ESCAPE - The Jungle River - Alex
Hello Everyone.
The scene I have come up with involves a female protagonist hanging off a cliff in a jungle. She was rafting through a river deep in the heart of the jungle when she suddenly came to a large waterfall and a long, deadly drop. Moments before the wooden raft went off the edge she was able to jump up and grab a vine from an overhanging tree. The vine gave under her weight and she began to fall off the cliff. Thankfully the vine pulled taut and she was able to hold on. Hanging over what is sure to be a deadly drop she began to climb.
The main thing I want to focus on for this challenge is using the first-person perspective to tell the story. Seeing the story through the characters eyes is a unique approach that I think (if pulled off well) could really make strong piece. I will focus on creating two renders from this perspective. The first will be of the character looking up at the waterfall and cliff. Her left hand will be visible holding onto the vine. The second will be what she sees when she looks down. You will be able to see her other arm (and maybe her body) and the jungle bellow.
The scene I have come up with involves a female protagonist hanging off a cliff in a jungle. She was rafting through a river deep in the heart of the jungle when she suddenly came to a large waterfall and a long, deadly drop. Moments before the wooden raft went off the edge she was able to jump up and grab a vine from an overhanging tree. The vine gave under her weight and she began to fall off the cliff. Thankfully the vine pulled taut and she was able to hold on. Hanging over what is sure to be a deadly drop she began to climb.
The main thing I want to focus on for this challenge is using the first-person perspective to tell the story. Seeing the story through the characters eyes is a unique approach that I think (if pulled off well) could really make strong piece. I will focus on creating two renders from this perspective. The first will be of the character looking up at the waterfall and cliff. Her left hand will be visible holding onto the vine. The second will be what she sees when she looks down. You will be able to see her other arm (and maybe her body) and the jungle bellow.
Replies
Subject: HANDS HANDS HANDS
I have gone through several iterations of what I want my hands to look like for this scene. I have never modeled something organic and realistic before so this was a very good learning experience for me. Now onto the images!
Attempt 1:
This is my first iteration of hands. From this perspective you can see some obvious flaws but overall it doesn't look half bad. However if you look at them from another perspective:
They look awful. Needless to say I decided to start again from scratch. The two biggest issues I wanted to correct were the fingers and the thumb-palm connection. The fingers I made were not rounded enough and the thumb joint was awkward and ugly.
Attempt 2:
Much better. I decided to try and make a boxy low-poly model that I could then import into mudbox to make look more realistic. Let's see the final results.
Not too bad. This was my first experience with mudbox and I really enjoyed using it. I am really happy with how the palm and the back of the hand look. The nails are pretty awful and after doing a couple I decided it was time to move on. In addition, the hand is supposed to be that of a 25 year old girl and I think I went a little overboard with the wrinkles and detail in mudbox. The thumb joinT is still awkward but the fingers looks a lot better. In my next attempted I tried a new approach in the hope that it would make my thumb look better.
Attempt 3:
Now that's what I'm talking about. I am really proud with how this turned out. The low-poly geometry is neat and it looks pretty good. In addition, I decided to do the nails of the hand before exporting to mudbox. Here is what they look like:
The UVs in that area are a little awkward now. I am still trying to get the map perfect but I decided to take a break from that to do a little work in mudbox. Here is my high-poly :
The webbing between the hand and thumb is still not perfect but I am pretty happy with it. I am going to try and tweak the webbing a bit before baking the normal and spec map onto my low poly. But besides that I think I am finally done with my hands and ready to move on to some non-organic scenery.
Cheers!
Alex R. Hogue