Shane Wheeler's Work in Progress

Robo Cop 8

2009-11-12T21:46:00.007-05:00

Finally done.

Animatic - short for Imps project - 1

2009-08-25T01:05:00.005-04:00

Animatic Scene 1 - This whole project may take a while. Here is a scan of scene 1 that I drew in pencil. I will be coloring it. There will be 4 characters in the entire animatic. I already did a rough run through and made an ultra rough 4 and a half minute animatic with me doing all the characters. For this more finished animatic I have already had one friend record multiple dialogue for one character. I've got to get together with a couple more friends for the remaining characters.

Robo Cop 7

2009-06-17T01:03:00.013-04:00

I wasn’t going to make a post at this point, but I did to show my friend Marife (an awesome digital artist http://marifealbay.com/ ) my most up to date progress. I'm still working on it. I basically have the model and color texture done. I need to make my other maps (Spec, Spec color, norm,)

This has been a learning process for me. I’ve never really textured metal to this degree before. I started taking out a lot of highlights I’m used to putting in. I felt they tend to be too much since the material itself has a shiny surface and highlights on a metal surface should look natural when the character moves. I still need to go back and tone down some more of the highlights.

Also, I realize that most texture artist will tell you to dirty up your textures by adding ware and tare, and anything else that will add realism to the model. But, for this Robo, I wanted him to look clean and new. I may go ahead after this is done and make an alternate version. I am also planning on rigging Robo with a Biped from Max so that he can be posed for display purposes.

Robo Cop 6

2009-04-18T16:39:00.009-04:00

Here is Robo's gun. At first, I started painting the entire model texture, then later started focusing more on just the gun so I could get a WIP update sooner. I still need to go back and finesse the paint job a little more. Some of the detail gets lost and highlights just look muddy when I size the map down from 4096 x 4096 to 1024x1024. All and all, I think it cam out pretty good. I hope Robo comes out as good.

Robo Cop 5

2009-04-01T16:32:00.007-04:00

Finished laying all the flat colors down, This helps me with making easy selections and deciphering one piece from another. The base color is bound to change. I could have chosen any color, which may be a good idea if you'd want to color code for easier identifying pieces (i.e. upper torso - green, legs - red, gun - blue. or what ever.)

Well, I need to go finish getting ready for a trip. I'll be back in a week. Then, I'll get back to texturing.

Robo Cop 4

2009-04-01T00:08:00.010-04:00

Finally, I got around to completing Robo's UVW layout. From reading about normal mapping, they say your not supposed to lay flipped UVWs on top one another. Doing so would cause undesirable looking results. So, I had to cram. Granted, there are some areas of the model that shouldn't be effected (under areas of his armor, eyeballs, bottom of feet, and so on.). So I did lay those on top one another.

Final poly(tri) count 9984. I added a few more details to armor and his gun. Now, onto texturing.

Robo Cop 3

2009-02-19T21:21:00.019-05:00

Poly count
Overall: 9952
Robo: 9432
Gun: 520

So I finally built the gun and optimized Robo. I’ll probably be able to get rid of a few more polys after I merge the two halves of Robo.

I actually built the gun as a medium poly cage first. I'll go back to both the medium res versions of the gun and Robo and continue with additional edge-looping and add a (turbo in max) smooth. Depending on how it goes I may try a bump-to-normal map conversion for the gun. Now, onto UV unwrapping. How fun.

Robo Cop 2

2009-02-10T20:19:00.014-05:00

Here's the lower half and legs of Robo. I still have to go back and add a neck piece and take care of the head. Once I get rid of those extra polys, I'll know what I have to play with: Either adding more polys or deleting some. Probably the latter.

Robo Cop 1

2009-02-06T19:01:00.023-05:00

I’m creating this character model using 3ds Max. My initial plan was to do a high res version of Robo, but I decided to make a next gen game model instead. So I’m limiting myself to somewhere between 8500 and 10000 polys. As you may have noticed in the screen shot; I have alraedy past that mark, since I started off doing a high res version. I'll correct this. Also, the total poly-count will possibly include his gun. If anyone knows, I believe any main accessory (his gun) needs to be included in the poly-count, right? I’m debating on if I will modify his right leg to be able to open for gun storage like in the movies.

Here you can see the head and upper body. Since the head was started as a high poly model, it shows polys inside the helmet created with a shell modifier. I’ll go in a remove the excess polys.