Project complete: Elizabeth

After a hectic spring and multitasking which puts all other multitaskings to shame, Elizabeth has finally reached completion. She is now rigged, textured, normal mapped and up and dancing in Unity. Her progress was slowed down by various minor bumps in the road, ie. me having to take the time to write a graduation thesis from Helsinki University. I am proud to announce that the thesis did get written, and Elizabeth got her textures and normal maps too. I have added Elizabeth to the gallery section of these pages. As my programmer is right now having his final moments before his thesis about Elizabeth has to be handed in, he will be able to provide with a video about the game little bit later. He has a questionnnaire  as part of  his final thesis open  about the Elizabeth, and he will be glad to have feedback. The questinnaire will be closed 12.5 though.

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We have come a long road from this…

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My final thoughts are quite positive. I am bit annoyed we didn’t have time to do facial animation (or even a facial rig) at all, but the feet movement is quite natural and the rig has decent bone weights. At one point we thought Elizabeth would wear sport clothes, and this is really on just my conscience, but we decided rather to go for urban street wear, which is relatively comfortable and would make sense also, as lot of people are using the dancing machines in public, ie. in movie centres etc. In the end Elizabeth also became a red head, even though I thought for a long time she would be blonde.

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…to what is shaped like this…

…and looks like this.

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As the project has been shown to people, most of the feedback has been incredibly positive. The criticism is mostly in where it was to be expected, which is a preferable situation. The project was a good chance for me to sharpen my skills on some of the more advanced UV and texturing tricks Blender has to offer and I did get my hands on some sculpting action in Blender too.

Even though we have come this far, Elizabeth is still a prototype. There is a strong chance she will be developed further in the future, as something like her does not exist in the current dancing games yet.

Elizabeth in the game engine.

Elizabeth on the dance floor

My programmer has given me the permission to show this new footage about the progress of Elizabeth –and she is finally hitting the dance floor! The movement has been given a great amount of thought and though not complete, it looks already quite natural. NOTE: Elizabeth’s movement is programmed and therefore NOT animated by me. I am responsible for : modeling, rigging, future texturing.

Alas she still is dancing nude and un-texturized. This will change soon though, as I have now finished writing my final thesis to Helsinki University and am able to concentrate on this project again. At the moment I am browsing women’s sportwear catalogues with great excitement, fishing for some trendy designs for our dancing queen. Stay tuned!

Trix dancer test stage from Jenny Tirkkonen on Vimeo.

Bachelor of Arts -Thesis is waiting for evaluation

As discussed in an earlier post, I am writing my final thesis for the Bachelor of Arts at Helsinki University this spring. After several months of hard work, back aching from carrying mountains of books back and forth, and fingers sore from typing, I am proud to announce that I have now handed in, exactly yesterday, my thesis for final inspection.

All in all the much feared writing process went incredibly smoothly. As I was able to maintain a stable speed of 2 pages every day, I was able to complete the 30 page thesis in 14 days exactly, with which I was extremely satisfied with. About 1,5 months was spent searching for reference materials, but this was to be expected as I was well aware of being a fast writer but a less skilled at gaining reference materials.

My professor has not yet given her correction suggestions and there will be a group meeting amongst all thesis writers where the written papers are discussed and graded, but my paper, hand on the heart, is well written and I don´t see any potential problems. My heart and head feels light and incredibly relieved; this is it, I will really and truly graduate soon.

Videogames and the problematics of non-physical and native digital existence from the perspective of cultural heritage -An academic paper

Not exactly 3D or even a visual piece, I still figured this might be of interest to a reader. As I am finishing my bachelor studies of Folklore at Helsinki University this spring, one of my last courses was a lecture series about introduction to preserving and understanding cultural heritage. As my final essay, I wrote a  relatively short academic paper about how videogames are seen in the field of culture preserving and what kind of thoughts it even awakens in one to consider them as such.

My case example was Computerspielemuseum in Berlin, the oldest museum in the world solely established to preserve older games and culture related to them. I was able to find an interview of the museum curator, Andreas Lange, and various very interesting academic articles about this subject. It thrilled me to find out how much academic information and debate exists over the matter usually, or  at least before, not considered as high culture. Especially emulation was considered  problematic, due to legal issues, in general having in recent years developed into an academic hotspot of debate.

I do want to remind, that I am not claiming inventorship over this subject, but am writing from only rather interesting fusion point, drawing perspective from both the more traditional studies of cultural heritage in general and from the preservation work done by videogame fan-activists, dealing with legality issues, presenting their side of the issue. Unfortunately this paper is written with my native language of finnish, but I hope the finnish readers enjoy it and find interesting new aspects from it.

Introducing: Elisabeth

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First skecthing of Elisabeth.

Elisabeth sideview.

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Mentioned secretively only as an upcoming project, Elisabeth is now up and running. I am collaborating with a programmer to help him with his Master´s thesis from Aalto University, department of computer science.

The plan is to integrate Elisabeth into a dance game similar to Dance Dance Revolution as an automated example how to complete a song perfectly. The game will play a song and Elisabeth will dance a 100% score, so the human player can observe her feet movement to understand how to clear parts of the song that are difficult for him or her.

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Front view before adding the hair.

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I´ll be responsible for designing, modeling, texturing, rigging and animating Elisabeth. The programmer will be responsible for integrating Elisabeth into the game. Right now Elisabeth is modeled and FK-rigged, but not textured. This weekend she will receive an IK rig and the production of animations will start. We will also discuss, what rest of the team behind the game is looking for in the means of texture. We are using Blender and Unity for this project,Photoshop later for texturing.

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Our sporty girl from behind.

…and from side view.

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My goal for Elisabeth was not to make another unrealistic manga-like image of a woman for gaming; anyone having tried those fast-paced dance games can assure you, that we are talking about a very sport-like experience. Sporty people are not anorexic, but muscular and balanced in structure, much like the beauty ideals of ancient Greece. That is what I wanted from Elisabeth, a sporty, healthy looking semi-realistic look, packed with some curves. She also has feminine but sporty hairstyle.

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Close-up front with the hair.

The braid was done with a free python script.

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As mentioned in my last post, I am graduating from Helsinki University (degree is Bachelor of Arts) from the faculty of arts this spring and I am writing my final thesis at the moment. As these two projects are overlapping, I am trying manage them both as balanced as possible, trying to get my uni papers properly together but not to leave my programmer dude hanging. Obviously this is going to be a lot of work and will require some  flexibility from our schedules, but I believe this can be done.

Bachelor of Arts: a light at the end of the academic tunnel

After being somewhat occupied with my university studies of the major of folklore at Helsinki University the whole autumn, completing my degree is quite near. I am worn out  all the way to my bones, but have a vibrant sensation of happiness about it: Being a Bachelor of Arts is only one half written final thesis away. With the current progress rate, it strongly looks like the thesis will be out this spring.

After the degree is complete, giving it a lot of thought, I have decided not to pursue the university studies any further. As much as I value and respect the academic world, I have come to understood my own nature is more of an artisan´s; there just isn´t a greater joy than making things from a scratch. Therefore, after this thesis, I feel it´s time for me to pursue being the best damn 3D professional I can be, day and night, no excuses.

Running two higher education degrees simultaneously is no light task and I do not recommend anyone trying it (ironically, that is exactly what was told to me.)  My other degree,Bachelor of Media (from Metropolia), was completed spring 2012, consisting of 240 credits. Bachelor of Arts from Helsinki University will consist of 180 credits. With both of these chapters in my life rightfully cleared, I feel really good about seeking permanent migration to working life.

Syysgraph 2013: I was like, YES

The ultimate yes-man is telling you to attend, right now. Yes, yes YES!

← I found this witty card during my vacation in Berlin. It was actually promoting a local theater, but the headline is rapidly spreading amongst my firiends as a one-liner!

And  just in time back from Berlin, I´ll be attending the Syysgraph 2013 tomorrow, 14.11.2013. Looking forward into some great professional presentations and discussions on (and off-) topic! I was like, YES.

I hope to see many familiar faces, but I absolutely welcome a discussion from a reader of this portfolio as well. I´ll be more than happy to have a chat and answer any questions, so don´t hesitate to grab my sleeve if I walk by! 😉

Doctor doctor, I´ve got a fever- and the only cure is more mudbox!

Screenshot (lo-res) of a successful normal map config from Blender, running cycles engine

As my previous project entry date probably suggests, I may have to admit, that I am not the best diary keeper out there.  Never the less, I am trying to adjust myself to the habit of keeping regular documentation of my doings and thoughts from now on.

So, just recently I got really excited about putting my hands into virtual clay, when experimenting with asmall 3D project. By a random chance, I had the opportunity to dig out an older piece of work, which also can be found from my gallery here. So I took this older model of the human hand and polished it somewhat with Mudbox, sculpted bloodvessels and examined the anatomy more carefully, even did some very crude skin pattern- texturing. And oh my- had so much fun with it!

Being an old pottery hobbyist, I can´t help it but feel really primal and genuine joy every time I´ve got a good reason to play a little with Mudbox. It feels always silly afterwards, that I even needed a “good reason” to touch this cool software and technology and remember how awesome it is.  My only cause of dissatisfaction at the moment is really the fact that Mudbox seems to generate alarmingly many unnecessary errrors into the normal maps that are baked. After some studying, trial and error too, I gave up altogether the effort to generate any kinds of maps within the programme, as there is a smaller plugin- like behaving software called “Xnormal“, which seems to me much more stable and error- free option ( Free in monetary terms too, I really recommend trying it out if any of you are experiencing similar difficulties with your models and their normal maps.)

So during this project, I was able to try out many cool things: Sculting very fine details into a realistic model, playing with some brushes, scraping  it with some texture arcs, printing my loving strokes into various maps and then taking the whole show into Blender, where I created an IK to FK- switchable skeleton for the hand and did some meditation on the inner life of the Blender´s (somewhat infamous) node editor to connect all the “wires” correct to see how my sculpting turned out. Mostly I was happy with my experimentations and what came out of them. I have a feeling that me and Mudbox should be friends, close friends.

Never the less, I really hope I am able to sculpt little more frequently  in the future.  But definitely, all reasons to touch Mudbox are good reasons. There might be another project coming up quite soon, where I could do some real time- character maps with it, but I would rather unveil it little bit later, as deadlines are getting agreed and set.

A diary of interests- the rants behinds the projects

What to expect:

Welcome to my recents projects- blog.  Here I will comment on some personal new interests and visual passions, also show in-between shots of future works as they develop. Some interests may even go bit off-topic from the visual world, as I also have interests from other fields; besides a visualista by trade, I also have committed several years of studies at Helsinki University at the faculty of arts.  My major was folklore and I also had special interest in the roman literature and latin language . I feel being open about these interests is favorable way of action, for obtaining a broader view of me as a person and even more important  -how I function as a graphicist. I am more of  an artisan by spirit, but have a major respect for the academic world, which I hope will lead to a unique view over the graphics scene and all the possibilities it has to offer.