Torran Rodgers, BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester

  Major Creature 9 Turnaround The final rig for this creature is simple and minimal as I know what I needed the rig for, because of this the process was simple and didn't take very long.

  Major Creature 9 UV and Textures. For this creature I didn't bring the retopo mesh into zbrush to generate a normal map, instead I just the used substance to create the textures with simple patterns. becasue of the fog and distance this will not appear to relevant to the film

  Major Creature 9 Rigging Rigging was simple with few bones I had few controls and I had no need for FK or IK's because of this is was as simple as attaching bones to nurbs circles.

  Major Creature 9 Skinning Skinning the creature took some time but I didn't have to restart the skinning at all because of a reduced amount of bones and simpler shapes.

  Major Creature 9 Modelling / Redesign The redesign was done to make the characters silhouettes look more solid and human, this will create a good effect in the film and add to the characters presence. Overall the process is simple and similar to the last 3 creatures making it easy and creates a result I'm happy with.

  Major Perceived Creature 9 Pipeline Moving into the last creature I know that we will only see the top half because of this character, because of this I will only really need to make have half rig. Because of this the process should be easy and follow the same steps as the last character.

  Major Creature 5 Walk Cycle Creature 5 Reflection:  Animating this creature can get quite complicate, however I am gaining confidence with animating quadrupeds. Overall I feel I have learnt a lot from the previous 2 creatures and because of this I avoided many road bumps along the way, and the process of making this creature went well and was an enjoyable revelation of the refined pipeline.

  Major Creature 5 Texturing I enjoyed the process of texturing this creature adding muscle lines and definition in Zbrush creates a great sense of thin skin that is loaded with distress after passes within substance painter. I am happy with the look, however i might tone down the design later if it needs to fit the animation.

  Major Creature 5 Turn Around Finishing this rig marked a good point within my project, having all 3 main creatures finished really has helped motivate me to push on through the project. after seeing outcome I am pleased with, I look forward to finishing my animation.

  Major Creature 5 Hair Dynamics I used bonus tools to create the spines on the back of the creature each one had to be put in and have its setting adjusted individually, as such it took a long time but the results are great to see. Spine Test One Spine Test Two

  Major Creature 5 UV UV's are simple when the creature has a simple silhouette and can be broken into pieces easily.

  Major Creature 5 Rigging There where a lot of bones and controls needed to give the spines on the creature the dynamics they needed because of this the layers system was essential in keeping the visual clutter down and allowed me to create the rig for the creature over all.

  Major Creature 5 Extra Modelling This Creature has a lot of extra geometry so I felt it important to spend the time and get it right, the teeth and spines add alot to the threat this creature gives of and as such its important to make it feel aggressive and interesting to look at.

  Major Creature 5 Retopo / Modelling Modelling and retopo when slow but the result was guaranteed, because of this I was more conformable spending time  of it because I was in control of the outcome. Over letting zbrush generate strange topology in areas.

  Major  Perceived  Creature 5 pipeline Taking what I've learnt forward into the creation of Creature 5 I will discuss issues with the steps I've struggled with. From this I have gained a better understanding of what went wrong and what went well within the pipe line of the previous creatures pipeline.  1. Zbrush sculpt - Focusing on a form sculpt and not spending time on details as i will have to redo these sculpts later. 2. Import into Maya 3. Maya Retopology - This time by hand the whole time focusing on edge loops around joints of articulation. 4. UV 5. Rigging and Skinning 6. High normal on Zbrush 7. Texturing This is a more refined process after learning a lot of smaller techniques through the creation of the other creatures.

  Major Creature 4 Walk Cycle Creature 4 reflection: Creature 4 caused me a lot of problems due to its design when I came to skinning, the thick thigh's and high joints meant a lot of deformation but now I see the creature animated it was all worth it. its controls and mesh look and work well and I can see the potential to have good animations made this the rig. Many of the efforts I took to speed up the process of making this creature didn't help and instead caused problems, mainly the lower topology out of Zbrush and then the process of skinning the creature overall. I have found the part of MAYA I am least comfortable with and as such i will been to learn to be better doing it.

  Major Creature 3 Walk Cycle and Reflection Creature 3 Reflection: Creature 3 being the first creature I had fully finished in this project, was a coming together of ideas and goals for myself as well as this project. setting myself the goal of a fulling rigged model was one thing, personally I found it a greater challenge to create quadruped creature using Zbrush and its own methods and work flows to mimic the process of creating these character. I became aware of may of the problems as I proceeded through he pipeline i had set out. many of the problems where self inflicted through no knowledge of the effects they would have later on, however because of this I am more knowledgeable. Overall I really like how the creature looks. On the other hand its design doesn't allow for a whole lot of movement around the legs. But I can see how standing the creature taller may reduce some of the problems I had while animating the walk cycle. Quadruped are strange in how they move but I thing ...

  Major creature 4 Turn Around

  Major Creature 4 Texturing The texturing process is one I enjoy and feel confident in because of this I was able to sit through the process in a few days and generate the outcome. I came back to these textures a few days later to darken the textures over all once I saw then in Arnold. I also increased the level of dirt in the textures as they looked to clean.

  Major Creature 4 Normals When I imported the FXB from MAYA into Zbrush may faces where not present resulting in patchy high poly sculpt. After a few days of problem solving i found these where ngons that caused the software to not load them in. because of this I had to re mesh the model then reskin it to the bones, this is less painful than it sounds as i was able to export my weights for skinning which saved me from reskinning from the start. I Used Zbrush's own normal generator due to discrepancies with he high and low poly models, doing it this way gave me all the pro's of the system I just needed the setting to be right in zbrush before I imported it the substance.

  Major Creature 4 UV UVing is a simple process it just takes time, luckily because I'm using substance painter I don't feel it necessary to make the shells straight and mirrorable.

  Major Creature 4 Skinning I really struggled while skinning this creature, very often weights would move onto bones on the other side of the creature, this caused me to restart on 2 separate occasions. On top of this the thigh weighting was hard as it didn't have enough loops to deform on the body. As such there is some stretching in the area however it sound cause a problem as its out the way and makes some sense where it is.

  Major Creature 4 Rigging Adding the bones and the controls to this creature was a simple process a large amount where assigned to a side or another as such I could mirror them over and it made the process simple. I se up a simple Rig for the legs as they act using IK's with an extra bone separating them from the foot controlled by and ankle control.

  Major Creature 4 retopo / Modelling after exporting from Zbrush to MAYA I found myself deleting edge loops and smoothing the loops against a decimated version of the mesh to further lower the quad count of the mesh, This will make skinning and rigging a smoother process and put more of the effort onto the maps for the creatures details.

  Major Creature 4 Perceived Pipeline After completing the rig for creature 3 I learnt a lot about potential hiccups and snags for the process as such i will list the new process. 1. sculpt in zbrush 2. export low poly with zremesh guides from zbrush 3. fix issues in export in MAYA 4. rig and skin the topology 5. UV 6. Import low poly to zbrush and use sub-div's to generate new hi poly details. 7. Texture using normal generated from high poly sculpt. Know how the generate the normal maps should save some time however i aim to save time with the retopology using Zbrushes zeremesher as a base.

  Major Creature 3 Turn Around With the rig finished a Turn around can see the creature from all angles and I am happy with this rig and the pipeline seemed to work. For the next creature I will asses where things took extra time and try to smooth out the process.

  Major Creature 3 Texturing Once I knew how to generate the Normal maps the rest of the texturing process was simple using group masks projection layers and generators using the normal map as an anchor point to generate micro details before exporting the textures and adding them into Arnold. 

  Major Creature 3 Texturing Normal Maps I found I was unable to reimport the mesh into Zbrush and project the details, because of this i had to redo a high topology sculpt re-adding all the detail to me mesh. I Exported the new high poly mesh as its own FBX file and using substance painters map generator, created UV's that went straight into the substance system.

  Major Creature 3 Model changes + UV Adding a detail Eye mesh with Iris over it Adding Flesh to the Neck spine to create the design. UV Layout Testing the UV Layout

  Major Creature 3 Skinning Skinning failed a few times while skinning this creature, its probably the most awkward part of the pipeline for me causing me to restart a few times. however now that its done I am able to pose my model.

  Major Creature 3 Rigging Adding the bones and controls for the creature was easy enough after deciding to use 4 IK limbs on the creature as its a quadruped. the extra part on the legs is controlled using an ankle control. this helps inform the IK that starts at the top of this extra bone and connects to either the hip or the scapular bone. The final rig with all the controls.

  Major Creature 3 Retopo / Modelling Overall the process of retopo when fairly easily but i still learned a lot from it. By breaking up the model into a few pieces the software wouldn't slow down making the process less painful. The make the Process easy I exported a decimated version of my model at around 150k polygons. I used this as a snapping point and drew the topology straight onto the original shape. I retopo'd half the model and mirrored it over. The Final model.