Samurai Robot Project : Completed

After a very long and sleepless week I finally managed to complete all the elements of the design, and then focus on rendering them out.

 I had a rather fine and arduous experience within z-brush over the last week, and after a few melt downs I managed to solve the issue what was causing the problems and finally got on with the sculpting. I made a few tweaks to the design as I felt that certain elements did not work as well as previously thought. The hat needed changing and I tweaked elements of the swords and guns in order to make them suit the theme a little more.

I tried to replicate a sort of general grievous inspired bone looking material for the main armour, and tried to keep the materials to quite worn and metallic bases. I overall feel the design came out alright, I'm happy with the final product with the way looks in terms of proportions and colour schemes, but there are elements but I do feel there needs to be some tweaks. I may play a bit with the  final textures just to add a little more realistic effects to certain elements and tone down some of the elements that seem a little too grainy.

The robotics and armours included a lot of repeated elements to make the details, but from previous experience I made sure I unwrapped one object and duplicated it in series to avoid having to texture each segment individually. They way in which I unwrapped the model, seems I modelled first then went into Z-brush meant that the z-brush model I worked upon looked half completed as much of the  detail was captured from one piece of the mesh, so basically rather than render uncompleted shots, I thought I would wait and update with a more complete model.

I worked on the weapons after the main body was completed, and I worked on them in separate files and posed them later within Maya. I tried to capture some floral motif design into the gun, on the handler to try and replicate some decorative elements to Japanese guns flintlock pistols.

I think I need to tone down the textures on he gun as it does seem like its made of a ferrous meta as opposed to looking work and damaged slightly. I may go back and look at the floral motif and make it stand out a little more, as it seems a bit drowned out during the piece. I had a lot of fun creating my own alphas and all suggested changes can be made very quickly. As I am still learning z-brush a lot of the techniques used were experimental and if I were to go back alter the model further it wouldn't take as long now having leant from my many many errors during the process.

The swords textures were enhanced using MTB2(MarmosetToolbag2) as initially though having hand painted textured for each element, the shaders and surfaces available within the software meant that I could portray metallic texture more accurately. I tried to add a sort of engraving to the blade to make to look more like a katana blade, despite being more heavily influenced by Count Doukoo's blade from StarWars. I decided to add a metallic decoration to the scabbard/sheathe as to help make it more interesting as opposed to just a leather cover.

I went back and altered the rice hat and made it flatter and to look more leathery worn. I feel this did help design as the hat kept drawing the eye away and initially it didn't look right. I am happier with the design and thanks to z-brush managed to incorporate some pattern work fairly easily, and it made the hat look that much better.

I feel that this project once again helped and pushed me that little bit further with using z-brush and I feel a lot more confident using the software and am now staring to get quicker at getting desired effects from the application. I am by no way an expert, but every project I do will present new challenges and make me use it in a different way. I have only ever used z-brush after having sculpted something previously in Maya, but now with a bit of experience I feel confident to produce work straight in the package and use the different workflow of modelling then retopologising  afterwards.

Turnaround Video  <<<<<<<<<< click to follow link

I was a really nice break to model something different from a car and assets, and I would love to be able to rig and pose this model. Though I don't know how to as of yet with more time and after deadlines I would love to pose the character to get a better feel for the character. As it stands time is slipping away and I can't find an animator to rig this for me, but hopefully I will learn to in  the next couple of months.

No its time to steam ahead ( bad pun I know) with with my locomotive project as this is the only one I have not yet started and with the deadline in less than 3 weeks I am up against it. Challenge accepted. Lets get to it !!!

P.S as always C&C always welcomed.

Samurai Robot: Pre-Production

I decided for one of my projects that I wanted to produce a stylised character. I was in the repetition of producing props and vehicles and decided that I needed to show that I can also change my style of modelling and also show I am capable of producing characters. I was deciding between producing a hyper realistic samurai or Mechanical character, I wanted to try and stay with hard surface elements but wanted to show a variety of surfaces and textures during this piece.

I have a passion for hard surface modelling and wanted to replicate armour details and decided to try and design a concept mixing elements form traditional Samurai armour with a mechanical elements. There was another class member (a good friend) and we both decided we wanted to do a samurai character. I decided in order for there to be less competition between our two project to change my design to a robotic character with samurai influences.

As a start to the project I decided to research a variety of classical armour types and focussed into the samurai armours.

The pre-production of the project can be accessed from the link below ( Caution Spoiler Alerts):

Samurai Pre-Production PDF


I wanted to try and portray an underdog sort of character and reflect an unassuming appearance. I wanted the armour to create a sense of mystery about the character and also to reflect the hidden potential of the character. Samurai armour was very glorious and decorative and yet and crated a sense of power, I wanted to take inspiration from certain elements such as wrist and leg guards, shoulder pads, and assets, but to tone them down from being decorative, and more worn.

I looked into futuristic armours and more in depth into Mech designs. I found that Mech designs followed a very similar pattern and that I needed to create a slightly more original design or risks it looking like a modified version of a Mech character.

I decided that I wanted to keep humanistic elements to my design, a sort of android appearance. I developed a premise for the character as I thought this would help focus the character and perhaps help me clarify what exactly I wanted to produce. I had and idea but it needed polishing.

After I had worked out a story I found it easier to think how the character would work an feel to the audience, and I went back and re-searched elements further and then decided to concept some ideas.

 One thing I wanted to avoid, was to make the deign too heavily Samurai influenced, and to make it look like a lesser version of something that existed. I tried to keep the inspiration subtle and to work it into the design rather than juxtaposition objects and hope for the best. I played with a variety of ideas and played about with the amount sci-fi / samurai influence I put into each design.
 I decided to try and create a character that the audience could sympathise with so exaggerated the eyes and proportions of features  to make the character look younger, and this would to help reflect the underdog theme to the character.
 I narrowed down the character and decided to block out features as something that works in 2d will not always be achievable in 3d and will not always work as well. I decided to block out features and play about and tweak the design.

Once I was satisfied with proportions and  general fell of the piece I decided to go back and look at what weapons and assets I wanted to include. As I developed the premise for the character to be stranded in a western setting I decided to take a spin on the samurai katana and developed a gun sword as well as a more futuristic katana. I took influence form StarWars lightsaber pommels and looked in to sawed off shotguns with under mounted blades.

I decided that I wanted to try and keep the theme quirky and and yet try and hit upon the robotic android feel, the final textured gun will have a engraved patterns and details that relate to the character in a similar way that the Japanese did with their flint lock pistols.This detail will be sculpted into the base meshes in Z-Brush but I will take a majority of the details into the software in order to get the desired feel.

After finishing off the the test weapons I decided to play about with the belts and tassets ( the man skirt things) and I felt the need to add a rice paddock hat I liked the way it did help towards the samurai feel I think this needs a little more work to make it feel samurai like but still link with the robotic theme.

I found it easier to block out details and check scales my modelling as opposed to drawing turnaround sheets, however I did concept prior to modelling and always research and design before jumping into modelling.

There are  few areas I am going to revisit before finalising the design but I feel confident after the design is unwrapped and textured it will look more credible and convey the themes I desire.

There are a lot of organic shapes to unwrap as well as a mixture of hard surfaced details this is going to take a while to unwrap and lay out properly.

Let the fun begin and I will update when finished :) 

Please feel free to crit and comment, as always any feedback is greatly received.