Otreum

Another blog post for those interested.

Lately (about 2 weeks ago), I decided to got off my depressed arse and take a new direction in my games development work.

I had been doing alot of static non-organic meshes such as weapons, equipment props..and of course the Colosseum, but I realised that the only reason I was doing those things was that they were easy and I didn't really have to learn anything new...so basically I was being lazy.

I realized that it's time I start working on a proof of concept instead of dreaming about the concept in my environments with my weapons/props etc.

A major part of creating the proof of concept for my project is creating realistic human models.
So at first, in order to get my hype up about getting to work, I looked online at DIY motion capture, and stumbled across many videos of people using the Kinect or Playstation Eyecams coupled with some paid software in order to create some really nice professional looking animations at a hell of alot lower price than setting up a full blown mo-cap studio.

I figured that before I go out and spend money doing all that, I should actually learn to make some human models, so I spent hours upon hours looking online for guides on how to get started, what you need and so on, only to feel too tired and bored to bother working on anything, so I went to bed.

Next day I gave it another try, and so ended up at gnomon. I purchased 2 DVD's there worth about $60 each, and sadly found out that they really weren't tutorials, but more so just workflow videos.
I felt ripped off, but I think i've picked up a few things from them.

After that I tried to learn some Zbrush basics, so checked online for Zbrush tutorials, I found some tutorials which were the most recommended, and downloaded them. They were quite good but found a few conflicts with the tutorials which made it difficult to learn, but I at least picked up a few things from those tutorials in the one sitting.

After some time off researching due to depression, I am now back at it again.
So the other day I decided to work through a gnomon video to create my base humanoid mesh which would serve as my canvas in Zbrush. I finished a very rough mesh which wasn't as good as I wanted it, but good enough for me to doodle around in Zbrush.

I decided this morning to jump into Zbrush and instead of being paranoid of the possibility of wasting time on a crappy model, I learnt that it completely OK just to doodle around and get a feel for things, and that is exactly what I did.
I took my mesh, imported it to Zbrush, and got cracking on my very first human sculpt.
I went in with the attitude of "I don't care if this looks crap, i'm learning" and it was the right attitude to have, because I really didn't care if I messed up, I didn't care if it looked crap, I tried different things, and learnt different things, which was great.
Not only that but the end result looks great in my eyes compared to the garbage I had done a while back in my earliest attempts at human modelling from within Maya alone.

Below is a link to the images of what I did in a few hours during the day. I really only worked on the torso, arms and back, not so much the legs and head as I really hadn't memorized any muscles from those areas.

Moddb.com

Moddb.com

I see pretty much everything there that needs working on (the entire thing! :P), so critique is not necessary.
I am now about to take some time out to study the human anatomy in a book that I purchased today called Strength Training Anatomy, which at a glimpse looks fantastic for what I'm doing without having to spend a ridiculous amount of money on courses and high profile books.

I should also note that on the weekend I did paintball for the first time ever, it was fantastic!
I also decided to just chill out and relax with a few alcoholic beverages, which I think really helped clear my mind of negative thoughts, so I feel really good now, especially seeing the work I could do on a human sculpt at such a newbie level of skill and training in organic mesh modelling.
Now I cannot wait to get stuck into anatomical research and making myself some human 3d models to work with for motion capture :)