Soma Yukihira - Finished Model

So I managed to finish this model by the end of the weekend. Fixing the issues from the last post didn't take too long, and it fixed all the distortion I had on the characters face too, which was handy, so it was all related. 

The model is complete, along with a little kitchen knife that will be involved in his future posing. The next stage is to rig and pose him, just like I still need to do with my previous Lord Beritra project!

Soma Yukihira - 3D Model. Character: 3872 Tris. Kitchen Knife: 190 Tris. A single Diffuse texture map each.

Soma Yukihira - 3D Model Wireframe.

Soma Yukihira Model Progression & Issues

I've been hard at work trying to finished this little project this weekend, and all was going well, at least in ZBrush. Here is my current progress. It is more or less finished, but there are some serious problems when it came to exporting the polypaint textures for Maya...

The green parts are parts that share UV space with their opposite counterpart, and thus do not require texturing. I coloured them green to make sure that I remembered this when it came to exporting, in attempt to avoid unwanted artefacts.

So here is an example of an issue that I've found all over the model when exporting the textures:

Apron Mesh as seen on the front of the Soma Yukihira model above.

On the left, you can see the direct result of going through the usual paces to export the polypaint as a texture map. On the right is the result that I expected, where the texture fills the entire UV space provided for the mesh. This annoyed the hell out of me when it was happening, but I soon found out why.

The following image shows 2 meshes. The left one is the one that I had worked on, The right one was the new mesh created to fix the problem.

Morph UVs button

Apron Mesh inside ZBrush with Morph UVs applied.

Using the 'Morph UVs' button in ZBrush, this clearly showed me that the original mesh had had its UVs smoothed while subdividing the mesh; something that surely no one would want to have happen...

Evil Smooth UVs!

The check-box that caused all this mess is here in the Geometry tab, called 'Suv', for 'Smooth UVs'. Is must be disabled when adding subdivisions to the mesh. Now I must go back through my model, creating a new mesh above each current mesh, subdivide it with this button unchecked, and then project the original detail to them. It has to be done this way, as simply updating the mesh will automatically subdivide again with this option still checked...

Soma Yakihira - Low Resolution Model

While I'm still finishing Lord Beritra, I have decided to start what I want to be another fast project. This time, I will create a low resolution model of 'Soma Yakihira' from the popular anime and manga, 'Food-Wars'. 

This project has a few goals that I wish to address:

• Low poly

• No normal maps or specular maps, all just hand-painted colour on a single texture

• Easily animatable (such low-res that it skins easily and moves well)

• Possibly paint directly to texture map in ZBrush, instead of Polypainting?

This is the progress so far. The hands are not yet sewn onto the arms and the shoes have not yet been fully modelled. The arms also need some work while I try to get them in the right position. His face has no detail; all the facial features will be drawn on in the texture, with the idea that it could be animated using a sequence of 2D frames. Also of course parts of his model are not made at all here either, which is the next step of progress.