Vehicle and Character evaluation

For this project we were tasked with creating a Character and Vehicle of our choice.

Character:
Influences:
For the character my idea was to make a sort of Ninja character, at first I was unsure on how to portray this; Feudal Japan Ninja, Armoured Ninja, Assassins creed like character or something completely different. In the end I decided to go with a futuristic space like Ninja. I got influences from Tron, Ender’s Game, Silver Samurai from Marvel Comics, Predator and Robocop.

Tron

Silver Samurai

Ender’s Game

Predator

RoboCop

What Changed?
My character is quite different to what I intended, I made it much more alien like than I was first planning to by adding lots of tendrils/spikes extruding from the costume, as I thought it would help me to add more detail to my character to improve it and would make it more creepy looking. I stuck with purple colours which is what I first decided to use. I did add a tiny bit of gold to the belt on the front. At the start of making the character I was not sure how to begin, the first way I started to make the armour did not work very well, so I rethought and found a much easier way to make it. At first I tried to use the body template from the content browser, but I did not like how that worked, one thing was that I did not want my characters arms to be sticking out, I wanted them by their side and if you moved the arms down it looked very weird. So I looked on YouTube and found a way to import body meshes from Skyrim. I found the Skyrim meshes much easier to use and the arms are already at the side on them.

Vehicle:
Influences:
For the vehicle I decided to make a futuristic hover-bike. I got ideas for this from; Tron, Fifth Element, Total Recall and Blade Runner.

Tron

Fifth Element

Total Recall

Blade Runner

What Changed?
I did not really change the vehicle much from what I originally intended I did make it more rounded underneath than I first thought I might and added a few extra turbines top it. The biggest thing I changed on the vehicle was the colours at first I was going to make it stealthy with lots blacks and dark colours. In the end I decided to make my vehicle more sporty with bright orange and blue, also by adding flame decals to the side of it. Again at first I found it hard to know where to start, I found trying to get the vehicle shape right hard at first I made it in two parts, but this made vehicle look disjointed where both part were put together. So to make it look less disjointed I remade it into one whole shape by making it with various sized circles and then using the loft tool.

I took others into consideration and worked safely by keeping to my own work station, making sure my belongings where not a tripping hazard. I made sure that I was not to loud or distracting and made sure I had no liquids or food near the computer.

Overall I am very pleased with what I have created, using the different skills I have learnt to use in Cinema 4D throughout my time of learning it.

Finished Vehicle Renders

Side

Back Long

Front

Seat View

Side Turned

Back

Finished Character Renders

Front

Front High

Back

Side

3/4

Close Face

Making my hover vehicle

My first attempt at making the body ended up not looking right and out of place, it involved scanning in one of my drawn designs, making a spline the right shape and then extruding it and using the move tool, but it did not look right and I had made it into two parts so the way they connected was not right.

So for my second attempt it worked much better I used circles to make the basic outline and then used the loft tool to join them into one 3D shape which looked much better.

Then I made the different parts that attach to the vehicle, the handles, seat, turbines, aerodynamic wings and dashboard. For the lights I just extruded some of the polygons out. After that I just added some textures and put the vehicle in a scene.

Making my Ninja character

First I tried using the base mesh that is included within Cinema 4D, but I thought that the body looked a bit unnatural and blocky in some places. Also I did not really want the arms sticking out, I wanted them by their side. I thought that I would find it more difficult to work with this mesh as did not think that there were enough polygons to work with for my armour to look right.

 

So to navigate this problem I found a tutorial on YouTube of how to import the base meshes from the game Skyrim, so I did this and the base mesh was more how I wanted it, more natural looking, with the arms by the sides and more polygons to work with.

First I selected a area for one part of the armour, I then copied it, inverted the selection and deleted the parts that I did not need. After that I just used different tools to make the selections into armour parts, the main tools that I used were; extrude, inner extrude, smooth shift and matrix extrude.

This is the basic helmet shape before I added more advanced shapes to it. Below is the final helmet outcome, it has a Bane-like (Batman) mouth part to it which I think look pretty good.

The neck part was the next thing I made, I used smooth shift and inner extrude a lot for this part, the move tool also came in handy for this.

The next parts I made were the main body, the arms, the hand amour and the belt.

The final parts I made were the legs and boots after that I just added some textures and put the model in one of the pre set scenes.

 

 

Vehicle Dashboard HUD ideas

For the dashboard on my vehicle I wanted to make it look futuristic, so I decided to try and make it look like a kind of hologram, some inspiration I got was from:

• Cadillac ATS which displays information onto the windscreen
• Jet fighters
• Iron Man’s armour HUD
• Elite Dangerous

Iron Man

Fighter Jet

Elite Dangerous

Cadillac ats

Character 1st Design Idea

Initial design for my Ninja character:

Front

Side

Back

Texture Mapping Testing

Here is a texture map that I made in Cinema 4D, the texture I made is a rubik’s cube design. You make the texture map, first in Cinema 4D by making an object, in this case a cube, you then go to the BP UV edit layout.

Make sure your object all selected, and click on the icon below to open the Bodypaint 3D setup wizard.

After clicking on the button you will get a box like below, just go through the steps and change any settings accordingly.

Then find the box below and chose the projection mode suitable for your object, in this case cubic or box will do.

Projection

When that is done you will get a net of your object.

Next give your net an outline by clicking on outline polygons or create UV mesh layer if not greyed out from the layer menu.

You then need to export it to photoshop where you add your colours and textures, then you save it as an image and put it back into Cinema 4D and make it your objects texture, it should have now been applied to your object.

 

 

 

Ninja Character Final Design

Whole

Legs

Body, Arms and gloves

Helmet

Legs

Body, Arms and gloves

Helmet

Character Mock-up

Here is a mock-up of the kind of style I want for my Ninja character, I created it in Photoshop using different elements from images that I found and editing the colours and saturation.

My character is going to have quite light armour, she will have greyish purple armour, with more vibrant purple accents to it. She will also have dual swords that she stores on her back.