Evaluation of Project Two

I'll begin with the things I really did enjoy during this project. ZBrush, this program has really opened my eyes  to the world of 3D modelling, prior to this project I really didn't enjoy other 3D programs like Maya or 3DS Max. I preferred to use my tablet to do digital paintings and I saw myself getting into concept art further in life. ZBrush has really changed my outlook on that, it really is the best of both worlds to me, the functionality of a 3D package, with the flexibility of something else such as Photoshop, and the fact that it really is like painting in a 3D environment makes it so much more fun to me as I get to utilise my digital tablet, and not be bound by a mouse.
Furthermore, the fundamental skills and knowledge I had to acquire to really make use of ZBrush was hugely insightful, I had never really looked into anatomy or anything to do with the body or face in a 3D View, since I've never really worked in 3D properly. I really enjoyed learning about all of this, and I enjoyed seeing the results pay off even more.
I can really see myself using this program in the future a lot more, I'd like to start a few of my personal projects and really get stuck in!

The physical sculpt, was what I didn't enjoy, I didn't enjoy it much during the last project, although it was something new for me back then, now it really just felt like a chore for me personally. I think the biggest thing that really put me off doing the physical sculpt was the material I had to use, I've already mentioned how much I dislike green stuff, and having to do it again was just painful. On the plus side, the sculpture we had to do was significantly bigger so I could really see and focus on parts of the face that I couldn't do, during the last project.

If I were to re-do this project over again, I think I'd get the physical sculpture out of the way (using a different material preferably) first and then begin with my digital work. This is because I tend to spend much more time on things I enjoy doing, so if I were to do my physical work first, I'd have much more time to do it instead of getting so caught up in ZBrush and digital work in general. They're a few things on my digital sculpt that I've mentioned I'd like editing but all in all I'm happy with it, just not particularly proud of it. Some of the facial features like lips and eyes don't look as organic as I'd like them to look, and the hair which I struggled with so much didn't end up as I hoped, although it was better than nothing. As fore mentioned, a new design of my character also would have been beneficial because my character was just plain and boring at the start and for that to be my base I felt limited to the amount of changes I could actually do to it.

Finito!

With all the parts put together I found I was as completed as I could be for this character. I could add a lot of detail to it and I'm not too proud of what the end product was but I believe that it matches my original character designs quite well and for that I'm happy.

If I had to redesign this in the future, the first thing I would do is completely re-haul the initial designs by adding a lot of detail in the armour, and maybe a helmet or mask. Just something else on the head, since it looks rather plain compared to the torso.

The hair, oh the hair...

I didn't think I'd ever run into so many problems doing the hair, this was by far the toughest part of my sculpt for me. I tried many techniques that didn't work out too well.

First I tried masking where the hair is and then extracting, to proceed to just sculpt the hair, but it didn't look realistic at all and just looked like somebody dumped food onto his head.

I tried putting a sphere into his head and then dragging the move tool to block in where the hair is, I ran into some problems concerning topology and so scrapped that technique too.

Finally I came across the most simple technique which works really well for my hair. I just worked on top of the head, but on a new layer, using the rake brush on a big brush size and then smaller sizes to get some detail. Damien Standard also was used to just separate different flocks of hair.

This is what I eventually got to.

Get some clothes on!

I couldn't keep my character naked so it's time to put some gear on him!

I started by masking a big part of his torso and then extracting it, then just smoothing things out so it doesn't look like it's skin tight, which it obviously isn't as I mentioned I wanted a carbon body armour piece.

I started masking in my patterns, but I found I couldn't achieve a straight line let alone a curve that wasn't bent all over. So I turned lazy mouse on which just really made masking the details in so much easier for me. They're other ways of doing this such as using curves, but I found this simple and effective.

I then just inverted the mask as you can see from the images on top, and then used the flatten brush to just push in the detail slightly. I added the shoulder piece to it too and repeated the same steps of getting the pattern. Mask, invert, and flatten. As you can see from the image below, I also filled the object with the metallic texture.

Starting my digital sculpt.

After understanding the program a lot more and using it constantly just to get the hang of it, things that took me a few hours to do previously took me 10 or so minutes now. 

A good example of this are the images below. This was the start-point of my sculpt, and it only took an hour or less. I got the hang of the tools and became familiar with really basic anatomy.

This is the back view of the sculpt, you can see that I emphasised on blocking in the trapezius and shoulder muscles, this is because as my designs show, I bulked up my character quite a bit.

This is the front view of the sculpt, I was pretty happy with my face all in all as there wasn't anything that really annoyed me or I didn't like. You can see from the front the trapezius on the back clearly reflects on the front. I also wanted to show certain bones and muscles quite clearly. I focused a lot on the clavicle, chest and neck muscles.

This is the profile view of the sculpt. This view is really helpful at just generally looking at if things are in right proportion and you can get a good idea if the silhouette is one similar to an actual human. In this case I think everything was done decently, except for the shoulder, you can see on the front it looks fine, but on the profile view it is way too small.

Understanding ZBrush

When I first used ZBrush I was blown away at all the features it had, I simply had no idea of what anything did. As I studied it further I started to learn the basics of it, and even though they're basics, they're still hugely important.

Here are just a few of the brushes I find to be essential.

So when I start a model on Zbrush, this brush is so powerful, I use this towards the start just to get the right silhouette of the model and also a few basic anatomical marks such as the zygomatic bone and the jaw.

These two are the next step for me personally, I use these two brushes to block in forms and planes, cheekbones, the brow, chin and so on. I just messily block in forms and then use shift to smooth things out and blend them into the face more naturally.

Dam Standard is such a good brush for cutting in forms, areas like inbetween your lips, eyelids, and generally just sharp pinches or cuts. I haven't found a limit of the uses for this brush yet.

Getting stuck in there

As mentioned in my previous blog post I had already dabbled around with ZBrush, this made it a lot easier for me to get my head around some of the tools I need to complete my finished sculpture.
But I wasn't convinced I had enough skill or knowledge that I would please me enough for the end product. This led me to do several practice models just so that I can work comfortably instead of googling each problem I encounter when I do the final sculpt.

Before starting the actual model work we were told to form a moodboard, and as dull as this was I later realised how useful reference and idea generation can be.

As you can see from my sketches, I've taken a lot of inspiration and ideas from these. Both the sword images were helpful, the top left one for the actual blade, and the bottom one for the handle, which again was   futuristic and something I liked a lot. The body armour on the right was important because of the actual material used and how it looks, how the curves look like and how it's shaped. My shoulder pad was majorly inspired from the image on the bottom left, I really liked how it sat on top of the torso but also looked like it fits in perfectly.

Furthermore, a good orthographic will be hugely beneficial to a 3D sculpt since it covers all views and you can get a good feel for proportion, so I did this quick orthographic in photoshop using a tablet.

Here are a few examples of my earlier work:

As you can see these models weren't up to standard, not even close, in fact it's rather embarrassing looking at these sculpts now. The first two on the left were my first go at sculpting my character design, and I didn't really have any idea of what I was doing, I knew what I had to do I just didn't know what tools did what and how to achieve what I had visualised. The ones on the right and the bottom left were an improvement but still not quite what I was looking for.

One thing struck me, in each of my practice sculpts, the anatomy was completely off. So I went ahead and started to understand and learn the facial anatomy. I started to watch as many videos as I could of Ryan Kingslien. He was a former developer at pixologic, so obviously understood the program, but what I enjoyed most about his videos is how in depth he gets about anatomy, certain terms that I had never heard before started to become common terminology for me.

This was the outcome of studying facial anatomy, even though I wasn't great at using the program, the knowledge of anatomy was so helpful, this sculpt could actually pass as a human!

Adjusting.. to the Apocalypse.

So, back in the summer holidays when we were asked to do a character design, I had no idea what would become of this design, so I really was forced to make decisions and changes with my character to better adjust it in the world it's living in, which of course, is that post-apocalyptic scenario.
I had to consider extremely important factors which would change my character design, things like survival, originally my character looked harmless, and he didn't belong in that world at all. He'd probably be killed on sight without a fighting chance. That meant one thing, 'manning' up my character.
This involved changing clothing and body build. If my character was a fighter, he'd need clothing appropriate to fight in, and take hits in, but also he'd have to be strong enough to do more than a scratch on whoever he may fight.

These were my original sketches and ideas.

This was my original orthographic for my character, as you can see he is only wearing a t-shirt and trousers, with a strap for his sword. He is rather thin, and doesn't look like he can handle himself at all. 

This was a later design of my character posing. As you can see I've added more utility to his clothing such as several pockets and a belt too. It's also apparent that he's bulked up a bit. I thought this was important if he was going to survive in a post-apocalyptic world at all. I hadn't changed the sword but I feel as though the sword was fitting in fine to the earlier designs but as this character becomes more menacing and powerful, the idea of him wielding an 'elegant' sword is becoming slightly more and more out of place.

These ideas led me to re-sketch my character design.

Finally this is what I got up to, you might notice at first glance that he looks a lot more sinister and perhaps evil. This was intended, so that he becomes a more feared character. I completed changed his torso so instead of a t-shirt, even though it is following the same silhouette, it isn't the same material at all. I was thinking it may be carbon body armour. The second thing I've changed on the torso, is the strange patterns all over it, I thought this might add a bit of an ancient feel to it. Even though this is the future, the apocalypse should surely knock back the humans generations a little, that savagery, It was inspired by ancient hieroglyphs and ancient Mayan patterns and tablets. He is also a lot more bulky, even more so than the previous design. As I mentioned before, about the sword, I've slightly changed it to match his attire, so that it'll actually blend in. It looks a lot darker now and the handle is much more mechanical than before, because this is still the future.   

Introducing...

In our previous project we had to make rules and mechanics for a board game, and the actual phsyical board game with mini-sculptures. Each of us had our own character.
In this new project we have to make a ZBrush version of that character, a physical sculpt made out of clay and of course record all the processes that I went through, throughout the project.

Prior to the project I had already researched and watched a few tutorials on ZBrush so I could easily settle in without getting my head around the basics of the program, along with the hotkeys and some of the essential tools required to make a humanoid sculpt.

I've never used clay to sculpt, in fact, prior to the previous project I had never sculpted before at all, so this is all new to me, and this is the part in the project I am most nervous about. Although since I've done a little research on anatomy in general I think this will give me a slight advantage when it comes to sculpting the clay - as well as the digital version of it.

The end of the road.

Here are some of the pictures of when they level one students were playtesting our game!

An effective hitpoint tracker.

This was discussed as a group several times, and several ideas came up with these discussions. How would we keep track of hitpoints without the need of a calculator or other tools? To make it simple for the player and not something they need to worry about.
The first step to solve that was simple - remove numbers! We instead would use something else, again this brought up another series of discussions. What would we use?
We thought of pins that you could stick in a foam/cork-like material, or sliders perhaps.
After all these discussions we ended up on hearts. And even further, to split these hearts in half so that things were easily to calculate, it wouldn't be 20-3.5 etc, instead just simply taking out half hearts, which would be clearly indicated by the ability cards.
Now the next problem, how would we present these? Would they be flimsy paper hearts that players could accidently rip, by just taking hearts out when they lose hitpoints, would we use a container for them?
Luckily one of our members Dan had an idea that we could use Velcro, and even luckier, he had some at home!
They were circular Velcro pieces, we stuck on a whole heart to each circle, then cut around the hearts and split them in two.
This worked great, it was so simple and effective the players never had to think twice about how many hitpoints they had left or how many they gained.

The Board

We wanted a simple grid for our board game, with a simple yet nice looking design underneath the grid.
I did this in photoshop as a 50x50cm document. Unfortunately we could only print in A3, so I had to crop four separate A3 sized documents, so that they could be printed out and then stuck onto the foam board by Daniel. I had to make sure it was seamingless and you couldn't tell that it was 4 separate pieces but only 1, so I had to make sure the dimensions were perfect.
This is how our board looked in the end, with our logo towards the bottom right.

The Cards

I was designated to make the ability cards for our board game, so I basically had to pick one template that we would use for a total of 24 cards.
Originally I was going to make the template, and my group member Conor was going to draw in a brief visual explanation of the ability using a tablet. We tried this and we found it harder and it didn't work as well. We wanted them to be simple as we had to do 24 of them and wouldn't have time to make masterpieces for each of them.
So we decided that we would print and mount all the cards, and then Conor would draw on them using pencil, and then finally in pen.
This is an example of how a few of our cards looked like.

The Sculpture.

Each member of the group had to produce a sculpture that is a replica of the designs that they had previously made for the summer-project.
We had to use something called Green Stuff, a form of epoxy putty.
The first step was building the 'skeleton' so to say, out of wire, so that the putty would stay in place and we could build forms easier. This was done by bending and twisting wires and sticking it into a cork.
Next we had to build the legs/torso.
I had no experience in sculpting before so I found this probably the hardest part of the project as a whole. Hopefully I'll improve if we have any future projects that involve sculpting.
Building the torso and legs was the easiest part, by just putting putty on piece by piece and molding the basic shape of a torso. Then things got a little complicated as we had to do the head and arms.
I started the head on a toothpick, started by pinching in the nose and then using tools to mold in the rest of the face.

The one-hit wonder!

So, we really wanted to incorporate some RNG into our game, and it would be best with the big ultimate cards that each character had.

I'll be explaining one of the cards specifically, which was from my character - Assassinate.
Originally it did x amount of damage, with a chance to inflict a cripple, this for an ultimately was extremely mundane and boring. We really wanted a risk element in our game, so we tried to achieve this, and Assassinate was our first test.

Firstly we changed it so it would do no fixed damage at all. Instead you nominate a number out of 6-sided dice, and the opponent you use this ability on has to nominate a number too. If you get that 1/6 chance and get your number - you instantly kill the opponent, and if they get the nominated number they chose, they again roll the dice to decide how many hearts you lose, which is up to 6 (which is 60% of your life - alot!).
Lastly if the dice rolled on the 4/6 numbers both of you didn't pick - nothing would happen. But without a penalty and the ability to use this constantly to gamble lives, especially with a chance you can survive if the opponent rolls a 1 for example, we had to balance this out so it wasn't rendered 'overpowered'. We made this ability a 'once-in-the-game' card, so it really was a risk card and you don't just charge out and try to use it as soon as possible, which is something we wanted to get rid of as explained in my last post.

We changed other ultimates too so that they too would have a similar RNG experience, although not as risky and noteworthy as Assassinate.

A change-up in mechanics

So originally we had planned to have two separate specialisations for each player/character, which would be, the attack class, either melee, or ranged, and then a utility specialisation, for skills that wouldn't be solely based on the damage done and how efficient it is to inflict that damage. It was more of a semi-support role.
After playing the game in its very early stages we decided that the utility specialisation was rendered completely useless, all four of us played the attack roles and that made the game rather boring too, as it was just, get to the opponent, and hit, hit and hit.
This led us to the decision of instead of having two separate specialisations, the 3 skills that each character had could be mix and matched, much like a form of talent trees. This meant that a player could have 2 utility spells, and one attack, or vice-versa, this gave the game a lot more strategy in itself because there would be more variety in the abilities used and it wouldn't just be a case of running forward and hitting the opponent for the remainder of the game.
We felt this was essential and I think this works perfectly with our game, giving a lot more stability and more of a fun-factor.

Progressing my character

Initially when I created my character, I had no idea that one, we had to make a board game using this character, so my character wasn't exactly built to fight, and two, that we had to sculpt this character, and again, my character would be too plain if it was to be sculpted the way it was originally.

This was my original character design.

So to better suit the conditions of the project I had to make essential changes to my character. One important factor was that he had no gear, so I decided to give him a sword strap that wraps around his torso diagonally.
Then even further I wanted to bulk him up so that he actually looked capable of putting up a fight rather than being a flimsy guy with a sword.

Establishing rules and mechanics.

So with four members in our group, we decided that our game would be a 2v2 strategy game. The aim would be to eliminate the opposing team.
My character is the slender-assassin type, so naturally it would be a melee dps. Same with Conor's character.
Jacks character had a shotgun, and Daniels character had a crossbow, this worked out perfectly because both teams would have a melee and a ranged dps.

We started to elaborate on the skills we would have for each character and decided as balanced as the game would be with the teams with one of each spec. we would further need a additional speciality to make the game have an actual element of skill and strategy rather than the all out battle it would be with all four characters being damage dealers.
So we added a utility speciality to each of the characters. This speciality would include abilities that had a 'utility' as the name suggests, with much less damage dealt. This included things like cripples and blinds.

 There would need to be a skill that could be used on every single turn, this would be the basic attack, or the basic utility/disable spell. We also needed more abilities that would be more powerful, and because they're more powerful they would need to be limited. We decided that they would have round-based cooldowns to act as that limit for the abilities. They're four turns in one round. The second ability would have a 3 round cooldown which amounts to 12 turns, and the third ability would have a 5 round cooldown which would amount to 20 turns in total.

The third ability would be the 'ultimate' skill and we want it to be used strategically rather than using it straight away so it comes off cooldown ready for the next 5 rounds. We thought of adding a RNG element to the third skills, so there would be a set amount of damage and then an additional effect thats based on a dice roll or some other randomiser.

We did want some kind of 'one-shot' ability that would have an extremely low chance, and have something bad happen to you if you do not get that chance, but we didn't use that in the end.

Randomisers

Randomisers are a essential part of certain games, the ability to have a input with a certain amount of outcomes, with that outcome being completely random.

Opposed to randomisers they're things that are uncertain - but not random, a prime example of this is Chess, nothing in Chess is random, it's all calculated, but your opponents moves are what makes this game uncertain.

We were asked to bring in a randomiser and conduct certain experiments to gain statistics for them.

I brought in a 6-Sided Dice and in a group we rolled it 100 times. 

The results were as follows:

1- 19%

2- 18%

3- 15%

4- 18%

5- 16%

6- 14%

As you can see the results were completely random, but since it is a 1/6 chance for each of the dice numbers it still remains somewhat even.
To add another element to this we incorporated the 'hit chance' mechanic and using our randomisers we had to figure out how to use them for this mechanic.

We decided that if you roll both dice , and it is a odd number you would miss, and even, hit. Furthmore we went even more advanced and thought about what would happen if you increase or decrease the hit chance, for example, if there was a 75% chance to hit you would have to hit anything over 3, or anything under 9.

As a group we started to think ahead and about the game we would be making, and how certain classes would respond to different hit chances, we wanted to incorporate a modern day combat triangle, meaning the warrior, mage and archer system. Certain classes would be stronger against other certain classes, and likewise, weaker against certain classes, this could be reflected in the percent of hit chance. Another mechanic we thought would be fun is if you hit double of a number on both dice, for example two 2's, you would crit, which would result in 100% more damage, therefore 8 damage. We also had to keep in mind a rough idea how our level would look and how it would interact with the classes, for example, archers can't exactly hit at melee range, just like melee wouldn't be able to hit at a range.
The list of mechanics that we could incorporate are endless, examples are:

• Weapons, to increase hit chance or increase armour
• 'Pick up a card' squares on the level that would include things like, natural events, that could aid or make things harder for the team, buffs that would last a certain amount of moves to increase hit, armour, critical chance, etc.
• Allowing classes to only move a specific way, and hit a specific way too, much like the chess mechanic.