Joker Post Mortem pt. 2

I figure I would get the rest of my character texturing trials and tribulations out of the way so I can move onto new things and have a legitimate excuse to say Lando Calrissian. But that's for a different day. At this juncture, it's time not be serious and get my discussion pants on.



Last time I gesticulated about this project, it was about the challenges of pattern making for textures, and now I'm going to move onto something considerably more fun. Normal mapping. Now, I will be honest, learning how to normal map with no prior instruction whatsoever was challenging to say the least, but I feel that the results speak for themselves, shown by our Clown Prince of Crime's lovely face here:



Before the obvious is stated, the lips looking, funky, as it were, is due to inherent problems with the geometry, so we'll gloss over that bit. Now, after I approached the situation from several angles in terms of generating the normal maps, the best solution for me turned out to be making my high-poly mesh inside Mudbox, eporting it, and then importing both the high and low-poly meshes into xNormal and generating the normal maps in there. However, I ended up having to modify the maps inside Photoshop in order to make the maps smoother and to fix some issues with how Maya handles normal maps in general.

From the Desk of the Webmaster

Greetings, I am writing to tell about the strange eldritch magicks being woven by my roommate/webmaster/code monkey Derek. He is currently carving a strange path through the wilderness that is the Internet so that I may have a sanctuary to call my own. The address is www.dhwerks.com, though it is currently under construction, but should be finished very shortly.

Joker Post Mortem pt. 1

Greetings once again. I apologise for the late post, (I'm shooting for one a week in case I haven't mentioned that yet) but it is nearing finals and I'm racing to get projects done.

I will be discussing one in particular over the next few posts regarding my first character model. I will not, however, be discussing mesh topology as I am already well aware of the flaws in it, and it's been at least 6 months since I did it, so I can't remember my process all that well.

I'll talk about the challenges I faced in regards to the subsequent steps after the modeling stage, starting with a particular texturing issue: Pattern Making.

My hat goes off to graphic designers, fashion students, and web designers alike who are all far more capable than I in regards to this particular niche of art. This was easily the most mentally difficult part of this model due to the complexity of the patterns involved and my own inexperience at making tileable patterns. So, let's show some pictures, shall we?


This is the clearest reference available to me for the pattern on the Joker's shirt, and, as you can see, there isn't a full sample shown for when the pattern repeats. From my understanding of it, the pattern is very complex due to the inner details of the hexagons. So, after banging my head on the desk for some time, I managed to make a pattern for the shirt to fit on the model.



You'll no doubt notice the discrepancy between the patterns, but that would be me taking "artistic license", so ignore it. I'm fairly satisfied with the result otherwise. It was an experience, to be sure, as I ended up having to place all of my pattern samples by hand rather than having Photoshop put it in automatically for me.


This was also true for the tie as well. More on the project next week.