a new idea!

It was brought to my attention that I need to model something really cool. It is a sword called "Stormbringer" from the Elric series of books. Elric of Melniboné is the last emporer of Melniboné. His sword is said to steal the souls of the things it kills. Here are some concepts I've found on the web of the sword. All pictures came from www.stormbringer.net.

Character Complete

Well, these 10 weeks have flown by. The character is 100% complete. This whole process was fun. I cant wait to get started on the next character. Next time around I'm going to get the model much more complete before progressing on everything else. The unwrap process was somewhat easy but I'd love to get into zbrush for some detail work next time. Texturing was fun but I need to perfect the painting shadows and lights of different materials. Overall, this was a great learning experience and I cannot wait to create something new.

Some Character Renders

Here are some renders of the character. I've got a few more small tweaks to do but a final composite picture will be up here next week and maybe some movies of the character.

Character Texture - Complete!

Eye Texture

Specular Map

Normal Map

Diffuse Map


After a ton of time spent on the texturing part...my character is textured. I used a few different methods to get everything the way I wanted. I tried crazy bumping but it didn't come out as I had pictured, so I decided to mess with the settings and paint on my normal map. Painting on the normal map came out with pretty decent results but if I had my choice, I would have used zbrush to create a higher poly model for the normal map. Overall, the whole texturing process has been a bit harder than I expected. Modeling is just so much easier for me then unwrapping and texture painting.

Character Unwrap and Texturing

The next part of the process is completed. For those that don't know, this part of the process is where we get ready to paint the texture of the skin, clothes, hair, etc. So we have to "unwrap" the character to pretty much flatten it out so its easier to paint on. The character unwrap was not as bad as I expected. Getting the verts together and welding them was a bit tedius but overall it was a fairly painless process. I'm now currently working on the texturing process. Texturing is not my forte but the better it turns out the better the character will look. More pictures will be up soon.

Final Model

It appears that my model is almost complete. I have one small things to do before I can begin the unwrapping process. I have to make some better cuts for the armpits for them to animate better. I threw a biped into the model and tested the rotation of the arm/shoulder and its not there yet. After that is done, I've gotta start next part of the project, which is unwrapping then texturing (maybe normal mapping) then skinning/rigging the character, then finally animating the character. The last three weeks are going to be pretty difficult but the finished product should be worth it.

Dark Elf Progress

This week in class we've been working on getting a Biped setup with a model and getting it rigged and working correctly. I've taken an animation class before so this task was not too difficult. Also, with any free time I've been working on my Dark elf model. At this point I am almost done, just with the face and head remaining. The face is the single hardest part for me in the modeling process. I'm going to go with the "plane" method and go with that this time. Here's an update on the model so far. I think the most difficult parts of this project will be unwrapping, and animating this guy. Hopefully I'll be able to get through it with a piece of art!

Female Model

This week we're focused on the female body. We have the awesome task to model a female. I'm really struggling with this assignment compared to the male. Things are different on a female than on a male! What a shock! Doing things like attaching the breasts, and even the butt of the model is giving me some trouble. They are there but they don't look right. There are much more triangles than there were on the male model especially around the butt and chest areas. I'm going to continue working on this model over the weekend to try to make it look more...female.

Model sheet - Drow Warlock

This is the model sheet I will be using for the creation of my Drow Warlock. Kraig drew it for me at the cost of a lunch (THANK YOU!). I think it turned out very well. I've picked the hard way for modeling this character. Apparently modeling robes and long hair is difficult, but I'm going to try my hardest to get it done in time. The due date for the model of the character is week seven, so I've got about 3 weeks to get it done well.

Week 4, working on faces

This week we're working on faces, and a different way than box modeling also. This method involves planes and dragging them out one by one. This method so far has produced better results than the box modeling method I tried before. The only snags that I've run into so far was that my model's normals were flipped, so with some help it got fixed. I like this method alot better. I want to Meshsmooth so bad, but im restraining from it for the sake of the assignment. All I have to do now is a little touch ups.

Final male model

This is the full male model...minus the head/face action. The final poly count is 1,136. I cannot wait to find a face method that I like. Not a big fan of box modeling faces so far. I like the way how the body turned out.

Work in progress

This week our focus is to design a male body. We've been given the character sheets so all we have to do is model. After a few hours my model is turning out okay so far. I ran into a little trouble modeling this guys butt, but I eventually figured it out. Modeling hands turned out a lot easier than I expected. Everything starts out from a simple object like a box and just grows from it. Disregard the head...that is not completed yet. I've got a few tweaks that need to be done in the next few days. Check it out.

Character Ideas

This week we have the task to find or create some artwork for the character that we want to model. I choose a Dark Elf Warlock type character to model. Ideally he would be tall and skinny, long white hair, with a robe and staff. After doing a little research, I'm not sure if I want to go with a robe or some cool spiky leather armor. Either option would be great if I manage to pull it off! Check out some of my reference pictures for my current ideas. These pictures were definitely NOT done by me and are off the internet.

Cave made with UDK

These are some screen shots from my last terms class Game Production III. We were allowed to use UDK as our engine for the project. This cave was one of my first experiences with UDK and I think it went well. The level design was all me but the assets in the level were created by my teammate Jersey. Comments welcome!

Introductions and Ideas

Hello everyone. 1ST!!!! HA I always wanted to say that…now that I got that out of my system we can continue. My name is Phil Whitman and I am a student at the International Academy of Design and Technology for Game Design. I've been here for three years now and I'm somewhat close to graduation. I LOVE video games...everything about it. I play many genre's including FPS, MMORPG's, RPG's, Action, Adventure, Strategy, platformer, RTS, indie, etc. Along with being a student, I am a manager at a pizza place around where I live. I also recently just completed my internship at a multi-platform interactive design company in Michigan called Vectorform. My title there was Associate Game Producer and it was an amazing experience. The people at Vectorform are a great bunch and should receive some props! Everyone should do an internship at some point in their lives, you learn so much.

This is the first post to my awesometastic blog! This is a place where I’ll be posting school related things…like ideas, concerns, problems, concepts, drawings (no matter how bad), and renders/screenshots from my work. I welcome comments on any of the posts made here. This term I am in Modeling III which is character modeling focused, Business concepts and Team Project I which use different blogs which I will link to this one later on.

I am required to post a simple update on my workflow, milestones, problems, planning and implementation, and evaluations for the next ten weeks, but I will probably throw some cool stuff in here to spice it up a bit. Since this is week one out of ten the content will not be as fruitful as it will be later on this term. I assure you that this blog will get interesting, many problems come up especially with the topic of Character Modeling. Working with characters is not my strong suit, I would much rather work with any game engine or model assets/levels, BUT everyone must learn the basics of everything.

This week we are required choose an idea for our character based on the guide we were given. We have to pick a character based in DnD or the Forgotten Realms world. This gives us a huge HUGE opportunity to make something awesome, from Dwarves to Orcs. Almost anything is possible with this project. The first thing I thought of when we got our assignments was Drizzt. I am currently reading the R.A. Salvatore “Drizzt” series of books and I’m totally fascinated with the Drow(dark elf) society. If I happened to model Drizzt, I feel like I would be putting his name to shame with my horrid character modeling skills. Instead, I choose to do a drow male warlock. A fiend of a dark elf that practices dark magic that wears a robe and wields normally a staff, or a dagger with an orb in the other hand.

I wish we had enough time to model every single race and class combination within the Forgotten Realms. Fantasy is one of my favorite genres out there. Stay tuned to this blog to see some…lets say interesting work that hopefully turns into something good!

-Axsor (Phil W)