Female character in progress
Modeled and uv-mapped (no, she will not be bare between tunic and the boots):
MS2 complement
This is a complementary storyboard displaying the animations and cameras intended for the project in association with the new timeplan. As I had two days to develop this and struggling with a norovirus at the same time, production quality is thereafter. I have added a moodboard as well. Both can also be found in the MS2 delivery folder.
MS2 Delivery
Investigation
ProjectPlan version 5
Prototype
Conclusion of the ms2 phase:
Textures, light and shaders has been developed and applied on a 3d model, with a goal that the model should look flat and hand-animated upon screen. It was realized that scenes in toon graphics can be kept simplistic and still look good and toon graphics can have drastically shorter render-time than other kinds of graphics. The texture was intended to show warm/cold skin tones in a stylistic way but also to act as a form of occlusion were there would normally always be shadows or dark lines, e.g below nose and eyebrows. Naturally it was developed to be neutral to any form of distinct light.
A new shader was developed from scratch. The new shader worked simply by a vRamp connected to a samplerInfo node. The ramp shader was at first set not to interpolate at all, and then provided with different alpha values - based on the alpha values of the skin tones in one of the projects concept drawings. The choise not to interpolate the ramp came from the strong desire to create different tones of shade. The ramp was however given a linear interpolation later on, but still kept very hard edges between the levels. Finally, the ramp was connected to the shader’s ambient color value:
Shaders and textures
At first, the character was painted with graphics tablet in BodyPaint 3d. The texture was meant to be neutral to any lighting and look handmade. It was then lit with standard maya lights, providing a deficient result:
The bad result is by reason that realistic lighting does not at all apply to the model. The textures look cartoon and thus the lighting must work in the same direction.
So the first thing to do was to adjust the light. The shadowmaps were tweaked to produce the most sharp and cutting shadows that was possible; either a surface was set to be in shadow or in light, without interpolation in between. The character’s shader was adjusted, having a samplerInfo node connect to a ramp, bound to the ambient light value. The ramp was given a set of alpha values simulating distinct tones of shade.
Both light and shader was then tuned to working together; with the shader giving of the distinct tones and the light simulating the actuall shadows.
From this point, it went easy to adjust the colorGain of the samplerInfo node in harmony with the spotlight, to produce more dramatic or moody lighting:
Rendertime = 3-5 seconds!
Unforeseen things
Because of a tragic incident between the weeks 52-3, motion capture will no longer be an element of this project. There is simply no time to implement it. The traditional hand-animation look is still a top priority though and the finished artwork will be presented in a sense that it shows how it was developed.
This is the progress for the time being, the male character modeled and UV-mapped:
The female character is allso under development, stay tuned for more. Coming up next week is a cellshading and textures test.