There was a little miscommunication between the completion of the Character concepts to the modelling of the character mesh: I thought the concept drawings provided by Nell were complete and final designs for the character Caruso. However after completing the base mesh and checking up with team leader Cullan for feedback, I was informed that the designs were not final so a few alterations needed to be made regarding the clothed version of Caruso. I am a little confused by the overall pre-production process but it's difficult to have a smooth workflow when there is so little time and so much work to be done to complete the project.
Unfortunately I had already spent a few days generating the UV maps for both the nude and clothed versions of Caruso and had made a start on sculpting additional details in Mudbox...
The first changes were to the lower part of Caruso's clothing, the concept art showed Caruso to have quite loose and slightly flared trousers so I modelled the mesh as such. The feet are separate meshes.
After a short discussion with Cullan, we have decided to go for tapered trouser legs. What I did was extract parts of the nude Caruso mesh and altered the edgeflow slightly. Once I take the mesh into Mudbox I can sculpt to make the bare legs looks more like clothed legs.
The first base mesh followed the concept drawing where the outer coat has an asymmetrical collar/lapels but I personally didn't really like how it looked so have decided to go for a more symmetrical design.
The final alteration was on Caruso's left arm: Cullan wanted Caruso to wear a metallic gauntlet on his left hand that was reminiscent of the gauntlet worn by Final Fantasy's Vincent Valentine. Due to the time constraints and lack of any designs or concept art for this gauntlet we have decided to go for something much simpler: a vambrace. This will be a simple extrusion of the faces on the lower arm and any details will be sculpted and textured in Mudbox. To allow the vambrace to be in view, the sleeve on the left arm will be folded up to the elbow.
Although it was not a lot of changes I had to make, I felt it would be far easier to delete the old mesh and alter the nude Caruso Mesh to make the new clothed Caruso mesh. You may be able to notice that the edgeflow of the coat sleeves are different - that is because I decided to follow the same edgeflow as the unclothed arms to have a more seamless transition into the exposed left lower arm while keeping everything merged into one mesh. Also, the torso, legs and feet are now merged into one mesh to minimise chances of meshes cutting into each other when animated.
In the brief moment of Mudbox sculpting the first base mesh I noticed how the edges of the coat were deforming because it was a single layer polygon plane and it was near impossible to bulk up the inside edge to make the material appear thicker. Since I was already back in the modelling stage I decided to extrude the edges to create an extra line of faces for sculpting.
Now to re-map most of the UVs - not that I mind, I find this process rather relaxing.
