3D Concept of Good Wolf

I have read a while ago about this new approach artists are using for creating beautiful .. 3D Concepts. It involves making anything from making a quick 3D maquet to resolved 3d models and bringing them later to photoshop to push the visual idea there. This is my first attempt, the 3D concept of Good wolf.

I was trying to blend the the character in the scene seamlessly. I also used a more dynamic angle, so it made the task more interesting. Perhaps there is some conflict between the very defined 3D model of the wolf and very stylistic and relatively loose environment.

 

I’m hoping to do something similar for the Evil Wolf as well and then finally my family will arrive and it will be time for Christmas :]

Character Presentation Video

Here is compiled character presentation. I chose to show characters in contrast to each other: how obviously different they are in modeling , texturing approaches, and how the time-lapsed animations also embody that difference. To solve some funny perception issues (they looked like about to sniff each other) I have posed the characters slightly differently and increased the distance between them, Hopefully that does it. As for soundtrack, I Used Dave Keefe's earlier soundscape tests.

Jumping and trotting

Here is another video of refined evil wolf run cycle. I've referenced oxes this time too so to add the heavyness in the run cycle. Also, for the good wolf I'm working on jump and flying animation

Good Wolf's Walkcycle Test 1

This is today's first attempt in animating the basic quadruped walk cycle. It is not stylized to suit the character type, I focused on basics first.. .which actually were/are quite hard to get . I have followed Williams' Animator's Survival Kit.



7 hours of animating and I have a pain filled walkcycle. At the moment it looks like the wolf is walking rather in pain. :D But it really helps as a starting point to spot the problems and areas of focus. All in all, this 1 minute long animation is a luxury to focus on quality instead of the quantity, which was the case in 4 minute long Ivan the Bird animation. I find that after this exercise I’m in a much better position for the future attempts. For example, there is way too much action in the upper spine (neck area). Also, there are some problems, which I guess are coming from the rig: legs twitch at times.

Also, as I was animating other problems became evident and I attempted to fix them, such as skinning problems, or shape deformations in legs particularly ( I now have created an overall blend shape sitting on top of all the other ones, so that geometry could be easily altered from scene to scene if needed )

So… 6 seconds of arguably crappy animation, but it doesn’t feel like a loss today. And hopefully during this week's time there will be those better animations.

Good Wolf Textured

 

The good wolf’s texturing was challenging in so, that all of his beauty comes from the painted surface texture ( whereas the evil wolf was already quite “textured” with loads of varying shapes) It took a fair while to solve it. Soft painterly shading gradually reaches a defined patterns around the front area.

Again, for his texture resolution I used the standard colour pass and added ambient occlusion bake and bump passes. A note for bump: I tried to reach a snow qualities of his fur. A simple noise worked rather nicely. I believe now the texture doesn’t look like pottery painting.

 

Also, last time I haven't showcased the evil wolf's texture layout:

Week's development: Rigging and Texturing

This week main focus was to finish rigs for both of the characters. The soft modification in the good wolf required some fixing, because some parts were collapsing as he is doing general moves. This was solved creating pose deformers.A very useful technique as I found it and am glad we were taught how to use it in our maya classes .

 For the evil wolf , his shield-like structure was asking for a disparate type of movement for his parts. I have created a pre-set animation for all 4 of his legs, so as they move an illusion of the separate muscles moving is suggested.

 The other part of the focus now is the texturing. Here is the doll’s colour pass finished.

 

I also used ambient occlusion bake-in and settings to quickly shape the outlooks. This technique, used for the first time, seems thoroughly useful now.

 

 I have started some developments on the evil wolf’s texture. The tweaked mental ray shader already it has 60 percent of the desired looks, so I’m quite excited what can be done further when all the passes will be solved separately

Evil and Good Wolves Rigs

For the good wolf to work I've followed a fairly basic quadruped rigging. It looks to be enough for the type of animation in The Wolves Within, but few fixes with pose deformers wouls still be needed. Also still waitting are blend shape models for the facial animation.

For the Evil Wolf I followed the base quadruped rig too. However I am pretty sure to go and set-animate the parts and look into some addition of other rigging solutions for finessing of the working of evil wolf.

Scale Relationship and UVs for Evil Wolf

Before going into rigging I wanted to find the scale relationship between the two characters. Making them the same hight, somehow made the evil wolf seem less capable. However, he was already wider and longer than the good wolf. I believe the glowing aura could visually compensate the lack of good wolf's size. I found this scale least conflicting.

Also, and finally, I have the evil wolf's Uvs done. Took longer that expected. But then, he had ..10 times more of details than the previous one.

The Good Wolf's Model

The base mesh of the good wolf now is ready. The details of the body will be added in Z-brush and exported as either displacement map or normal map. But before doing this, I’ll model the bad wolf in the same way. So then I’ll have both of them ready for rigging and skinning . We’ll be able to play with them setting for animation, while working on detail maps (displacement, colour, and so on.)

II also add here the progression of modeling. Again, much like in drawing : block out first, detailing later, finessing last.

It required me to learn the anatomy and topology for quadrupeds, to prepare this model. But it then was quite a straight forward process. I’m quite excited the bad wolf is going to be  of totally different approach, looking forward to nailing it :]

Shape Translation Test

This is the base layout of the good wolf. For now it serves as a shape test, how drawn designs translate into maya. If after discussions all seem ok, I'll move to detailed modeling. Also, quite clearly, I'll have to research  geometry flow for quadrupeds as deformation in animation depends on it. Both, me and Leo estimated a week for each character's modeling ( texturing excluded ). We shall see how it goes.