Bipedal Werewolf Form Character Sheet

I managed to finish a character sheet for the bipedal werewolf form, and a new concept drawing. I noticed just now that the back side of the werewolf on the character sheet might be slightly bigger then the front side. But atleast I hope it does show the character design.

Like mentioned in one of my first posts I based the bipedal werewolf on the werewolf from the VanHelsing and The Wolfman movies. I do hope you are still able to see the humanoid like face since I still want to capture that in this form, making it look like and in between form before the quadruped form.

Also this werewolf version show the ripped jeans. And I seem to have gotten lazy with the hands on the concept art sketch. Again later for documentation I will have to scan in all the drawings.

Sculpted meshes and textures

After a long weekend time out I gave sculpting in Zbrush a try, again. But yet again I was blocked by the shear amount of options given by the program. And also the fact that I wanted to finish atleast some sort of material before the end of the day, that I went back to Adobe Mudbox. 

I created a few simple sculpts and materials for the Human, Bipedal and Quadruped Torso/Back meshes. Which I hope can use through this week to test the materials and see how I will be able to blend them in UDK.

 
Human form

 
Bipedal werewolf form

 
Quadruped werewolf form

As you can see above, the texture streching seems far less obvious then I first expected. However these Torso/Back meshes are change far less then for instance the head, hands and feet.
These meshes make use of one and the same UV-set from the human form, which I then reshaped into the bipedal and quadruped form.



The mesh it self is only 560 faces, 1120 tris.

I also created new UV-sets for the bipedal and quadruped meshes, yet I still have to create the textures for those.

I will have to test both, the same and different UV-set meshes in the matinee sequence.
In the result I hope to see if it possible to swap the models with their different UV-sets and still create the blending transformation for the fur on the models. Like mentioned above I will continue to work on this over the course of this week.

Human Form Character Sheet

I managed to finish a character sheet for the human form, and a concept drawing. The character will be based of the actor David Witts. Don't got a paticular reason for the actor choice but I think he looks fitting.

I know the previous werewolf concept sketches do not show any ripped jeans, but I gave it a thought and I think it might be more appropriate. So for the upcoming bipedal and quadruped form character sheets I will draw the ripped jeans. Since these designs will be final for the character design.

Of course later for documentation I will have to scan in all the drawings, because right now I do not manage to make them look good when making a quick photo of the sketch and adjusting that photo in photoshop. I hope I can do this in a week or two while finishing the other character sheets, and then I will update the old post with better images.

Morphing in UDK 03

I managed to set up a simple matinee sequence in UDK's Kistmet, thanks to an example from here. The one who post the thread was generous enough to also add the UDK and UPK files.

The result of the morphing can be seen in the video below.

The sequence gives me the possibility to transform/morph on the press of a button. When you press 'E' it transforms from the human form to the bipedal werewolf form and when you press 'Q' it transforms from the bipedal werewolf form to the quadruped werewolf form.

In the animation you can also see spikes, these spikes on the models while transforming are most likely the result of the model not being skinned properly to the rig.

In the video you can see the spikes disappear on the model, this is because I set up the matinee sequence so it switches the models.

This is how the sequence has been set in Kismet. It is also possible to create a reverse, however I believe that I would like to create a different animation for transforming back then simply using the animations in reverse. These animations will have to be drawn out as animation sheets.

The reason why I switch the transformed mesh with a the full mesh, like the transformed bipedal form with the full mesh of the bipedal form is because otherwise the morph target from bipedal to quadruped form will not work properly. This is an issue I mentioned 'Morphing in UDK 02'.

But it also has two more advantages, one is it immediately replaces the skeleton/rig structure of the mesh. The skeleton which later on will have a different set of animations.

The second is that it could decrease the problem of having to cope with streched UV's around the feet, head and hands on the transformed mesh. The streched UV's will occur due to the blend shape/ morph target not changing the UV's of the model.

I'm not sure if it can solve the problem, perhaps if I would switch the meshes halfway during the animation, on the two seconds instead of on the fourth second. But this would require another blend shape/morph target. One from human to bipedal, where as the bipedal is the blend shape target and one from bipedal to human where as the human is blend shape target.
But also require setting up the materials in the right way. This is certainly an issue that requires testing.
I hope I can cover this in the upcoming week with the torso/back mesh.

(Pre-) starting sculpt mesh and material test

The past week I have mainly been researching a few things. One thing was materials in UDK, which I hope I can begin working on soon once I have finished sculpting the torso/back model.

The other thing I checked is Z-brush sculpting and creating a more detailed torso/back model. Here below you can see the result and it seems to work with the blend shape I created, this was merely a quick test.

 

 

UV's do not seem to change with the blend shape, so I will have to watch out for stretching.
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This week I also worked on the creation of the bipedal and quadruped werewolf form skeletons/rigs.

I hope that over the course of the upcoming week I can set up the transformation in Kismet, UDK. So the transformation/morphing works with the proper animtree and matinee set-up.
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I also tried to find a solution for the vertex order problem in maya which can majorly screw up your blend shapes. Maya reorders the vertices of the model when you split and merge your model, add an edge even adding a vertex is to risky.

Unfortunatly I have not managed to find any solid scripts or plug-ins that can fix this problem. I did find something about a plug-in called Maya Mesh Re-order, but it seems the one who initially put it online took it off again due to certain problems and it wouldn't work on geometry that would look really different from one and the other.

The only things that might work is using the program Houdini SideFX to remap the vertices of your model, or simply not adjust your model once the Human base mesh has been created.

I think that I will keep it to the latter, and make sure to make this an critical note in the pipeline.
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So in the next week I will be working on the torso/back mesh and create a blending/transforming material in UDK, possibly with fur patches of geometry.

And work on the real-time transformation to set up the right matinee sequence in Kismmet.

Morphing in UDK 02

The past day I have worked to get the entire mesh into UDK and test the in-between blend shape deformation which I applied in Maya. I mentioned the in-between function of the blend shapes in "Block-Out Quadruped Werewolf Form".

Unfortunately I have come to a few conclusions which I will sum up:
* Wrap Deformer cannot be exported as FBX, FBX does no support this function
* A combined mesh from separate body parts (head, neck, torse, ect.) with blend shapes cannot be exported properly. This creates ‘mismatched morph target geometry’ in the exported file and breaks the blend shapes.

* Animations made on skeleton/rig which is skinned to the mesh does work with the blend shapes. Skinning is important as when done not appropriately it can break the mesh in the blend shape.

* A mesh consisting out of separate body parts skinned to a skeleton/rig gets combined in UDK into one Skeletal Mesh.
* Multiple blend shapes on one mesh get grouped into one ‘Morph Target’, the morphs/deformations are still selectable and get the name of the mesh with the title ‘Shape’. Example ‘BipedalWerewolfForm01_RightArmShape’.
This means that each body part getting its own morph, and when you have a lot of morphs the overview will become cluttered.
* An In-Between blend shape deformation applied in Maya does NOT work in UDK. UDK does not apply it, instead it increases the weight of the morph. So morphing from human form to bipedal werewolf form works, but then applying the third morph going to the quadruped werewolf form breaks the final result. See ‘UDK_FBS_Test02’ video which you can see below.

(The video below are the correct final morphed meshes. Do keep in mind that the morphing order is wrong. 

The human form transforms to the quadruped form, this should go from bipedal to quadruped)

The conclusions above basicly mean that most of the fixes that I mentioned in earlier notes, do not work in UDK. Wrapping, combining body parts and in-between blend shape deformations.
This means I will have to apply a different approach, which I have taken into account.


Concluding from the separate findings above I will describe the basic solution. Create a full body mesh which does not require any separate body parts, except for the ears, tail, teeth and tongue. This will minimize the amount of morph targets you will have to work with in UDK and create a more pleasant overview.

Begin creating the human form mesh. From this human form mesh you will create the bipedal werewolf form mesh and from the bipedal werewolf form mesh you will create the quadruped werewolf form mesh.

Apply the blend shape deformation on the human form mesh with the bipedal werewolf form mesh.
Keep a separate bipedal werewolf form mesh on which you will apply a different blend shape deformation with the quadruped werewolf form mesh.
Make sure you do this also with the separate ears, tail, teeth and tongue parts.

Create the skeletons/rigs for the for all three forms, skin this and test it with the blend shapes in Maya to see if it does not break. Animate the transformations. Export the human to bipedal form and bipedal to quadruped form separately to a FBX format.

This should give a result in which the body changes size and the topology of the character gets adjusted.

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The next step that I will research and test is the changing of the skin, or blending of the materials in UDK.
I will also try and see test the result of fur patches as planes growing out. Trying to get a nice blend with the transformations.

While I test this I will also continue to work and test my 'basic solution' creating solid meshes of the current block -outs, build out the rigs and create a simple animation for the transformation.

Animations and Morphing in UDK

So after some trouble I managed to get the blend shapes working with a simple animation in UDK. One of the main things to remember, when you wish to import a skeletal mesh into UDK. Is that your mesh must have at least one bone/joint, skinned to this mesh. It doesn't require any animation but otherwise the engine will not register it as a skeletal mesh or import its blend shapes.

In UDK blend shapes are mentioned as Morph Targets. Unfortunately it is not as simple as to just combine morph targets and animations to one mesh. It requires a little more delicacy and detail, especially the naming, the type of mesh you set into the scene and the nodes you have to use to make it all work together.

Luckily I managed to find some information and combine it to figure out how to properly structurize the animtree and set it up in kismet and matinee. 

 

It might not look all that complicated, but forgetting to move one slider can already break it. UDK seems very sensitive about that.

Here below you can see a short video of the result, the animation and morphing is playing real-time.

I noticed that in Maya and UDK the morph can still occur on the skeletal structure on the mesh while it is animated. This way you can create an animation while the character is morphing.

Also UDK seems to use the same envelope from 0 to 1 like in Maya which means that it is possible to add an in-between blend shape. I will however need to test if it works.

I will check if it is possible to also morph the rig in maya, however I believe it might be easier and overal less time consuming within a pipeline to create the bipedal and quadruped rig set and swap them in UDK after the morphing animation has finished.

This way you can also create seperate, walk, run, jump and other animations on those different rig sets. Instead of having a lot of different animations on one rig, it seems to me to be more organised. 

Next will be to see if I can make the human form block-out work with all morph targets within UDK.

Block-Out Quadruped Werewolf Form

So I have continued my work on the block-out meshes. Creating solid versions of the block-outs I had and creating the block out for the third form, the quadruped werewolf.

As you can see in the images below it is based on the sketch version I posted last week. The form might not look much different from the bipedal form at first, but it is definitely longer, thinner and slightly more lean.

 

I also applied the blend shapes with an in-between to the human form block-out, placing the quadruped werewolf form in a T-position.

Now it is possible to blend from the human, to the bipedal and then to the quadruped werewolf form, as you can see in the video below.

While setting it up the blend shape I again ran into the problem of the deformation of a few pieces getting screwed up. Like I explained in the previous post it could be because of the vertex order. 

Luckily I was able to apply the solution of duplicating the piece like for example the neck from the human form. Adjust the vertices to the position of the neck for the bipedal form and renaming the body piece. This solved the problem of the mesh breaking in the blend shape deformation.

So now there a human form that has the ability to change shape into two other forms by the use of blend shapes. The past week I also researched on the subject as to how to make the blend shape with an animation work in UDK. I hope I can update this tomorrow and show the actual result.

Morphing in Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is a game developed by an indie developer called
Black Forest Games.
The game shows some interesting asset morphing since it transforms the entire level in two or three seconds.

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzZ-xxx8_30&feature=player_embedded

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-UBunMYik0&feature=player_embedded

Here they explain a bit about the process of the game. However I would have loved a more detailed description it does give an explanation as to my previous problem when I tried to blend shape the whole model and the model broke. It gave a similar result in the video below.

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGR_PB5r-is&feature=player_embedded

The reason is the vertex order of the model, it seems that it can change when it is being duplicated, adjusted in position or when it combines. I am not sure how you can check the order or if it is possible to change it.
The problem also seem to arise for people who use a 3D sculpting program and go from Zbrush to Maya or Max, adjust some stuff and go back.

I did find a solution for this problem with blend shapes and that is to duplicate the starting model en snap the vertices to the transformed model piece. This is however a very time consuming and tedious solution.