Week 1:

We imported the skeleton model and used the quick rig tool, that opens a window with multiple settings that we have to edit to add the rig onto the skeleton.The first step was to add the geometry and then use polygon soup to tell the software that the topology is somewhat scattered, this step also determines where the pivot points from the mesh should be added and places empties in the locations.Then, we proceed to change and adjust the locations of these empties to ensure they have been placed accurately. We use the mirror under the adjustments category to make sure that both of the pivots on the left and right have been properly placed before moving to the next step. Following this, the armature is created based on the empties we placed earlier. We change it to skeleton only since we do not need the control rig for this process. This armature doesn’t have any animation, meaning now is the time where we want to add the animation data from our other rig to the new Skeleton rig.  The first step we need to do is tell Maya which bones are which ones, basically linking the bones from one armature to the other.Then we tell which is the character’s armature; in this case, we have named it Skelly, and then we want to tell it to apply the animation data from the motion capture onto this rig. Thanks to the fact that we told the software earlier which bone corresponds to which, it is able to apply the keyframe information to the rig.

Week 2:

We started this new pipeline which consists of ZBrush, Substance Painter, and Maya. We first start blocking out the shape of the shoe, cutting certain sections and moving others around to add details. We then remesh the model and export the model and it’s UVs. We then add some materials and textures to the object in Substance Painter, this is just a showcase of how the pipeline would work so none of it is in too much detail, but in a normal project situation, we would go more in-depth on both the modelling and texturing.Finally, we bring the object into Maya and add the exported image textures onto an AiStandardSurface material, this can then be parented to a rig and animated.

Week 3:

This is another pipeline use case and it is similar to the Zbrush one, but in this case, we would use this for a hard surface model instead. We export the UVs so that we can get the model ready for Substance, where we add all of the textures. Then, we added all of the materials and textures we created in Substance Painter and set up the scene to render. Since we have multiple images, we can name each of them in the AOV Light Group section, and we can add these to the render passes. Once rendered, we have an .exr image with all of the lighting combined, but if we were to import it to Nuke, we would be able to split the light and control each light separately..
Here, I rendered each light separately in this case so that we can see each of the render passes of the AOV Light Group. This is beneficial because we can adjust the brightness and colour of each light without needing to re-render the whole scene.Week 4: Blendshape Workflow

Week 5:

One of the First Rigging Tests

The rig bones were placed incorrectly so the whole arms moved towards the chest, leaving only the forearms visible. There was a problem with the naming of the legs which made it hard for me to see which was which and caused them to not be properly rotated and placed.

After the next rigging test with the changes that were made it works almost perfectly, the only issue that now happened is that even though everything seems to be properly rotated the arms seem to be rotated the other way, hence they move on the back. This should be easy to change with another iteration of the rig.

Final Project:

Week 7

The initial step when sculpting a piece like an arm is to block out the bones that stand out and are always visible, these are the elbow, the two joint bones from the elbow, and the wrists.We continue to sculpt the main muscles like the bicep, brachialis, triceps, and so on. It’s important to not stay in one area for too long and to continue blocking out the whole arm before focusing on smaller details. At this point the triceps and all the extensor muscles have been blocked out and slowly we start to better define certain ones. In this case the arm is of a strong person so the muscles will continue to be better defined but for a person that has more fat and is weaker the key is to smooth the transitions between the arms. At this point the details have been blocked out and we continue to go through the whole arm tweaking certain sections.

Here is the final result and a video of the modelling process to better understand how it works.

Week 8 With the legs we do a pretty similar process as with the arms. Firstly, blocking out the bones to better understand where the muscles will be attached to, it is extremely important to place the knees in the correct location otherwise the legs will look weird and when rigged they might not bend at the knees. Here we continue the process of blocking out the main shapes of the quadriceps, the sartorius, gracilis, and any additional muscles that form part of the upper leg. In this section we block out the muscles present in the back of the leg, muscles such as the hamstrings and the calves. At this point we continue adding details and better defining each region of the leg going through the whole model multiple times to slowly build up the definition of the muscles.This is the final outcome of the leg sculpt with a video showcasing the whole process of modelling. Here we start to experiment with blend shapes and other use cases they have, in this case we have rigged the arm with a skinning rig. In this section we open the shape editor and add the blend shapes and the target.

Finally, we edit the mesh onto the target and this creates a blend shape that allows us to have control over how the bicep acts when the arm is moved. It can also help us fix sections such as the ones in the elbow.

This can then be animated as we can see in the video above.