UNIT Trooper development.

OK after a days delay in putting up my character development due to me going on a rescue mission with Chuck Norris to save thousands of stranded people in the Ice and snow I am now going to give you a step by step guide to how I made my UNIT soldier.

OK First of all I started off as you all should have seen in my lesson how I modelled the body. by initially creating the front and side planes of the blueprints I drew of the character. Then from here I chose a starting point to begin modelling.

As you can see in this image I began with the flack jacket, creating a plane and then manipulating the points to line up with the blueprint.



Now as you can see in the screen grab I am having trouble getting the displayed image on the blueprint to show at the correct resolution. If anyone can work out how to fix this I will give them a prize.

OK so following on from this I continued to use edge copy and vertex manipulation to shape the torso and the flak jacket. Like this. So the front half was pretty much blocked out.



To get the back I just mirrored the front section then used soft selection to move the verteces into place. I also cut lots of unwanted edgeloops out as I shaped it.

Here are both the front and back sections complete with the collar section built in too.



Next, using the vertical version of the arm I then started blocking the bicep out with a cylinder. I basically positioned the cylinder at the top creating the first loop of the upper arm then again using edge copy just began extruding the edges down to form the folds and shape of the sleeve. Once I got down to the elbow pad I jsut carried on extruding but didnt build the actual hard shell of the pad from this. I added that by using a sphere and shaping it to match the design.

I didnt add too much detail in the forearm section as I was going to let the normal map take most of the detail. He has a Hard forearm guard with indents and this is better achieved with a normal.



OK. from here I decided to start modelling the head as I had to get the head modelling into the lessons for the students so it was a perfect spot to get this in.

So, using my ugly mug as a guide I took some images front and side to use as my blueprint and again set things up in max on two planes.



Then again finding a good starting point I creted a plane and began shaping and edge copying to start forming the head shape.



I usually start from the forehead and work out and down from there but I know alot of artists like to use the eye as a starting point. I guess its all in your own choice of where you want to start but either way you will get to the end somehow.



As you can see here I managed to get a good shape with the head and in the rendered image I was quite shuffed that it really did look like me. GOD HOW UGLY. To get a more natural look. Once I had mirrored the right side I used soft selection to offset the left eye and tweak some of the shapes. This created a more realistic and natural look as my head is so unsymetrical.



Once I was happy with the final head I merged it into my body scene and positioned it in correctly.

I then continued with the legs. This again was done similar to the arms by using and cylinder to start from and then edge copy down to form the folds and shapes of the legs.

Once I got down to the knees I mirrored over the shape I had to see if it was OK. I was going to have to totally rebuild one section as the legs werent symetrical. One side had a holster and the other a pack. So once I was happy with one side it would get tweaked after I flipped it over.





Then Finally once happy I mirrored everything over tweaked the bits I needed to get it asymetrical and Bobs your uncle and Kev's your aunt and he was done.

He still needs a few pouches and ammo packs on his Torso and belt but thats him pretty much done.



Also note in the image that the polygon count on the selected polygons are only 3619. So with a Polycount of 10,000 I have lots of room to play with if I wanted to add more detail but that can come later if needed.

So the next big job is going to be Unwrapping the UVW so I can get a UV layout and create a texture for him. I will be showin the students how to do this when they come back from their Xmas break but for now I hope they just get stuck in and experiment.

Well I hope this has been helpful. If you have any questions please dont hesitate to comment and I will see if I can answer.

This will probably be my last post till after Xmas so make sure you have a great time and get lotys of goodies and I will see you all in the new year.

Big hugs.

Dean :D

PS. He's watching so be good.

Environment work.

Sorry for not updating for a while but I have been heavily involved with the students and their level designs. I used that time to have a play with Unreal 3 and see what the possibilities would be like to create a fully working level but it just wasnt going to work. I would have had to spend alot of time on this part of the process so I have decided to take what I have learned from the level design element and keep that as something I can use for my lessons but probably not included it into my degrees finished work.

Sontaran Textures.

To get the cahracter in correctly this is wat the layout needs to be set out like.

If the rules are met then your cahracters should go into game correctly.

Here are the complete set of textures needed for the cahracter to work.

Getting it right.

This time I was particulary careful when it came to naming body parts, textures and everything else I could think of that had gone wrong with the Cyberman.

Initially I ploughted ahead with the character putting it into the game seeing similar problems as happened with the Cybermen. I posted on the forums looking for answers and was then passed on to a modeller called Discmage. He had created the difinitive document in importing characters into Unreal 3.

His very helpful PDF can be found here. www.neomagination.com/tutorials/


Following this by the letter I managed to get my Sontaran in game with no problems.

Sontaran trooper development.

This was created with hand made blueprints like the Cyberman, pieced together from various photo references and then completed with the aid of using an action figure to get a better sense of shape and depth.

This character actually came in quite below the polygon limit I have set but that isnt too much of a problem as a character under budget is very welcome when you are a programmer tryting to squeeze every little mega byte out of a games engine.

Importing the Cyberman into Unreal 3.

Over the last week I have tried to get the Cyberman working in Unreal. I did alot of research into this using the Unreal forums. There are alot of tutorials on this subject some very good some not so much. Some of the tutorials do miss alot of important information out.

In the end I managed to get him in game. initially with a few skinning problems like verteces weightted to the wrong bones etc but eventually he went in game perfectly.
The only major problem I came accross was that while looking correct in the character selection screen, his textures were corrupted once playing in game.

So back to the forums I went and found that the Unreal 3 system requires certain body parts to be textured in very specific locations on the texture page. To fix this I would have had to totally redo the texture so I decided that as a learning experience I would take what I did wrong and then apply it correctly to the next one.

So onto the next character I went and that was the Sontaran trooper.

Renders of the finished Cyberman.

Just a few images to show the finished Cyberman.

Also a few test shots of how he developed too.

Cyberman Texturing Completed.

I completed the textures and am really happy with the results.

Once again created from a mixture of overlays, an occlusion pass and hand drawing textures I achieved a very convincing texture for these metal monsters.

Cybermen Unwrapped

The Cybermens Unwrap is complete and now ready to texture.

Cybermen and the Death Zone.

With the Cybermen modelled and unwrapped I am now in the process of unwrapping and preparing for texturing.


In regards to the environment. I have created a rough mock up of the area that I want to create including key features that will appear in the level. from this I can then did alot of research into level creation and my findings have brought me to the decision that creating a series of charcters and also a fully working level will be too much for this project so for my production I am going to just use the level design section as a learning experience that will be crucial to my teaching level creation to my students.

One Dalek, DONE! Environment started.

I am really happy and think he looks the part. Not sure if he actually does look exact to the series but I dont mind. The texture is meant to give him that battle worn look.



Here is the final Dalek with all textures and materials applied.

Now I will move onto the next Iconic character from the series. The CYBERMEN.

At the same time as workin on the characters I have also began work on the environment. For the environment I have decided to recreate the classic scene from the Five Doctors 25th anniversary episode. It is a barren landscape that is full of deadly encounters and obstacles for the Doctor. I want to capture some of those elements in the scene I make but expand upon what was seen in the episode.

Texturing the Dalek.

For a character to work and look as realistic as possible, each cahracter has to be made up of several types of texture map.

Diffuse - The colour map that gives the model its detail.

Specular - This is a map that gives each of the models surfaces either a matt or shinyness.

Normal - This is a special type of bump map that can make or break a model. The Normal map creates a virtual 3D effect on your model giving what would normally be a 2D image a much better sense of depth and detail.

Here are teh textures I created for the dalek. I used two of each of the texture types for the final model.

Dalek done and dusted.

It wasnt as easy as I had originally thought as some of the shapes arnt so straight forward after getting to study them.

With alot of work and hours I managed to get the Dalek to a shape that I feel comfortable with. As close to the blueprints as I could without going overbowrd on polygons. I feel so far he stands up quite well as a solid model.




Dalek is now modelled and unwrapped. ready for a texture.

Moving forward with modelling.

The next step for me is to now start to model these characters I have designed.

So I am going to initially start with the Daleks. Hopefully a nice geometric straightforward shape. I will be downloading the Dalek Blueprints from the Dalek building website. http://www.projectdalek.com/projectdalek/

This website has every version of the daleks in blueprint form. I am going to base mine on the New Series Daleks.

Onwards and upward.

More character designs.

Here are the final two armies concepts.

This time its the Sontarans and the human army UNIT.

More design work.

All the Concepts are now finished so I can really make a start on making the characters for the game.

Here are the first two armies characters that will appear in the game.

Cybermen and Daleks.