Important texture naming conventions.

OK. Just a quickie to make sure as you are creating your textures to name them correctly ready for import and implementation into Unreal.

Here is the information you need that I have cut and pasted from the character inplementation document found here.

"Texture setup
As mentioned your character can use up to two 2048x2048 ‘materials’. Each material is usually
made up of at least 3 ‘textures’ (Diffuse, Normal and Specular) with the option of emissive and
Specular Power (Glossiness). There are others according to your ‘baseskin’, which we will look
at soon.
You HAVE TO to name them accordingly in your package in order to get Teamskins
working. Best to name the actual files as this will save time and probably issues later with
CharacterNameHere being your character name, obviously.
Body General Diffuse - CharacterNameHere_MBody01_D01_V01_SK1
Body Blue Diffuse - CharacterNameHere_MBody01_D01_VBlue_SK1
Body Red Diffuse - CharacterNameHere_MBody01_D01_VRed_SK1
Body Normal - CharacterNameHere_MBody01_N01_V01_SK1
Body Specular - CharacterNameHere_MBody01_S01_V01_SK1
Body Emissive - CharacterNameHere_MBody01_E01_V01_SK1
Body Specular Power - CharacterNameHere_MBody01_SP01_V01_SK1
Head General Diffuse - CharacterNameHere_MHead01_D01_V01_SK1
Head Blue Diffuse - CharacterNameHere_MHead01_D01_VBlue_SK1
Head Red Diffuse - CharacterNameHere_MHead01_D01_VRed_SK1
Head Normal - CharacterNameHere_MHead01_N01_V01_SK1
Head Specular - CharacterNameHere_MHead01_S01_V01_SK1
Head Emissive - CharacterNameHere_MHead01_E01_V01_SK1
Head Specular Power - CharacterNameHere_MHead01_SP01_V01_SK1"

If you dont name your textures in this way it WILL NOT WORK in unreal.

Happy texturing.

Dean :D

Unwrapping begins.

This post is for my students who are now getting stuck into their character development.

I just wanted to post this now so I dont forget. But here is the link to get the Importing characters into Unreal document.

Its really informative and pretty much tells you how to get your character in game.

Follow this step by step and you wont go wrong.

Anyway. Here is the URL. download and enjoy.

http://neomagination.com/downloads/Tutorials/ImportUT3Tutorial_sm.pdf

One troop almost done.

Well the UNIT soldier is almost finished now. I thought I would add an update as I havnt done so in such a long while.

As you can see in these renders there is no normal map or specular. Just a flat diffuse.











I will try and get the extra textures done next week.

Thought I would put some flat shaded renders of the two extra sontaran factions I knocked up last week too. Things you do when your bored ey!!!

Comments and Crits more than welcome chaps.

See you on the flip side.

Dean :D

UNIT Trooper development.

OK after a days delay in putting up my character development due to me going on a rescue mission with Chuck Norris to save thousands of stranded people in the Ice and snow I am now going to give you a step by step guide to how I made my UNIT soldier.

OK First of all I started off as you all should have seen in my lesson how I modelled the body. by initially creating the front and side planes of the blueprints I drew of the character. Then from here I chose a starting point to begin modelling.

As you can see in this image I began with the flack jacket, creating a plane and then manipulating the points to line up with the blueprint.



Now as you can see in the screen grab I am having trouble getting the displayed image on the blueprint to show at the correct resolution. If anyone can work out how to fix this I will give them a prize.

OK so following on from this I continued to use edge copy and vertex manipulation to shape the torso and the flak jacket. Like this. So the front half was pretty much blocked out.



To get the back I just mirrored the front section then used soft selection to move the verteces into place. I also cut lots of unwanted edgeloops out as I shaped it.

Here are both the front and back sections complete with the collar section built in too.



Next, using the vertical version of the arm I then started blocking the bicep out with a cylinder. I basically positioned the cylinder at the top creating the first loop of the upper arm then again using edge copy just began extruding the edges down to form the folds and shape of the sleeve. Once I got down to the elbow pad I jsut carried on extruding but didnt build the actual hard shell of the pad from this. I added that by using a sphere and shaping it to match the design.

I didnt add too much detail in the forearm section as I was going to let the normal map take most of the detail. He has a Hard forearm guard with indents and this is better achieved with a normal.



OK. from here I decided to start modelling the head as I had to get the head modelling into the lessons for the students so it was a perfect spot to get this in.

So, using my ugly mug as a guide I took some images front and side to use as my blueprint and again set things up in max on two planes.



Then again finding a good starting point I creted a plane and began shaping and edge copying to start forming the head shape.



I usually start from the forehead and work out and down from there but I know alot of artists like to use the eye as a starting point. I guess its all in your own choice of where you want to start but either way you will get to the end somehow.



As you can see here I managed to get a good shape with the head and in the rendered image I was quite shuffed that it really did look like me. GOD HOW UGLY. To get a more natural look. Once I had mirrored the right side I used soft selection to offset the left eye and tweak some of the shapes. This created a more realistic and natural look as my head is so unsymetrical.



Once I was happy with the final head I merged it into my body scene and positioned it in correctly.

I then continued with the legs. This again was done similar to the arms by using and cylinder to start from and then edge copy down to form the folds and shapes of the legs.

Once I got down to the knees I mirrored over the shape I had to see if it was OK. I was going to have to totally rebuild one section as the legs werent symetrical. One side had a holster and the other a pack. So once I was happy with one side it would get tweaked after I flipped it over.





Then Finally once happy I mirrored everything over tweaked the bits I needed to get it asymetrical and Bobs your uncle and Kev's your aunt and he was done.

He still needs a few pouches and ammo packs on his Torso and belt but thats him pretty much done.



Also note in the image that the polygon count on the selected polygons are only 3619. So with a Polycount of 10,000 I have lots of room to play with if I wanted to add more detail but that can come later if needed.

So the next big job is going to be Unwrapping the UVW so I can get a UV layout and create a texture for him. I will be showin the students how to do this when they come back from their Xmas break but for now I hope they just get stuck in and experiment.

Well I hope this has been helpful. If you have any questions please dont hesitate to comment and I will see if I can answer.

This will probably be my last post till after Xmas so make sure you have a great time and get lotys of goodies and I will see you all in the new year.

Big hugs.

Dean :D

PS. He's watching so be good.

Time for an update.

Hi chaps and happy followers.

I just wanted to let you all know I have finished the modelling phase of my UNIT soldier and plan on putting loads of development images up from start to finish tomorrow.

I have had a hard day Xmas shoping today and spent a small fortune so havnt got the energy today LOL.

Hope you have all had fun in the snow. We were out playing with the Dogs last night and having FURTHEST SKIDS competitions with the boys on the icy roads LOL. Fun and games in winter wonderland.

Hope everyones working hard.

Check back tomorrow for gopefully a HUGE and proper update.

Dean :D

Time for an update.

The time has come for a proper post.

Right. I have been promising a post with loads of helpful information so I thought it was about time to do it and give something to you all.

Over Christmas my students will be modelling a character that will then be textured and implemented into the Unreal 3 engine.

With them having almost three weeks with no supervision over the Christmas break I thought it might be a good Idea to give them a good selection of links that will be helpful in their modelling.

there are tonnes of helpful websites that are useful so here are jsut a few.

Here is a cool female character tutorial. Its low poly but worth a good look.

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/tutorials/character/c/real-time-character-modeling-tutorial

This one is by Ben Mathis who's website is poopinmymouth.com a website that is more than worth visiting as his site also has loads of other tutorials.

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/benmathis/benmathis_1.php

Here are his tutorials

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/tutorial.htm

This one is very low poly but is a good example of how to get started following this one for a clothed character is spot on. It also has how to do hair so is perfect for Adam.

http://www.bakaneko.com/howto/computer/3d/character/page01.html

Another cool set of tutorials downloadable a RAR files

http://www.3d2dizayn.com/3d2dizayn_tutorials.html

This guys work is AWESOME. some great low polyish characters. Great to study how he has modelled the topology.

http://www.superostrich.net/index_3dArt.htm

This guy has made an amazing Grand Moff Tarkin head. Well worth a look.

http://www.daz-art.com/hi_poly_tut.htm

I could go on and on really but In the end its up to you guys to get into it get stuck in, learn from your mistakes and really just enjoy it.

Anyway. Keep at it over the Xmas break and hopefully we should have some cool characters when we all come back in the new year.

Dean :D