Zombie Man (feat Animations)

I was originally sculpting and then retoping a 3D zombie to improve my skills in 3D coat after my 3rd gaming course in 2018, but I had to put it on hold because I was about to do my 4th gaming course making me forget it afterward, until recently I decided to finish it off by texturing it in 3D Coat and Photoshop, then using Mixamo to animate the zombie and finally to edit its animations in the Time Editor in Autodesk Maya completing the project for good.

After I finished texturing the zombie, I exported 4 animations from Mixamo using the zombie T-pose model in the process. I exported attack, scream, idle, and catwalk. You heard me, right? Catwalk! I honestly thought it was funny that a zombie was doing a fashion catwalk. Unfortunately, I had issues with editing the animations in Time Editor since it was my first time using it, so I scrapped it.

For Time Editor, I tweaked the animation of the attack, and then for the idle and scream - I blended them together into one animation.

Not only I was happy to finally finish it and learn new things, but I was also happy to warm myself up yet again to do 3D art again due to myself not doing any 3D art for a while. In the future, I will need to use those skills to create assets for my own games, especially when it comes to creating my own original characters and monsters.

Since it’s been a while since I sculpted and retopoed the zombie, I can’t precisely get into nuts-and-bolts detail of what I learned or improved, but I can explain what I learned while I was texturing and animating the zombie recently for the last month.

Post mortem is short because most of the skills I used in 3D Coat and Mixamo are what I learned in the past, however, I did learn new techniques in Photoshop and Autodesk Maya.

WHAT I LEARNED:

• Various voxel and sculpting tools to make details of the zombie in 3D coat.

• How I can use the Time Editor in Autodesk Maya to edit Mixamo exported animations and blend two of them together with layers.

• The difference of creating an Additive layer which adds on animations like moving the head and arms. Override layer which overrides animations on any chosen joint rig in Autodesk Maya's Time editor for animated characters.

• Creating a control rig to allow me to control the joints of the zombie easily when animating them in Autodesk Maya.

•  Making adjustments in Photoshop using the Hue/Saturation and Color Balance to change the zombie's skin color. These adjustments I rarely use for my projects.

•  Making adjustments in Photoshop using the levels to make some areas darker or lighter depending on the texture map in Photoshop. Yet again I hardly use levels in Photoshop.

WHAT I IMPROVED:

• Better making muscle and bone placements on the 3d model based on human anatomy compared when I made Rambit Bonzer 3D model years ago: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/rambit-bonzer-e5cdc786e744479f884136a3be7c6c83

• Making texturing details stand out using a bit of light and dark texturing e.g. (rib cage around the body).

• Remembering to save color swatches before I switch to a new texture color to use in 3D Coat.

• I got the hang of exporting the retopod 3d model better in 3D Coat so that way it shows its sculpted details better when rendered.

WHAT WENT WRONG? WHAT I COULD HAVE DONE BETTER?:

• I could have made some cuts and muscles deeper compared to the source material I used for inspiration on my zombie in 3d coat.

• I occasionally make a mistake I paint the texture on the wrong layer in 3D Coat. I need to make sure I don’t do that otherwise development will be slow causing me to not meet certain deadlines in time before the game launch.

• It was my first time using the Time Editor in Autodesk Maya, so I couldn’t easily edit the zombie catwalk with it. I need more time practicing using Time Editor in Autodesk Maya.

• For the Zombie attack animation, I couldn’t get the other arm that the zombie didn’t swing with to be more flexible. Yet again I need more practice with Time Editor in Autodesk Maya.

• I struggled with making the right lighting and rendering on Sketchfab for each zombie man model, I will need to practice with the options more to get a better hang of it.

• I could have made the video render shorter so I could encourage people to see the actual 3D model of the zombie and the animations on Sketchfab rather than show it all on social media and spoil the surprise.

OVERALL:

It may have taken a while to complete the zombie, but it feels satisfying that it is now on display on my portfolio so people can see it. The project sure gave me a better idea of how I can make characters and scary monsters better for my games.

I don’t use 3D coat as much as I used to, but I hope I can use it again in the future to give it justice showing how effective it is in creating assets for my games.

I don’t know how likely I will use Time Editor again in Autodesk Maya, but at least I know it’s an effective way to blend and tweak animations if need to be used, but practice using it won’t be my biggest priority for now.