Monster Design

• Monster design

 • Overview project

Following are some screenshots of the major points in the creation pf my creature, I made majority of this creature on a laptop at home as I started the course late and had a lot to catch up with. I tried using OBS however trying to use both blender and OBS at the same time on my laptop causes issues and lag/crashing a lot. So instead I kept multiple save files and screenshots as proof of my progress.

• Monster designs

My monster was intending to be a creature made of smoke that could not only posses inanimate objects but take a vaguely humanoid shape, so for this model I created it form when in its "humanoid" form. Like explained above the following is a set of screenshots along with a brief description of the reason for each.

• Development notes

• Version 0.1

Firstly I started with a generic torse base for the model of the creature/monster, seeing as the creature was intended to be humanoid in nature.

• Version 0.2

Once the torso was made I decided to leave that file as a backup, i then proceeded to create the basis for the characters legs.

• Version 0.3

The reason for this version was to try improving the topology of the legs making them seem core humanoid, this is to make sure I had a file to go back on if something went wrong. Once I finished that I went on to adding the feet and arms, this was the last few things done on this file before starting another backup.

• Version 0.4

This version I was trying to add the neck of the creature, but I couldn't  get it to fit properly. It always seemed to have an odd seems no matter what I tried, so this was abandoned as I went back to version 0.3 to try working from there again. 

• Version 0.5

As stated earlier version 0.5 was created using version 0.3 as a base, seeing as 0.4 had some issues in its mesh I couldn't figure out/fix. This version however I manage to figure out the mesh for a decent attempt at a neck and head for the creature. 

• Version 0.6

This versions was when I realised that my mesh had some topology issues similar to what happened in version 4, this made me take a while to look up some information online. Doing this I came to the conclusion that my creatures mesh had some overlapping faces/verts so I took a couple hours going over the mesh and correcting any mistakes. This had the added effect of rounding of the mesh slightly. 

• Version 0.7

Not much was done to this version as it was mostly done to create a "backup" for the project.

• Version 0.8

Not much was done to this version, as most of the time was taken in an attempt to create a hand, I decided however to leave the version as a backup in case anything when wrong. I had added a new mesh for an "eye" that got removed and added again later.

• Version 0.9

In this version I managed to create a hand using an image of my hand, the rest of the time was taken trying to fix the hands topology. (cant don't the file for that image, as I had to wipe my computer)

• Version 1

In this version I finished of the main body's topology and started adding a shrink wrapped mesh that would later become a kind of "ribcage" for the creature.

• Version 1.1

 This version I was trying to improve the topology of the ribcage's base to hopefully reduce the chance of the mesh having issues later.

• Version 1.2

For this version I tried to add some thinness to the ribcage mesh, it had some issues so I decided to make a new version before making any significant changes and losing my current progress in a mistake.

• Version 1.3

For this version I tried to do some more improvements to the mesh of the ribcage as the solidify mesh modifier wasn't working properly and trying by extrude and scale was giving odd results.

• Version 1.4

In this version I found the problem that was causing the issues in adding a thickness modifier to the mesh and took several hours to correct the issue.

• Version 1.5

This version was created to do more mesh correction like above, this was more to make sure if anything went wrong with the next few fixes I wouldn't lose all the work up until this point. This was also the point I thought using face orientation would be helpful.

• Version 1.6

This version is when the thickness modifier started working and the main focus was on improving the mesh further to remove the fault in the mesh causing unwanted "spikes".

• Version 1.7

With the fact this last few issues with the ribcage where taken care of in the last version, this version was focused on sorting out the scale of the ribcage in relation to the main body.

• Version 1.8

This was created as a backup just in case I needed it after doing a few changes to the mesh of the model, mostly attempting to deduce the excessive amount of poly count. 

• Version 1.9

This version was where i started using some textures and physics to give some personality to the creature. The textures where added to some "eye" meshes and made to glow red, this was to contrast the smoke. The smoke itself being created in blenders physics using the quick smoke feature but changing the smoke to a negative number, making it drop instead of rise. I then added a couple cones with "volume scatter" and passed a red light through them to give the impression of "red eye" beams.

• Version 2.0

For this final version I tweaked the smoke domain to give a more desirable finish, and made some alterations to the glow in the eyes. This was the last few modifications made to the creature before I was satisfied with the end result.

• Final render

The following is a final render of the creature I created for the horror project, this involved some tweaking of the lighting and camera and a few "alterations" to the smoke simulation. The "alterations" to the smoke simulation was little more then letting the animation of it simulation run until I found a suitable frame that had the right look I was going for, then rendering that frame out.

• Developing the project

As seen in the "development notes" an images provided above, a large proportion of the project was in creating the "body" of the creature, this body only needed the vague shape of a human body as it was going to be used at the emitter for the processes used to create the smoke. This involved using several reference images for generic human character sheets found online as a reference for the proportions. The main problem was with the hands of the creature, I have never had to model anything resembling a person before, so the hands an feet where a little difficult to produce. 

As for creating the smoke for the character, that wasn't as hard as I though it was going to be mainly thanks to the tutorial I round during the research stage. The only really time consuming parts was fine tuning the smoke to fall in the correct way and to change the default grey to a more darker colour. As for the lights that was also another pretty quick fix as the tutorial I found was quite useful, as stated above I wasn't that confident in how it would work but with trial and error they came out pretty decently in my opinion.

• Final thoughts

• Pre-Production of the creature

 Pre-Production was rather difficult as I usually prefer to have an "organic" work flow and tend to look up things as and when needed, as such doing all the planning before hand is a rather new concept. For this reason I found it somewhat hard to come to terms with, I understand why research is important but if you already have a plan i fail to see the point. I also am not that great at sketch's and tend to avoid doing them as best I can, in my personal opinion there kind of pointless when creating a project on your own and only have any real purpose in a group project.

• Production of the creature

 Personally production didn't go to poorly, like stated in the development notes (0.8 and 0.9) I found it the hands and feet of the project to be the most difficult, het next part that I had issue with was creating the neck to connect the head to the mesh. The rest of the mesh creation when somewhat smoothly besides a couple areas that I messed up the mesh, this was easily fixed by loading an older version and starting again with the knowledge from the failed  file.

• Post Production of the creature

This part of the creation of my creature didn't really involve much, it mostly involved making sure i could export the mesh in away that could later be used in the unreal engine project. The only real notable issues with this part, it was at this point I was told that the smoke effect couldn't transfer to unreal engine but didn't really have the time to come up with something else. That is what the end result in unreal engine has appeared as a mostly untextured mesh, I was a little disappointed with all the work it took to pull of but at least I know for next time.

• Problem solving

I managed to solve most issue that cam up as previously stated they where mostly mesh related issues called by overlapping verts and or faces, this was usually fixed by altering the mesh or starting back from an older save file if I couldn't find the issue. Also like stated above the hands, feet and neck of the creature caused the most issue taking a few hours to a couple days on each.

• Challenges

The biggest challenge I faced was the part where my creature used several features of blender to make smoke that I couldn't figure out a way to either transfer it to unreal or replicate in unreal itself. That and my laptop at home isn't that powerful and tends to lag when doing high stress work such as high poly count and or simulating water/gas.  

• Approach to next project

Now I have a better understanding of what my skills are in blender and what can be transferred between it and unreal I will have a better idea of what needs to be created in blender and what need to wait until its imported to unreal. I would also probably start using reference images earlier in development as that helped decrease the time taken to do my work, by this I mean having the reference images actually in the blender project itself.