Alien Skin Binding

With the skeleton constrained to the controllers, I can now bind the rig to the skin of the alien.

This takes the nearest vertices on the model and connects them to the joints. Often times however it is not perfect. Certain joints will have influence in odd places and make the model look awkward. This is most prominent in the jaw, as the inside of the mouth is quite complex, the jaw controller simply stretches the face where we want it to open the mouth.

To fix these issues, I have to go in and paint the weights. This allows me select what areas of the mesh are affected by what joints. For the jaw i had to get rid of influence on the top and roof of the mouth to get it to open. I also had to paint weights on other limbs so that they moved in a clean fashion.

Alien Skeleton

Now that I have the model completed I can work on the rig of the Alien. This will allow the alien to move.

I first started with the legs; creating joint chains going along the shape of the leg and stopping at points that it will move. After that I created the spine, arms and head, joining them all up. I had to make sure the hierarchy of all these joints made sense so that limbs could move naturally.

After the skeleton was made I started building controllers for the alien. These would the manipulators that the animator would use to make the character move. I used NURB circles and curves to create simple shapes that represented each part that moved. I then colour coded the controllers so that right limbs were red and left limbs were blue.

After that, it was a case of constraining the joints to the controllers. IK handles were used for the legs, orient constraints were used for the spine, arms and head, and aim constraints were used for the eyes. By attaching these joints to controllers, I can just move the controller and the joint will move with it.

Storyboards

We have now finalized a storyboard for the cinematic and figured out some story elements. The girl is now called Tabitha and the robot is called ALBUS (Automated Lifting Bipedal Unit Solution). Surveillance bot is still called Surveillance bot.

To figure out the storyboard we all made a quick one ourselves. We eventually settled with Sophies storyboard. Alex, as part of his Manga Society, will be making a comic based on the storyboard.

Here is the storyboard that I created.

Alien Texture

I have now added the texture to the Alien. With the UV map it was pretty easy to add. Although it is difficult to add patterns to the back, as the back is located on the edges of the UV map. I will have to make sure to remember this when making textures in the future.

Surveillance bot

As Surveillance Bot will be appearing in the cinematic, I decided to do some more sketches.

UV problems

Unfortunately, I have hit quite a major problem with my model. I mirrored the alien and began preparations to create a UV map. However, when it came to unfolding the UV map out, it simply would refuse to work. I believe this is due to a poor topology, if I had begun with this in mind I believe I would not have a problem. Unfortunately, as I cannot pin down what the exact problem, I have to now use the pre-made model for future workshops. I will have to make sure to research a lot more into proper topologies so this issue doesn't repeat itself for the cinematic we are creating.

With the new model, UV mapping became a lot easier. First I made a planar map of the entire model from the front. I then cut the UV edges of the limbs and separated them out. Finally I unfolded the UV's out so I could then paint them with a texture.

Initial idea decided

After a moment of deciding, we have decided to go with Alex's idea of a steam punk setting with a girl finding and fixing a broken robot.

Right now we are still in the concept stage, developing the characters out and getting into the mindset of the setting. We have agreed to also put the 'Surveillance bot' from initial planning into the scene as we all enjoyed his design.

As we all want to work on different parts of the scene, we have decided to roughly split the work by characters. I will work with the 'Surveillance bot', Alex will work with the main robot and Sophie will work with the girl. I am sure we will also be splitting the work on other parts as well.

Better Topology and Arms

Since last time I had blocked out the alien, however I didn't take into consideration the topology of the alien.

I added more detail and more edge loops into the model, this will allow for better control when animating the alien. A clean and efficient topology is important for game characters as they will be the center of attention in most scenes.

I then proceeds to block out the arm of the alien. This took me a while as I couldn't get much information from the side image plane, however I eventually completed it.

New Team and Initial Ideas

For this module I have made a team with Alex and Sophie. Not only are they very talented and hardworking but I also teamed up with them in a previous module last year so I was confident that we could work well together. We then started on brainstorming some initial ideas for the game cinematic using the three subjects (Surveillance, Exchange, Stolen) that we were given.

We all had many ideas including mobster trade-offs, classic cops and robbers, kids stealing ice-cream, characters based on the zodiac, skeletons stealing bones, robots stalking people and so much more.

Alien Blocking out

To teach me the skills required to create the game cinematic I am first going to practice by creating a model of an Alien. To begin with I started with acquiring the turnaround images and setting their sizes up in Photoshop. I actually struggled a little while to do this as I do not own Photoshop but eventually I got two images: The Alien on its side and on its front.

I then set up a new Maya project and placed these images in the image planes. With these I could block out the alien much more efficiently and accurately.

I have only blocked out half of the alien. This is due to the alien being completely symmetrical. I can model only half of the alien and them mirror it at a later date. I will have to make sure that the topology of the alien makes sense so that I can have an easier time UV mapping and animating.