Normal Mapping

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This is my normal map I created for my alien, there is also a screenshot of how it shows in a render. I am happy with it but at the same time I have a long way to go in making a alien look realistic, on the bright side it makes a good character for a game especially with its low poly count.

UV maps

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To make the biggest use of a normal map I need a good UV map, also to make some realistic textures I need a good UV map too. It also reminded me of the technique as I had problems in the past and this time they were a lot easier to create. However I still had problems with the hands, also I need to learn how to connect body UV’s together so I get a seamless join in the textures on the model.

Facial Expressions and Blend shapes

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I have done a quick attempt at facial expressions I had some help from matt as he showed me the technique. This seems a very nice and fast method for animating faces and if the blends had some more time spent they could look very nice. This will solve the soft looking alien face I have.

Creating the Head

Again this is the first time really going into the details of creating eye sockets etc. I wanted to create some kind of nose to blow effects from but I just never liked any of the designs I did. The one problem I found with this head is that it looks too “nice” for a gladiator alien, it looks gentle because of the shape of the eyes and face. I need more angles and less round features. I will find a way to solve this hopefully when animating the face.

Testing Textures and Bumps in Mudbox

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In my game module I wasn’t able to use a normal map on my character as it had bad co-ordinates and was not centred. I wanted to try and make the most of a low poly model and I believed the normal map was the only way to make the alien look good while keeping renders low. These are early tests of moulding in mudbox and exporting the normal maps. Also some quick mudbox painting.

Creating the Alien in Maya

I am hoping for a quite model heavy render for this project. I want my alien to be well animated and as lifelike as possible. However I am still going to use a low poly rig around 1500polys and just add a normal map and displacement on the model. This is the majority of the standard maya wireframe model minus the head.