Finalised Zbrush sculpt of main character

Coming back to the main character model in Zbrush once again, I believe that this time around I managed to capture as realistic of a representation of the human male muscle anatomy as i possibly could. With this being the first ever sculpt I've made within zbrush, of an organic model that is anyway I am pretty happy with the overall outcome.

Above are then some screen shots of the character completed with all of his clothing and items equipped. The bracers on the neck and arms are supposed to be made of a mixture of stone and metal, so I tried to show that with the contrast of smoother planes next to the more bumpier like planes that have a lot more cracks on the surface.
You can also see in these screen shots the scaring that I applied on over the characters skin, from where he would of been whipped and tortured within his imprisonment in the dungeon. I have then also finalized the folded over jacket that our main character wears around his waste.

Overall I am very happy within the final outcome of this model as it leaves Zbrush to go onto to process of creating the low poly model and later baking the normals within Xnormal.
I think now that I have the experience of creating a more organic humanoid model within Zbrush, any future work I create similar to this will be able to be completed faster and with more accuracy then the amount of time it took me to achieve this level of accuracy with this character model.

Level Redesign - John Howard

Task

To create an achievable level design. It has been established that the current level design is way too much work for the environment artist to do at this time.

Overview

Although for this project I am not a level designer I thought I should develop a level and get the environment artist started on it due to the simple fact that it needed to be done and it hadn't. I created one major room where a crystal and statues will be located. Upon interaction with the crystal the statues will activate into the golem AI basically creating a battle room. This would mean that even if this was the only room to get done we should still have gameplay as long as the other coders have finished their environmental code. I also included two other rooms and a corridor that can open as an end level area.

Further Environment Details - Matt Glen (Concept Art)

Here are some further little details to help inform the modelling of several rooms and props. First, the Crystal Room, which needed several details fleshed out a little more.

Crystal Room

Below are several sketches taken from the first concept for the room. I wanted to lay out a simpler depiction of what certain details actually consisted of in terms of form and structure. The simple column here was used to plan out some variants on the initial single pillar in an earlier post.

From here I started to quickly sketch out plans of other objects from the room and how they would sit from different views, including the alcove, crystal and roots.

These images are not immensely detailed or technically strong, but they act to give a more three dimensional view of the room and what sits within it. Hopefully these should be enough to give a clearer idea of where everything goes and how it should be modeled.

Screaming Cells

For this room, I first did a vertical plan to see how the room would be put together in a modular format by our 3D artists. The layout is very simple and repetitive, and should easily come together into a larger area.

I next did a quick illustration of what the inside of one of the little, light-emitting cells might look like. I wanted to keep it pretty simple so that it could be copied and pasted to make multiple cells without needing many changes, and I also tried to keep with the grotesque faces theme that this area of the level has a lot of.

Once these ideas had been run past the team, we decided that the room at the end of the cell block should be redesigned into a smaller chamber in which a crystal would hover.

This gave the room more of a purpose, as well as simplifying the layout of the room to eliminate completely superfluous spaces that would add very little to the game experience. This room is pretty simple and modular, but once it's put together in the final game with lighting, it should be quite an effective and imposing space. 

Threshold Steps

This room was fairly straightforward and self-explanatory from the initial illustration. It consists of a circular, elevated platform connected to a bridge. I put together this quick side view to give a better idea of the dimensions of the space, as well as a view of the entrance that leads to it. Other than this, the only other objects in the scene were more Gothic face-lights, which there is already a separate design for that should do the job.

This room should look pretty good once it's made, and makes for a very dramatic final stage on which to end our vertical slice. It'll be really interesting to see how these designs are adapted into 3D and turned into a real space. Hopefully they'll feel connected and part of one larger theme, while still having their own identities and atmosphere.

Some UI Concepts - Matt Glen (Concept Art)

One idea for our game is to have the UI appear on the actual character, rather than as an overlayed image on a HUD. In order to have this work, the character needs to be wearing some type of collar or brace that, on top of the magic-inhibiting bracelets he is already wearing, holds back his power and indicates his health. Here were some ideas for what this could look like.

These concepts probably won't make it into the final game, especially the overly complicated health bar, but it's good to try out different ideas before settling on a final one and testing out options. If I had to choose a favourite it would be the first, as it seems the most simple and the health bar reads fairly well on it, however they all have slight issues with how easy it is to actually see the readout on them. It may be that we need to revisit how we actually display the health, and there at least needs to be a larger and simpler readout on the character that can be read from a third-person camera.

Coding - Golem Model and Animation Setups - John Howard

Task

Import the low poly golem model and set it up to work with the AI scripts.

Stage One - Golem Model

Importing in the Golem was the easiest part our animator had already attached the rig to the model so when it came into unity it was all set up. The only element I had to change was to make the rig humanoid. I think in future custom rigs would be better specially for creatures however this was one of the first rigs our animator had done and it works really well.

Stage Two - Animation and Animator

Bringing in all the animations so I has access to them seemed like the logical first step. I had to change all the import settings to act on a human rig again and the import for movement animations to looping. I then had to create a custom blend tree. I used my original iteration of the ethan AI to work this out. However we didn't have as many animations as needed to create a smooth movement. I shall ask the animator of the group to create some shorter or even stationary turns. But the blend tree works really well for the first animated setup! In regard to the actual animator setup all I did was make the movement into the entry state and then the same bools from the the cube AI with a combat state which had no movement and the two attacks coming off that.

Stage Three - NavMeshAgent to Animation

The next step was to get the golem AI to use the animations in the level. To do this I have to try and take values from the nav and feed them into the animator. I have two floats currently within the animator which control the movement blend tree. Turn which is the x value, and Forward which is the z. I was really struggling with how to set this up. So with the tecaher's assistance we went with  making each float equal to nav.velocity.x/z. Now whilst this works its rather buggy the AI spasms out quite a lot due to this and even has trouble stopping so I will have to research more into this and come back and develop a script just for this nav to animator conversion.

Environmental Assets Pt.2 - Matt Glen (Concept Art)

Continued on from an earlier post, here are some further asset designs to fit into our game level.

Crystal

At least one of the rooms should contain a mystical glowing gem stone. Below are some ideas about what that could look like.

The concept on the right is a more standard crystal type of structure, which is fairly recognisable from the off. The left hand image is somewhat different, but not particularly clear. Someone remarked to me that it looks like a squid. This is not ideal. One piece of advice about creating concepts I hear often is to ensure that a design is easily understood within a matter of seconds, and so it seems to be a good rule of thumb to avoid going with an image that does not achieve this. The right-hand crystal is more obvious and works off of previous design shorthand visible in other games to tell the player exactly what the object is. The idea of it floating and glowing should also draw the players attention to it as a usable item pretty immediately as well.

Sarcophagus

Another object that should work well in the environment is a sort of small tomb that could act to divide up certain larger areas and add interest to the scene. In my first sketches, I decided to make this a fairly simple shape for the modelers, so that it could be quickly made and implemented, and potentially be made into multiple variants quite easily. I also included a human figure atop the sarcophagus, however, somewhat echoing the forms of ancient Egyptian coffins and making them more imposing and foreboding.

However, almost immediately after completing these drawings, I realised that in order to sculpt a decent human figure for the tombs, the 3D artists would need to spend an inordinate amount of time working on this small set piece, which completely defeated my original intention for the asset. I quickly began another drawing without the human figure, and also added a bit of damage and plant growth to replace the interest.

This should hopefully look quite good once it's in game, and provide a bit of cover-like scenery to the level.

Roots

One idea for the cathedral-like Crystal Room is to have a series of tangled roots dangling down from a shaft in the ceiling. Modelling these should be fairly straight forward, as they are only there for visual purposes and don't need to be amazingly detailed. 

Three twisted roots like this should look fairly effective and set the mood pretty well. While only a simple illustration, it should be enough detail for a simple model to be put together to drop in with a basic texture. Hopefully for only a small amount of work this should look quite good when in the game.

Golem Movement - Jack Schular Animation/VFX

These are the final Golem movements given to the AI coder. The golem was being driven by a nav mesh agent so would have to take root motion into account unlike the character animations. I wanted the Golem to move mainly through the power of his arms. I focused heavily on the animations of the shoulders and making them move with shifts in weight. The run was the most challenging animation to make. I attempted to model it off of a Gorillas run where the left side meets the ground before the right side.