Phil Pendlebury - Final(ish) Pilot Topology

Hey geeks

Andrew, i hope your time away was productive, i can imagin it being quite a mission to get all the things done out there, plus resist the temptation of chilling as if your on holiday. Prague is definatly somewhere i want to visit one day.

Here is the final topology of my pilot before being posed. i wanted a solid figure underneath so the rest of the work fits well.

There are still afew tweaks to do, and any suggestions at this time would be greatly appreciated. im still iffy on the face. ive used alot of referece and it matches up against real heads, but when viewd without it still seems alittle bulky.

Ah yes, there are no ears, the final model will not show the ears as there is a skin tight skull cap thing with sensory wires coming from the ear area. You will see a bulge suggesting the ear underneath. I do want to create them just in case i want to show them, but at this stage they are no priority.

Ive rendered these in Zbrush just for speed and the use of a handy skin shader, but i only used XSI in the modelling.

Andrew, i will be sending you the obj file of this mesh shortly

Well now im busy creating all the biotech armour and wing pack.
Im thourally debating how to create a decent dragonfly wing. Andrew do you have any tips regarding realistic looking insect wings? Ive starting building each individual vein/cell on the wing, it takes time but im sure it will look pretty good and react well to lighting. Is this the best way to go?

I can now dress her accordingly and then after will pose her.

Im doing it this way so it forces me to consider how the armour reacts to a mesh which could be animated.

Well back to it i guess :)

Phil

AM - Ahmed Robot

I loaded up your model and have had a close look at him. He is looking great. I was worried you had built the mesh too dense, but the model is clean and details have only been added where necessary. As for deleting faces that are not seen, this is a good idea but I wouldn't worry too much about it. The model is still pretty light weight to use and if you start deleting too many internal faces you won't get a good occlusion pass when you render.

What I would concentrate on at the moment is organising your scene. There is no point in having a cool model if it's not grouped and named sensibly. I know you will get to this eventually, but the sooner you start thinking about this the easier your scene will be to manage and animate.

If you are going to animate this guy intensively I would create another version that is really low resolution. You can tweak your animation interactively with it, then swap in the high resolution version at render time.

I noticed there are a few "floating" pieces of metal. When you go through and start organising your model into movable sections just double check everything is attached and feels solid enough for it's purpose.

Also, you will need to make some small alterations to the model in order for the limbs to get a descent range of movement. Currently the shoulders and legs won't move far because they will collide with other metal parts. Check some of the reference from Transformers and you might come up with some cool solutions.

The hanger is looking good. This set will rely heavily on some nice lighting and texturing to really take it to the next level.

The hovercraft is coming along well. It would be good to add in a few more sharp edges and details though. At the moment it feels a little soft and organic. I like the overall feel of the craft, but it would be great to add small details such as aerials, radars, doors and hatches to give it a sense of scale. The more stuff like this you model in at this stage, the less you will have to rely on textures and displacement to push the realism.

Overall your work is of a great standard and shows a good understanding of what is needed for this project. I look forward to seeing some updates!

cheers
Andrew

Hi Andrew

Hope all is well.


I have been working solidly on my robot and I have attached a couple of screen caps for him so far...I still want to add in more wires like in the concept art.






The Robot is done modelling wise, although I am finding the number of polys after subdividing them very worrying!! as they have gone over 2 million so far! being only 300k before subdividing...

The Robot is more of an expolrer type hence the big hands











I am nearly done with the centre hover craft that will take the pilot to the chest area, and also the environment is almost finished as well although I am finding showing the sense of scale a bit tough at the moments











So before i move on to the next stage thought I would share with you guys, and if any input is possible, please let me know.



I have emailed an OBJ file if you can kindly have a look at it whenever is possible that would be great.

All the best

Ahmed

AM - Ollie

Hey Ollie
Your pooch has come a long way and the improvements you've made are evident. As you mentioned, it would be good to add detail to the eyes as these are the first thing you look at on an animal/character. Animals like this are difficult to create due to the thick layer of fur but you should be happy with your results and if you have time, so fine tuning will take it to the next level.
It would be great to see some wireframes of your other stuff.
Don't worry if it's not perfect! In the industry you need to show your work on a daily basis to everyone in your Department. You may as well get used to it now :)
Keep it coming.
cheers
Andrew

AM - Biker Dan Model

Hey Dan
I managed to check out your model today. All I can say is that's it's really impressive! Everything from the pose and weighting to the topology and mesh quality is of a very high standard.
If I needed to use it in production I would make a few changes to the topology around the hip and legs but these are really minor and not necessary for what you are doing. Hats off to you Dan. A good turntable render of this on your demo reel will impress anyone who is hiring!
cheers
Andrew

Ritchie-OBJ

Hi andrew! Just to let you Know I've sent you an OBJ. Cheers!

Dan - Biker OBJ's

Hi Andrew,

Just to let you know I have sent you an updated version of the biker model...............hope you like it.

Cheers,

Dan