Day 6

Well today was a bit of a slow day, as I had to to a lot of boring, time consuming work, where I had to retopologize my models. For those of you who don't know what that soul consuming task it, I'll try to explain it but bear with me as it may take a while. Basically all things in 3D computer space are made from vertices, points in X,Y,Z space. These are then joined together by edges, which can then form faces, which is what the 3D object is made of. To then animate the model, it has to have good topology, so it can be deformed in the correct way when limbs or features move. Good topology generally consists of two things; one, is that the faces are all quads, so have for sides for better deformation, and two, is that they have good flow, so wrinkles and things go in the right direction. 

So on the left is the original model, which is just a grid generated by ZBrushes dynamesh, and on the right is the retopologize version, which I did in 3D coat. As you can see the right version has faces that follow the flow of the eyes, mouth and rest of the body, this means it will work better when it comes to skinning and rigging it. This is just a rough explanation and some exceptions, such as in games, but this might help to get the jist of it. Anyway so I spent much of the day just drawing quadrangles onto the models, with varying results of success.

The control module didn't come out so well so I may redo it, however as it does not deform, it shouldn't matter too much. But the gloves and the helmet came out nicely, not I just have the rest of the objects to do, yay...

Furthermore, I created the O2 hose and nozzle for the space suit, I followed the game design, but i'm still not quite sure why it's there. For the hose I created one segment, then using the insert model and curve functions inside ZBrush I could create duplicates of the section all along the curve, which is still editable so i can change it's shape really easily. 

Just to show how cool this ability is, I created a whole series of hoses, and only spent about 2 minutes of procrastination on this masterpiece. 

If people have any ideas or suggestions please leave them in the comment section below, or just send me some form of message.