Year: 2017

To add final touches to my video, I decided to add some sound effects and a simple background track. To do so, I searched on Soundcloud through Creative Commons using terms such as ‘Ambient’ and genres with a more relaxed tone, as well as using FreeSound.org to get appropriate sound effects. I used Premier Pro to place the following items on top of my trailer.

Animation

The Footsteps:

 

Ambience:

 

Image 1

Ambience:

Image 2

Ambience:

 

 

 

 

Image 3

Ambience:

Backing Track:

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Sources:

– Soundcloud

– Freesound.org

During the texturing process of my project, I came across some struggles when deciding what textures and effects to use for my images. Although limiting, Substance Painter includes more than enough textures in its shelves, some that are versatile and can be used to create effects that it wasn’t initially created for. In some situations however, just simply adapting a preset to fit my model wasn’t enough, so I turned to the platform ‘Subastance Share’

What is Substance Share?

Substance Share is an online, free exchange platform for all Allgorithmic.com account holders. The website contains a library packed with content compatible with substance painter, all uploaded by the community, as well as Allgorithmic, and users can upload, download, rate and comment on other people creations. All assets uploaded to Substance Share are free of charge, and under the Creative Commons “Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International” license they are adaptable for any purpose, even commercially. (Allegorithmic, 2017).

Where did I use it?

When looking through assets on Substance Share, I found many useful items, but didn’t end up using them all. Because I am new to the software, I was unable to successfully upload certain assets, and others just simply weren’t as adaptable as I had hoped, causing me to scrap them and stick to the materials based on Substance Painter. Having said this, the following material found its way onto one of my final images.

 

In the future, I hoe to explore the world of substance sharer with more detail, and have the option to use some of the amazing content available.

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Sources:

– Allegorithmic. (2017). Substance Share. [online] Available at: https://www.allegorithmic.com/blog/substance-share [Accessed 15 Dec. 2017].

Following from rigging my character, I continued to use Sebastian Lague’s tutorial on Character Creation to create a walk cycle for my character to follow. Sebastian’s tutorial includes a step-by-step tutorial, putting the simple mechanisms of key framing and using the dope sheet into practice.

The first thing I tackled was animating the movement of my mesh in one spot. Once I had completed my mesh, armature and all, I set about creating key frames beginning with the 1st frame and ending with the 8th. I moved the armature to create the following poses.

Frame 1:

Frame 8:

 

After doing so, I duplicated and reversed frame 1, placing it at frame 16 using the shift+ctrl+V shortcut. I then changed the interpolation to constant to gain a static view of the poses at each keyframe, helping me to block out a more accurate animation. Now I needed to repeat the reverse duplication, but this time of frame 1 and frame 8. I decided against adding any more keyframes than the amount I already had per walk cycle, as the result I gained from this created a smooth and consistent animation. My model is a creature made of rock, so too much movement would break away from his reality. Once I was happy with the animation, all the was left to do now was create a path for the animation to follow.

Here was the result:

Creating a Path:

To create a path, I first opened an NLA Editor window and opened the animation for my Armature and set the repeat option under Playback Settings to a large enough number to cover the number of frames I wanted in my final animation. Adding a new path under the mesh option curve, I lengthened it to the desired size and parented the armature to the Path Constraint. I needed to alter the position of my model before moving along, so did so and made sure it was facing the direction of the path.

Under the constraints tab on the right-hand toolbar, I clicked on ‘Animate path’ and ticked ‘Follow curve’, which caused my model to walk along the path I had created.

I then moved on to composting this animation onto my final image. Find a time-lapse in the post I dedicated to my final animation.

On deciding to texture paint my model in Substance painter, I now needed to prepare the model to be imported into the software. To do so, I needed to UV unwrap and export the model as a .obj file.

Because I had never used Substance Painter to texture paint such a complex model, I consulted my tutor and asked him what the quickest and most efficient way to go about it would be. I had looked at tutorials in order to try and work out how to do it through my own primary research, however the tutorials I found focused on simpler meshes and failed to help me much. Here are some examples of the tutorials I originally relied on.

My Experiments:

After struggling for a few days, I had a meeting with my tutor who created the following walkthrough. In the walkthrough, I was able to see first hand how to export appropriately. My tutor showed me how to do so with one part of my model so that I could apply it to the rest. Because I was present, I could ask questions about things I had experienced in my previous experiment. The following footage is of this meeting.

UV Unwrapping my Model:

After this tutorial, I proceeded to apply what I had learnt to the rest of my model Originally, I did so to each individual part of my model. After doing so, I imported them into Substance painter, baked the textures and went to work designing how I wanted them to look. Here is the outcome of this part of my development:

As I began texture painting, I started to question whether doing every separate part of my model individually was necessary. Before I went any further, I went back to my model and exported the pose with each individual part of the model joined together, making one large mesh. I then UV unwrapped the model as this and took to texture painting it. The result satisfactory, so I proceeded to export each pose as one mesh before importing them into Substance Painter.

For the model I wanted to animate, I exported the pose as below ready for texture painting.