Project Plan

This blog is about my Kerbal Space Program project, and although I'm three days into this project already, from now on I'm gonna keep a regular log of what I'm doing. So to start with i'll explain what I'm doing for this project.

This project is based on the Kerbal Space Program game by Squad. It's a game based on a far off planet, inhabited by Kerbals, who have grand dreams of leaving their fair planet behind for the thrill of exploration. At the moment the game is still in beta and only has a sandbox mode, but you can build rockets and space planes and fly them around, get into orbit, go to the Kerban moons and to other planets in the solar system. You can make probes, space stations, rovers and anything else you can think of from the parts avaliable, something that will probably explode. So as an ode to KSP, I have decided to model, rig and animate a Kerbal, just for the practise of taking some rough plans and making them highly detailed. Just to clarify, I do not own KSP or are part of Squad and am just borrowing the idea from them as concepts for my final product.

Day 1

I started by getting screenshots of a kerbal from the Kerbalizer from KSP's website as a basis for modeling, I then imported these into Zbrush and started sculpting.

I used the screen shots to help me place ZSpheres in the right places to get the model bulked out, I then made it a dynamesh and continued to refine the model.

While modeling I moved his arms out so he's in a 'T-pose' , so when it comes to rigging later it's easier. I also created another subtool for the eyes.

I exported the model as obj so I could retopologize it in 3d-Coat then send it back to Zbrush for finer details, you can see how the faces now flow around his features so he animates better. This was all done in one day.

Day 2

After getting some more references such as game screenshots, trailer videos and wallpapers, I started creating the space suit. For the boots, gloves and body, I masked off the relevant areas then used extract with a 0.02 border so I creates a copy of that part, but slightly thicker, I then converted these parts to dynamesh and smoothed them out so they looked less like the body, and more like a space suit. For the helmet I created a sphere, warped it into the rough shape, I then used the extract tool but this time I extracted the visor with a 0.01 thickness and the helmet at 0.02 to make the visor thinner. For the helmet connector I created a cylinder subtool and fashioned it into shape and for the lights I did the same but with a sphere. This was all done in one day.

Day 3

Today was just about improving the space suit, I added detail to all of it, including shoe lases for shoes, wrinkles for clothes, and panels to the helmet. For the glove connectors, I just duplicated the helmet connector, scaled and moved it to fit, and refined it to make it fit better. For the wrinkles I generally used the Inflate bush for the bigger stuff, and the Dam Standard bush for the finer stuff, as well as for emphasizing the helmet panels and boot straps. To make them look more real, I did all the wrinkles with symmetry off, which doubled the time I had to spend on it, but it will make it look better in the long run. This was all done in one day.

And thus begins my project, I am going on holiday next week, so I aim to get the Kerbal, who needs a name, fully modeled and textured, hopefully with sss textures before I go, so i can come back to rig and animate him.