Extended Practice: Creating the Chinese Ancient Character - Modelling, UV Mapping and Texturing

Modelling
After creating the first ancient I then moved onto creating the second one.The second one is a Chinese character that will be for the third level in the game, one that we are not actually creating, but in a cut scene you may be introduced to Cheng as she will be walking around the hub world.

I started by modelling out the basic shape of her, following the turn-arounds that I had previously created for Cheng, she was quite a slim and bland shape but has this very nice dress on that sweeps down, especially on her arms. 

I focused on modelling one side of her first, getting in the necessary details there first so that she could be easily mirrored over.

I then moved onto detailing the head, she has quite a round shaped head and nose, but still have large ears compared to the characters Sophie made but she appears to have a lot more delicate features them Menes, making her more attractive rather than comedic.

I then mirrored her over, and began to sort out the shape of her, ensuring that I was capturing all of the necessary details.

 I started by looking at her head, and ensuring that I got the sticks in her 'hair' and her eyes as well, which I made slightly thinner than Menes and also made them slant in a different way to give her a harsher expression to his, as he is a softer character.

I then added the details into her dress and shoes before I was ready to UV map.

UV Mapping 
I moved onto UV mapping, and once again didn't have any problems with sorting her out, I had a few complications with her dress sleeves, but they weren't too difficult to sort out.

I was very proud of the UV map in the end, as I really used to hate this part, and actually did enjoy it, ensuring that it is using all of the box necessary and keeping all of the parts in proportion to everything else on her. 

Texturing
I then moved onto texturing and once again I kept using the same fur brush as I had done for the rest of the characters. I once again worked through this process the same as I had done previously. First giving her a basic colour over to ensure that the UV map is working how it should be, and fixing it in any places where it isn't.

Then I went through adding in the shading onto the clothing and the fur onto the head and rest of her to add in the details needed to get the model looking right. I think she is really starting to come together here but I found that her dress was looking a little boring and refered back to my earlier designs to find out what was missing.

In my designs her dress had a pattern which really brought the dress to life so I added this on, and it did finish off the look for her and made everything come to life more.

I then finally added in a bump and specular map onto the model so that it again brought the character further to life. The specular map was added onto the eyes, nose and then details on the outfit and shoes, and the bump map added onto the fur.

When looking back the fur does seem to be a little too bumpy and this will need to be toned down just slightly before she is added into the final game, but overall it actually adds to the aged look of her and does make her appear older.