bumps that I was looking for. All in all, my skills in this have certainly
improved since the van project.
Step 7.The
final step in creating my gladiator was rigging the figure. To rig I had to
create a biped the size of my gladiator, then I moved it into the middle of the
gladiator figure. I had to alter the biped as we were only given a limit of 28
bones to the biped. When the biped was placed accurately, I then applied the
skin modifier to the gladiator’s figure and thus began to rig. Rigging at first
was a tedious task, it entailed going back and for the between moving the bones
and correcting the verts in the ‘edit envelopes mode’. On my first attempt a
colleague pointed out how I was doing it wrong. The 2
nd time round,
I had rigged one side near perfectly in my opinion, but the mirror mode wasn’t
working and so I decided to do it again. Although I hated the having to re-do
it, It helped me learn how to rig correctly. After making the final
corrections, we were instructed to add a fairy dance animation. It looked very
nice on my gladiator, beautiful in fact. I am pleased with how the rigging has
gone, but also how much I’ve learnt.
Things I need to
work on
Certainly texturing, I do believe I could have textured better
this project, given the texture budget which we had been set. I had to
continually change my texture sheet until I got it correct. However when I got
it done right I was contempt. I will continue to improve my texture sheet
allocation. I will also make sure I don’t warp the images too much or the
texture will be distorted.
The next thing I need to work on is rigging- I had to rig 3
times until I got it to rig properly. This would not have happened if I had applied
the biped exactly at the centre of the model.
Final thoughts
In conclusion, despite all the issues I ran into, I am very proud in
the way my project has gone. The gladiator turned out a success and the way
that model was modelled shows how much my 3d skills have progressed. I have
obvious corrections too make, but my time management was better than from previous
projects. I will continue to stay focused and organised in order to hone my
game production skills. I’m most proud of the knowledge I’ve gained from this
project- I now know how to texture figures, high pass and rig in order to
animate a character. In conclusion, this project went well, much better than I
had expected it to go at first. Here is an image of the final design below.
Thank you for reading.
References
