IPP - WIP of Helm

So once again I did my process for the helm of my collection, only now I decided to add a transparency map to it so that I didn't have to make unnecessarily high geometry. I used it mainly for the air holes on the lower portion of the helm.

IPP - Round Shield

So the next piece of armor that I decided to take on is known as the round shield. I decided to give it some of my own stylized design, as most round shields have a signature artifact in the center to signify alliance. At first thought, I felt that it would be best to just make a quick cylinder in Maya with a thin edge-loop so that I could extrude a border face.What I didn't know is that there is a problem that Mudbox would have with where all of the tri's converge on the cylinder; when I tried to sculpt near that convergence, a pseudo black hole / singularity would be created and bug the topology out. So from there, I decided that it would just be best to have the convergence be of quad-based topology. Fixed!

With clean UVs and good edgeflow, I decided to smooth to a relatively high level before bringing it into Mudbox. The reason for this is because I want to UVs to be smoothed as well so that the normal and color maps that I will extract will be far more accurate when I bring them back into Maya.

So I gave it its color and sculpt...

Then I plugged the color map and normal map into the shader that I have in Maya..!

EDW - Modeling a Humanoid Cont.

So, with my reference pictures in place and ready for modeling the entire human form, I began my approach with primitive box shapes that are smoothed by one division level. Boxing out the general forms with these geometrical pieces, I then started to combine them once they were in their anatomically correct positions. Once they were combined to a single mesh, I used the append to polygon tool to connect them all together. I feel this method is quite effective.

My two biggest problems included a strong non-planar face where the shoulder meets the body, and the fact that I was unable to increase the transparency of my images planes in the scene. I wanted my frontal image translucent because the shin of my leg goes behind the images plane.

Rendering - Update

So for our 5th rendering assignment, it was required that we used 2 of the 3 following attributes:
Global Illumination
Physical Sun and Sky
Caustics

Unfortunately, I came down with the cold last Tuesday when my professor lectured on caustics, so luckily I already knew how to accomplish the other two.

I decided to make a scene that incorporates Physical SnA by having it enter the openings of primitive objects through its bounced light (global illumination) while colors were bleeding onto other surfaces in a very subtle manner. This is what I came up with:

As you can see, the direction of the physical SnA is coming from behind the two primary boxes (evident from the angle of the shadows). I felt that this was the best way to give justice to the global illumination used.

IPP - WIP of Helm

So to begin my modeling for the medieval helm, I first had to accumulate several concept pictures that I could use as reference.

So I made a very primitive model and UV mapped it, making it ready for Mudbox sculpting.

And after some work in Mudbox, I was able to get a general idea of what I'm leaning towards.

Though I made relatively good progress with the sculpting, I'm not getting the outcome that I want with the 'cross-shaped' guard on the front of the helm. With this in mind, I may recreate the t-shaped geometry in the model in Maya and give it another shot in Mudbox

EDW - Curvature of the Head

So after critique on Thursday, I found that I really needed to make some concept work of head's contour edges before I should actually started modeling it. So to start, I brought the reference photos into Photoshop and began putting an overlay of what the contour lines of the face should be.

EDW - Head cont.

So progress is going quite smoothely as I begin to model Hynek's facial features with a 'low-poly-count' in mind at all times. I started from a simple plane, and began individually moving the vertices while adding edge loops where it was necessary in the topology. Additionally, I used the split polygon tool where I needed to divide individual faces further. I'm finding this process to become more and more easier with every small accomplishment.