Revisiting Bear Textures
After some feedback, we were advised to add a bit more texture to our bear creature to enhance it's realistic yet stylised qualities. Therefore Emily and I made a mood board of what material we want to implement on our bear. We really liked the look of felt/ fine fuzz which is commonly seen in stop motion. We also looked at examples of stylised furry characters in live actions films (such as Winnie the Pooh) since we are doing the same thing.
3D Environment
As part of our montage section, there is a scene where the friends are playing around with a VR head set and then it cuts to a POV shot in the VR world. Although this scene was not 100% necessary, we just wanted an excuse to advance our skills in modelling, texturing and learning how to use Unreal Engine 5.
Pool Float Model
I have a scene where the bear jumps into the pool with a floatie around his waist. I first modelled the pool ring in Maya and made sure it fit around the bear properly. Then I took it to Zbrush to sculp the wrinkles that would appear along the seamline. Since the finished Zbrush sculpt was very high poly, I knew it would be a pain to render with my bear animation - especially since I will be rendering a water simulation too. Therefore I tried to do something new and learn how to create displacement maps from a high-poly model in Zbrush and apply that to a low-poly model to optimise render time. However when I first tried to export out the displacement maps and it didn't work, I quickly realised that it was because I forgot to unwrap my model before sculpting. after much trial and error with how I could keep the sculpt I just completed while trying to get UVs, my lecturer highlighted that you can UV unwrap in Zbrush and showed me the process. Finally, I was able to re-export the displacement map and successfully apply it to my low poly model in Maya.
This was an incredible useful learning experience because it gives me new knowledge on how to create highly detailed yet optimised 3d models and will continue to apply this method to my other assets if relevant.
Initial model in Maya:
Zbrush sculpt:
Displacement map applied to low pol model in Maya:
Textured Model in Scene:
I also tried to see if adding some transparency would create an interesting effect but it didn't quite look right.
Comments