creature and character

After binding the clothing to the bones and copying the weight paint from the body, I had to make some adjustments to the hat as the ears were distorting it. I also found that the tail was being distorted no matter how I added the weight paint. A good way to refine the weight paint for me was to pose the character and then go in and smooth or add the weights as needed. I could also copy the weights over onto the clothing again where needed.

I was having trouble getting the pole vector to work on the arms and legs due to their positioning, I used this video to resolve the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxM4GawKwjQ

I found the rigging process was a lot to take in so I made notes that I would be able to refer back to. This helped me process the recorded lecture and allowed me to double check shortcuts without rewatching or finding a specific place in the video.

I used a paint layer and used the polygon fill tool set to UV fill to make sure the colours didn’t bleed over into other objects. I created a mask on this layer to make sure anything I added didn’t go outside the lines. I also noticed that I can copy the masks which was useful if a component needed more than one layer.

I was getting a lot of problems with my bake, the edges of my topology was showing and I was getting artifacts of darker splotches around the ends of the clothing.

This is because I was making mistakes in my settings. Instead of having it match to the names of my assets such as matching _low with _high it was using any. The other problem was I was using the wrong resolution, which I fixed by turning it to 2040. I also tried turning anti aliasing up to 16 however this didn’t make a noticeable difference. I found the thing causing the main problem of the edges of the topology was because I didn’t shade smooth in Maya before exporting my low poly version.

The mesh after making corrections:

To get rid of the splotch artifact on the shirt, I opened the low and high poly meshes together in substance painter, and used the move brush ad the inflate brush to match them more closely together.

The only other artifact I have on the bake in on the trousers around the tail, however I think it is ok to move on as the dark texture will conceal it.

Looking back, I think it would have been better to duplicate my high poly asset in Zbrush before remeshing it, so I can compare it with the low poly version and make sure it matches at an earlier stage, rather than having to go back and forth. I also should have established the flow of topology I wanted in Zbrush before Zremeshing the clothing. This may have prevented some distortion and would have made the assets much easier to UV map.

I had a process for making each piece of the clothing. For the shirt, sleeve and trousers, I extracted it from the base mesh and used the cloth brushes to move it around. For the top hat, I appended a cylinder and modeled it to bend/fold over itself, I then added another cylinder for the rim and combined them with Dynamesh. I then extracted the band and Dynameshed it together again. For the belt I extracted the main band, then added the bullets by making my own custom IMM brush. I then extracted the section over the bullets and belt to make it look like its all attached together. I then added details and textures to the high poly mesh, and used Zremesher to make the low poly versions of the clothing which i took into Maya.

I unwrapped the clothing on a separate texture square.

I used the square texture to see where my UV was being distorted. the snout was being distorted so I had to add more cuts. I managed to use 70 percent of the UV square however if I was more sparing with the cuts it could have been higher.

I think a lot could have gone better with my retopology process. If I were to do it again, I’d start by making loops around everything and keeping the quads very large, so I could go back in and add loop cuts once I had already got all the 5 point vertices in good positions. This way I would also have more control over the flow of the topology and what areas had more detail. I would have also been able to spot and correct errors earlier on. To do the tail, I added a cylinder and extruded it along a curve, then joined it with my quad draw mesh as doing it in quad draw made it twist in unpredictable and messy ways. I would also follow my references much more closely as I was overcomplicating it for myself by trying to invent new ways of modelling the body parts.