1. Character Design for Animation and Games
Week 6b: Mudbox Texturing
Object and Environment Design as Characters
Maya Lighting and Rendering

2. Mudbox: Texturing Paint Color, Specularity, Glow, and other maps
to create a convincing surface!

3. Mudbox: Texturing 8 MAIN PAINTING BRUSHES
(opacity=[m], Steady Stroke = fine control, use falloffs to change brush shape):
COLOR: Paint (main), Airbrush (feathered), Pencil (sharp), and Drybrush (only paints on raised or depressed surface when using tablet).
STENCIL: Projection brush (stamp color data directly onto surface). NOTE: also use Stencils as masks on other paint tools. To transform, hit [s]
UTILITIES (like Photoshop tools): Clone, Erase, Color Picker (& others, like Blur).

4. Mudbox: Texturing LAYERS/CHANNELS:
Paint Layers are grouped by data type: Diffuse (color), Reflection, Specular, Bump, Gloss, etc. Paint Layers are not SubD-level locked.
Use Layers to organize painting: wrinkles on a new Diffuse layer, etc. Layers may be copied, merged, moved, hidden, deleted, exported to Photoshop for editing and refreshed in Mudbox to show changes.

5. Mudbox: Texturing MUDBOX PAINTING STEPS:
Create a new Paint Layer on selected geometry (Diffuse). Choose Paint Brush. Set color, size, strength. Paint color in Diffuse, or alpha masks (black/ white) in other Channels (Specular, Glow, etc).
Add Stamp with Randomize to your brush for stroke variation in Painting & Erasing.
Use Stencils in Tray to add variation or pattern alphas to Paint Brush, or actual color with Projection Brush.
Color is multiplied with base material color, so try different shaders in the Material Presets Tray.
Use Drybrush to enhance fine geometry.

6. Design: Architecture

7. Design: Objects and Environment
The principles of Character Design extend to objects and environments :
Creative use of contrast in form, color, and detail.
Serving a function in the intended story or game.
Expressing a personality .
Often objects, furniture, and architecture borrow visual elements from their related characters to imbue them with a sense of character.

8. Weapons as Character: Games
How do these weapons express their FUNCTION?
DUBSTEP GUN
(Saints Row 4)
Inventory:
Gameplay:
MORPH GUN
(Ratchet & Clank)
Original Commercial:

9. Weapons as Character: Games
How do these weapons express their ORIGIN and USERS?
LANCER:
(Gears of War)
PORTAL GUN:
(Portal)
BOWCASTER: (Stranger’s Wrath)

10. Weapons as Character: Anime
Consider these famous anime weapons. What do they share with their wielders?

11. Furniture as Character: Star Wars
What about each character is expressed in their throne?

12. Furniture as Character: Others
What are these seats meant to express about their users?

13. Architecture as Character: TV/Film
What do these homes communicate about their owners?

14. Architecture as Character: Games
Egotistical villains stamp their faces on their world.
Designers work to make characters both fit within and have clear visual contrast from their environments.

15. Architecture as Character: Star Wars
Environments that express the bodies of the characters

16. Architecture as Character: Star Wars
Environments that express the bodies of the characters

17. Architecture as Character: Nowhere
Marvel Comics:
A space station built inside of the giant skull of a dead “Celestial”

18. EXERCISE 1: Your Character’s Weapon
BRAINSTORM with your neighbor:
Share your 3D character Orthos. Discuss: What weapon best fits your character? Sword, gun, spear, shield, bazooka, club, crossbow, mace, strongly-worded letter, etc?
DRAW:
Sketch ideas for the chosen weapon, using shapes from the character body, head, hair, or clothing designs.
Draw/paint a more final image of the weapon.

19. Maya Lighting
1/5
Lighting and Surfacing (materials and how they reflect light) make a CG model feel real.

20. Maya Lighting: Types 2/5 Four main light types:
Directional (cylinder, sunlight)
Spot (cone, electric source)
Point (all directions, electric)
Ambient (no shadows or highlights, fake bounce light).
More information:

21. Maya Lighting: Theory 3/5
All primary light sources should have a meaningful origin (a practical source).
Bounce lighting can be automatically generated with Mental Ray radiosity or faked with an ambient light.
3-Point Lighting theory: Studio lighting uses a hierarchy of brightness and color to emphasize the form, a triangle around the character or object from top and front.

22. Maya Rendering: Display Set Up (provided)
Create a ground plane larger than the character to catch shadows. To remove the unsightly hard edges, add a new Lambert material with a radial gradient opacity texture: Add “Ramp” to Transparency (set type=Circular Ramp, Interpolation=Exponential Down)
Create 3-Point Lighting around the subject: Key (1.0, yellow), Fill (0.7, red), bounce (0.5, blue, no shadows)
Create > Cameras > camera. In any view set Panels > Perspective > Camera1 to look through the camera.
Camera1: View > Camera Settings > Resolution Gate to fully frame your character.
Camera1: View> Select Camera. In Attribute Editor, under “Environment” change Background Color = white.

23. Maya Rendering: Render Sequence
The provided file has 3-point lighting and a new Camera1 parented to a circle animated for a 360 degree turn.
Open file. File/Import your mesh, delete proxy boxes.
Windows > Settings/Preferences > Plug-In Manager to turn on Mayatomr.mll for Mental Ray renderer (If missing from list, go to If unable to use, set DirectionalLight shadows = “Use Depth Map Shadows”).
Tet: Render a frame, turn on MR, render for shadows.
Display Render Settings: Under Edit > Change Project Image Directory, set Images to a folder of your choosing. All other settings are prepared: size, extension, length.
Rendering Module: Render > Batch Render to activate
After a time, each frame will go in the folder your chose!

24. Homework #12: Revise 3D & 2D projects
3D: Revise your 3D character by painting a color texture with as much detail as you can.
2D: Revise 3 of your concepts from this course to create your best 3 pieces. Compile your final Photoshop file with ALL 2D projects from this term, including your 6 concepts and your Orthographic diagrams for 3D modeling.
CLAY: Start your clay sculpt of your character head.
Post screenshots and to hw12 folder in Piazza by noon Thursday: piazza.com/class/ippn0kwpb904xh

25. Post-Class Viewing: Miyazaki
Clips from multiple films:
Hayao Miyazaki - The Essence of Humanity: