For my final FMP character I really wanted to go out with a bang and make something completely different to my last 2 characters. I have absolutely loved making my nun and punk and I'm so excited to start this next project and use all the knowledge and skills I've developed whilst doing those in this next project. Since I absolutely love rain frogs I thought it would be a cute and unique idea to create a rain frog familiar to go along side my nun character. I will be looking at various concepts and coming up with my own design for this project to combine my 2 ideas of a rain frog with a medic familiar. The style of this project will be semi realistic and will align well with my nun character as they would be from the same game. I plan on taking some beauty shots with my little rain frog sat by her side to add in to my portfolio. The scale of the rain frog however will be much larger than their actual size as they are very tiny usually measuring around 3-6cm and I would like it to be carrying some kind of medical equipment.  The budget for my rain frog will follow along with that of ff games and what I have used for my nun character however since this will be a much smaller character I will be lowering the tri count in order to optimize the model as much as I can. I plan to give myself 2 4k sheet to work with for the textures and I will split this up into relevant texture sets. Rain frogs are my favorite animal and on top of already knowing a lot about them I am excited to make a character of one since I haven't seen many sculpts of this particular species around so I am really hoping to bring something new. There are a few extra things I will be adding into this project to really push it over the line including emissive, translucency and possibly a particle system and glass shader to add some extra complexity to this project. I hope to keep him under 50k tris.

Since my first project was from a concept, my second was from real life fashion and 70s photography and imagery I wanted to go in a slightly different direction this one by coming up with the concept myself based on a random interest of mine.  My aim of all my fmp projects is to create game ready pieces that I am proud to add into my portfolio and pieces that personally appeal to myself as well. Also another reason I wanted to make this is also to add a bit of variation to my portfolio since I have already made 2 human characters. By making an animal and specifically an amphibian it will give me some experience in a slightly different field of 3D character art. 

Week 1

To get this project going today I have collected a big range of images of rain frogs so that I can make a start in sculpting the actual character itself. I will be adding a wide range of assets on to him to add to his narrative also hence why I have collected images of possibly items that I could add in. These include: a spell book, medicine bottles, syringes, bandages and a few types of bags and key chains. Since this character is not from a concept I will need to make sure my refencing is very strong and justified as part of the narrative, visual appeal and overall shape and silhouette of the frog. For example since the frog is very round, adding a book on his back will help add angular shape language to it and stop the silhouette from blending in to much. Players will need to be able to identify this rain frog familiar from a distance or from a shadow. I have had a look at a range of concepts on artstation of both animals with saddles and any other kind of utility and also some concepts of different kinds of medics to give me some ideas of what I can add to it. I am planning on making the saddle detachable therefore the frog will be fully textured and able to be without it if necessary. 

From my research and ideas and the composition of my pur ref board I began blocking out my final character to finish off my FMP. I started with a simple sphere and started manipulating the shape using the topology move tool and the move tool.  Rain frogs have a very round and distinct shape, therefore it was important for me to capture this starting from my block out. Since it is a very unique type of frog During my research I also looked into why it is structured the way it is as i thought this could help a lot with my sculpting process. Since I collected many images of the frog from all angles my starting process has been quite straightforward as the silhouette is quite simple compared to other animals and that a a human due to the simplicity in the shapes and amount of fat on this type of frog. I found that watching videos on YouTube of rain frogs helped my a lot with the construction of this so far in my sculpting period due to being able to see its movements and being able to get a sense of how it looks and moves in a 3D environment. As previously mentioned this frog will be in the type of that of a final fantasy/ dead by daylight creature which is semi realistic, therefore I am planning on making the eyes slightly larger bu apart from that the rest of the sculpt will be pretty much realistic. Due to how rain frogs look I think they already have quite a stylized look due to their comical shape they almost do look like fantasy creatures from a game such as final fantasy. 

To update my blog on my progress this project I have added many more elements to my high poly sculpt. I did decide to make a little bunny plushie to go on the other side as I think the plushies just add so well to the overall cute look of this character. Some other narrative assets I added are a little medicine bottle pouch with a couple of bottles inside, i am planning on making glass shaders for these in engine. I will generate an opacity mask for it in substance since I will be making a label to go on them showing what they are. I have added a lot of assets to my frog in order to push the narrative a bit further and showcase my skills for hard surface modelling and also hard surface prop texturing since my other 2 characters do now showcase many props. This is all my own design and ideas and since I am not working with a direct concept there is some trial and error with what props are working and what props aren't working. 

One of the main props on my nubby frog character is the spell book on his back. I am looking forward to adding some interesting effects to this such as emissive writing and possibly particles coming out of it with a particle system. I made the book in 3ds max using some refences of old leather open books. I wanted to give it some depth by added pages whih are slightly raised and have thickness. I didn't want to have them as just planes since the paper would be made of a thick parchment paper. I need to add a bookmark on it as well. My friend saw my frog from afar and noticed the silhouette had dramatically changed because of the book which I am pleased about. The book will be a kind of healing spell book as he is a mage familiar for the nun who is a support medic type chacter. 

Since I have used a low to high poly workflow for a few of these assets I will already have a low poly made for them and will save me retopping things again such as the book. I have added a couple little heart details as well to kind of push the friendly medic narrative I am going for. He is supposed to be a cute caring character so it is important for me to include props which push this. I have also added a little apron thing below his chin which will also feature a medical emblem on it. I used the rope IMM brush for this again. 

I have now finished the sculpt for my froggy character and I am really happy with how it has turned out. Since I last updated my blog I have added some further details onto the actual frog itself through surface skin details with an alpha that I edited and imported to make some bumps on the skin since they have quite textured skin especially on their backs which have bigger blobs on it. I plan on  taking some beauty shots with and without the props on to showcase the textures of the actual frog and in game he could be viewed without any props on. I am still not quite sure how I am planning to make the eyeballs since they are quite complicated and big however I am hoping i can recreate them through the texturing and the use of several references. Usually i would add some shape for the lens however frogs eyes are very different from human eyes and they don't seem to have the lenses in the same way humans do making the eye shape from the side more oval. I am going to look more into this. I have also added stitching to the edges of the fabric so that generators will pick it up nicely from the bake. 

The retop of the main body actually took a lot longer than I anticipated since I wanted it to be as perfect as possible and very clean with good edgeflow. I spent a long time shuffling things around to make sure the mesh was perfect. I struggled a lot with matching the back legs up to the back since the amount of geometry wasn't the same. I ended up having to include some tris in places of no deformation since I could not get it to match up a when i was taking away geometry or adding it wasn't an option at this point as it was effecting other parts and making things look faceted. The mesh is quite dense but since this will be a relatively big frog and a familiar I think this is ok. I am sticking to the budget of final fantasy and that of what I was using for the nun. I didn't want him to look faceted as his is quite a round character so I felt that this amount of geometry was good and contributed to the smoothness of him. 

My next step is to start retopping the many props that I have made. Luckily I think all of these are hard surface and therefore will not have to deform so it shouldn't take me as long. Anything close to the surface of the frog i will try and match up to the geometry underneath.  

I have now started on the retop of any props I want to include on him. Since there are so many and multiple layers I think this is going to take me a few days of work to complete. So far I have retopped the blanket and the leather saddle type thing where the straps will be attached to. I have tried to match up the geometry to the body of the frog as much as I can however it is not a must since their body's don't really deform that much and he will have a book on his back. I am trying to keep consistent with my retop though since this is good practise for industry. I have retopped the hat and the apron as well. The satchel was so awkward to retop since it is all object and has the inside showing as well. How I went about doing this was that I retopped the outside and then added a shell modifier inwards to create the inner part. The mesh was quite tangled and it took me ages to untangled and conform it accordingly whilst optimizing it as much as I could. Next time I would definitely do this separately  and detach the lid so that I could get to the inside easier, I have no idea why i didn't do this as it would have made the retop a lot more efficient. The woven basket was a lot easier since it does not have a lid on it so I could easily conform it. Also I must note that I did make the bag with the lid in max and then import it into zbrush so it does have a low poly however I changed it so much in zbrush that I could no longer use the og low poly since it was too different. 

Going forward I will continue retopping my objects and then I will begin the unwrap and pack process. 

Since I have so many props the retop is taking a long time as there are many small details I must consider such as fastenings and straps to attach things onto the saddle. I decided to zremesh the bunny and teddy in zbrush as i am a bit conscious of time and since they are-non deforming objects I figure  this would be an ok thing to do under the time constraints. When I brought them into 3ds max I did mess with the geometry some optimize it and make it more conformed to the high poly. If I had more time I would definitely redtop these by hand to make the geometry more refined. They are quite dense however since they are such key assets in my design and are at the very front I am ok with this as long as the whole thing is under my budget. 

The image on the right shows the finished retop from the right side. All my other objects where quite straight forward to retop as the shapes were quite simple. The overall tri count is a lot more than I expected but considering the amount of props and organic shapes included I am ok with this. If needs be I can delete some loops but I would rather not since I am really please with the outcome of the low poly. 

Going forward I will now be splitting the assets into material IDs and texture sheets and also unwrapping. I am really looking forward to moving on to texture and bake since there is the opportunity for me to push my texturing skills with there being a lot of variation in surfaces. 

Unwrap- 25.4.23

I found this this character was a lot easier to unwrap compared to my previous 2 since I had a lot more hard surface props which made it very easy for me to make good use of the UV space.  I have tried to pack logically based on material. 

Baking and texturing-

Some more progress son my textures from today. I am still not happy with the eyes so i am going to look at some more close up refs to revisit them. Also I am struggling to texture the bear so that it looks fuzzy. I am going to try adding some more tonal variation and fill layers to push this texture further. I am really pleased with how my bake has picked up the wicker basket as it means that the edgewear generator has worked very well here. I am tying the textures in with both the style and theme of the nuns textures also.

I am really pleased with how my textures have ended up looking. This did take me quite a  bit of trial and error to get right since it looked very obvious when something looked off due to the specific nature of the animal I am making. I will now generate a subsurface map and also an emissive map to make the writing in the book glow as if the frog or nun is casting a healing spell from it. 

Please see below some beauty shots in marmoset from my finished nubby frog. I have also included one without the saddle on some of the photos as it just looks so cute. I have also included some of the frog sat with my nun in the beauty shot folder I have submitted. 

I cant even tell you how much I have loved doing this project. Since rain frogs are my favorite animal it has been a great way to finish 3rd year. I have never made an animal like this before so it has been a really great and useful experience for my skillset. I am most happy with the design since I did it from my own head and not directly from a concept, I think it works nicely with the nun along with on its own too. I am proud of my textures even though it did take me a lot of trial and error to get right since things started to look very strange when I was adding  a lot of detail to it. The only things I wish I could have done are adding a cavity map to the skin since there's so many details I sculpted in which I could have pushed with this. If I had more time I also would have liked to added some paralaxing onto the surface of the skin just to make it pop further. Over summer I think I am going to make a mouth bag for him and pose him yawning like in the viral video (there is a picture of it on my ref board but I will include it underneath too because it is so cute).  This is my final project finishe don my game art degree and I am so happy that this was my final project as I have had so much fun with it, it has summed everything up super positively. I hope that you have enjoyed reading my blog and seeing my projects, thank you :))

The end thank you so much to amazing lecturers for the past 3 years