My design ideas

   This year Ming and I joined in a team working with game students. They had a clear division of work before we joined in, but most of them were programmer so I though our design might give them some help. I had showed my works which has done on summer holiday to them before joined in, then they asked me to design weapons for the game because most of my works were weapons.


   These weapons are not my design. I was learning a new way to modeling and making weapons would not take so much time, so I selected some picture on the internet and used the weapons on the picture as references to make these weapons.
   

   Because this hatchet was made on the computer which on my Chinese home and I forgot to save the texture files into my removable drive, so I could only put the white model into video.

   This hammer has no UV and I cannot render it, but its details are done by Zbrush.

   I was crazy about using Zbrush to draw details on models after making those weapons and I still has about a month to make other things . My friends told me I should make an ordinary person to understand skeletal and muscle of human first if I want to make richest characters. Then, I choose to make a Chinese old farmer. The reason why i choose him is his scars on his waist, I wanted to carve all kinds of details on Zbrush.I just referenced his shape and expression, the post was regulated by me. I though the time is not enough to make his whole body, so I just made his body without the four limbs like gypsum model of Venus. But it was not still finished until I back to school that there is not enough time to draw texture. Then I just made it like a plaster.

   However, I began to think I might be a bad idea and I can’t finish it with good efficacy after read the story line of the game. It is a game which uses future world as a background, then most of weapons in it are guns. To be honest, I has no knowledge of guns, I does not know how guns work and how to make a capital gun. But I though it might be a opportunity to let me learn something about guns then I continued. It was really a headache to me at the beginning. I collected a lot of pictures about guns even downloaded an app named “iGunPro” and see how others do. I found a course which is teaching how to draw a gun on http://www.yiihuu.com/v_3841.html and I tried to design my guns, but I couldn’t draw out the pictures in my thoughts. Then I just drew the shapes of them and make details by Maya. 

   This is a small game and it is not a first person shooting game, then it does not need gadgets. So, there are just shape of gadgets in these guns. In other words, they does not like gadgets if the guns were separated, such as nuts of these guns just were that cylindrical through the gun properly and then looked like a nut. Our team member told me that I don’t need to render these guns and they will render them after putting them into game system, so I just render two guns to show how they look like in my thoughts. These two are what I prefer.  I was considering there are also lots of  female players, then i choose two scenarios to render these guns. One was more masculine and the other was feminized. It is generally know that pink and red is womanly, but it will look like plastic material  if simple pink is used on weapon, so i choose dark red to texture. 

   I had understood how to render models by a plugin for Maya in last summer holiday, it was Vray. i found a n interesting thing when i was rendering this one. There is a option in the setting of Vray, it can put some HDRI pictures as an environment. I just wanted to change the colors of texture for this guns at first, but i found that it was too dark after render.  I begun to have my doubts, why it was darker than the other under the same light intensity? I tried to change the intensity of the lights, although it had indeed lighted up, it was not the result i want. Then, I tried to change the HDRI picture for environment under the same light intensity and it was change! It was lighted up even looked like it was made of other materials! It is amazing that learning new things during working.

After finish doing those guns and looking at Ming's monsters, i though maybe i should make my monster. According to the story of the game, monsters are animal hybrids and human hybrids. At first, i wanted to make a hybrid, a gorilla mix with a moth like this:

However, I found there would be some trouble when i was thinking about how it fly. If it had two bodies( body of gorilla and moth) that would be very strange when it was flying. And, it was obviously not appropriate that the head of gorilla is a head of moth. So, I changed my idea after some serious thought. I was going to make a hybrid, a gorilla mix with a sea lion, because the teeth of lions were horrible like a monster. For convenient, I used the human model in Zbrush to carve the body of gorilla, it wasn't still with head of gorilla. I was thinking something during doing its head. Will it look like when it has no low lip? Gorilla had such a huge belly, why don't i make something on its belly? Then, I decided to make a big mouth on its body and its upper lip like a hat with it, that would be look like a monster more. If there was just a huge mouth on its body, it would be also strange. So, I copied and pasted lots of teeth and put them onto its mouth. Naturally, for aesthetic, shape of those teeth were not the same, and there were several teeth were broken. Although coping and pasting sounded very easy, it was really complicated to make UV for about 100 teeth.

   I didn't make eyes for this monster, because the eyes of sea lions were very cute and they didn't accord with the image of monster. However, it existed in a future world with high technology. I would make some equipment for it, then it could see world by thermal vision, sensing out its enemies through infrared detection of the heat generated by them. I had done lots of research for it, such as how its mouth looked like, how its skin looked like, but i still didn't finish it. I was just make a shape and UV of it, I didn't draw skin texture, scratches and equipment. There were still lots of things i should do if i want to finish it.

 I'm such a guy who always like eating a bowl, watching the pot, thinking the ground it. I began to make another model. It's almost Halloween, pumpkins could be seen at the supermarket. Suddenly, I wanted to make a model using Halloween as the theme. I'm really interesting in magic world in the West, so I chose the witch as my character. There were two kinds of witches in my thoughts, black evil witch and kind witch. This time i wanted to make a kind witch. In fairy-tales, witches always wear black hats and black cloaks, and they ride on broomsticks. My witch was most same as them, but her hat and cloak were not black. I also used the human model in Zbrush and used body of an old woman as reference to carve her body, then I selected some witches as reference to make her clothes. As the theme was  Halloween, I make some pumpkins as accessories. After finish doing the details of character, I should export it to make UV for it. Because the models which is made by Zbrush had no valid faces, so i needed to retopology it. I should recommend a software at this time, 3D coat. 3D coat is really useful for 3D modeling. It can retopology models and modify texture after drawing texture by photoshop. After making UV, I exported UV maps by Zbrush, then i could used a low poly rendering out high-quality pictures.