Hugo'studio

January 05, 2012

Maya tools I wrote in 2011

Thursday, January 05, 2012 No comments

For our makers, we decide to develop our own plugin for every 3D software, so that makers can make assets easily. I start from Maya.

There are five tools in this set. Pre-verification tool, Chain renaming tool, Joint cleaning tool, Skin weighting tool, and Symmetry modeling tool.

This tool is the key of this plugin. It helps makers to check all kinds of rules of making wemo art assets, including static models, rigged models, and animations. It also provides the quick export settings for FBX. Makers can check everything by their own and export FBX files with correct settings. Also, the tool can check the assets in different phases. In this way, makers can avoid some mistakes. (like re-rigging, or re-skinning.)

This tool is going to help makers to name their rig, meshes, and materials to follow our naming rules. This tool can do the auto tree renaming with correct suffix which match our rules. Here is the demo movie. Try to watch in HD and full screen.

Joint cleaning tool is the tool to help maker to build and clean their rig. The function of the tool is simple but important to a rig. The mirror joint function here is different from the one in Maya. It will delete one side of joints and mirror joints from another side.

This tool is meant to help maker to skin their fishes in quicker way. In the list, we provide the weight table of our template models. If a maker make an asset from our template, he can easily use this tool to copy the skin weight from the template without importing it into the scene, Also I have the internal tool to export skin weight files. The tool basically will find the closet vertex from the template to assign the skin weight to the current vertex in the mesh. We assume that makers are using the same rig with the template. However, we still offer the function of editing joint mapping.

The tool is modified from my previous modeling tool. It helps makers to do symmetric models. Also, it provides other functions to fix symmetric models. For example: in order to fix the center border, makers can use the border align tool. Also, while making a longer fish, it is always hard to select the half body. For that, I provide the selection tool to select the half body in easy way.

Great models I did in 2011 (theBlu project)

Thursday, December 01, 2011 1 comment

Ya, if you go to http://theblu.com and request a beta invitation, you are going to see lots of my work.
In fact, building aqua lives is really interesting and also a good practicing method to be a good 3D artist.
Here are some works that I like better.

Spotted Eagle Ray wip

Thursday, August 25, 2011 1 comment

Tutorial: The process of creating a new fish from a template using ZB and Maya

Tuesday, July 12, 2011 No comments

Hello Makers,
If you are already a senior artist, please skip this tutorial. This tutorial is for students and entry-level artists as Wemo makers.

Author: Hugo Shih, Digital Artist in Wemomedia

First, to be a Wemo maker
get the template from our maker site. I choose to make Blue-ringed Angel fish

Although, there's a photo on our maker site for you to image what the fish look like, just remember: it is not for your model reference.
Try to find enough reference photos for you to see all details of the fish, and find a photo as your main guide to build this fish.

Here is my main photo.

Second, the new model
modify your model LOD0 in the template to fit this fish.
For this fish, the biggest difference between Queen Angel (template) is dorsal and anal fins. (really easy, huh!)
So, just to manipulate those fins in the template to mimic the new fish.
For me, I just delete some polys from the template and extrude some new polys.

After modifying your polys, don't forget to modify you UV map.

As you can see, I didn't modify anything from body. That implies that I can utilize some texture from template (Queen Angel).
In this case, I'm going to use the normal map of Queen Angel's body.
Also, I can utilize the specular map from Queen Angel to be the mask map to draw scales on the new fish.
Remember, to save your UV space, just unwrap the half of your fish and overlap the other half.

Third, prepare to go to ZBrush
If you are ready and sure about your LOD0, you have to make another version of your model for ZBrush.
There are two things you need to modify in this model.
1, For the entire model, delete half of it.
2, For fins, you need to add edge loops on your borders of those fins. And press "3" to see the smooth results. If the result is really similar to your non-smooth model, it is ready to export as obj file to ZBrush.

extra edge loops on fins and on the border of the half body

Beside the model, we need some guide maps to help us to draw diffuse maps in ZBrush.

For me, I did a color guide map and scale mask map. The color guide map is a tweek from my main photo reference. The scale mask map is a tweek from the specular map from Queen Angel.

Notice that, we do not encourage directly using photos as the diffuse map, but we encourage you to use those photos wisely.

Forth, the normal map
As I mentioned before, I would like to use the old normal map from Queen Angel.
However, we still need to draw our new normal map for fins. It's easy to draw that in ZB.
(I'll skip how to generate normal map in ZB here)
The tip is which brush should I use? For me, I use slash 3 in Zadd mode plus lazy-mouse

The final normal map

Fifth, draw diffuse map

This part would be pain in the ass if you stick with photoshop and you UV map. However, it would be a pleasure, if you go with ZBrush.

1. import your color guide map and turn it into polypaint in ZBrush.

When you draw diffuse color, remember to use flat color material.

Note: when you import your model into ZB, remember to flip your UV map vertically

2. Follow the color guide and mesh while using polypaint tool to paint whole fish body.

Ignore the scale when painting. After finish all color, import your scale mask map onto the fish, and apply the function: mask by intensity. It will auto apply the mask from your texture map. Then you can paint the scale onto the body and fit the normal map. After that finish painting fins to connect the body well.

Note: you should draw fish eyes on the body (because LOD2 doesn't have eyeballs.)

3. Export the map, and fix some inconsistent color (because of smoothed UV layout) in Photoshop.

Final diffuse map

Sixth, drawing specular map

For spec map, here's only one thing I want to say:

you can have colors in specular maps. Our shader supports colorful specular on models.

For this case, those blue rings are really shiny, so I draw them as light blue in my spec map.

final spec map

And don't forget check all maps in Maya. Please turn on the high quality rendering to see your normal map and the specular map.

The End.

Wip of a Sardine fish

Sunday, July 03, 2011 2 comments

using: Maya and ZB

Modeling Tip Sharing

Monday, April 11, 2011 2 comments

As a junior modeler, I always had hard time when I don't have enough reference pictures (up, side, front view)

This time, I only found this up reference picture as image plane. But I also found several photos as reference.

So, I decide to use a lazy way to make a well-topology model.

First, from the image plane, I build a base model for sea turtle.

And export the model into ZBrush to do a quick 3D sketch

Using polypaint tool to do the topology plan

then re-topology the model

Now, I have a well-topology model, but I need to unwrap it.

Also, I use a lazy way to unwrap it.

After exporting back to Maya, I extract the model into arms, legs, heads, mouth, body and tail.

After export the model back to ZBrush, I use the UV master to unwrap the model.

In a second, I got the great UV layout (of course I need to adjust the layout in Maya)

My poly tool set in Maya feature preview

Friday, April 08, 2011 No comments

I finished the prototype of mirror tool
Although it's easy, lots of people did it before.
Also, when you had hard time to select the half of the mesh (cause there are too many polygons)
However, before mirror instance, my tool will reset the scale pivot to make sure the mirror result is correct (without huge gap)

Also, when you had hard time to select the half of the mesh (cause there are too many polygons)
My edge to poly tool can help you easily select that.(you don't have to unwrap first)

Thus, you can easily mirror complicate models, and fix mirrored models