Final Dissertation Proposal

After conducting many more hours of research and after discussing with my tutors I have now completed my Dissertation Proposal and handed it in.

This is a quick overview of what I am now going to be undertaking over the next academic year within the Dissertation Module.

I am going to be carrying on my research into 3D Modelling techniques and testing and playing with them until I find some that I like. Once I have found these I will be starting my modelling process. I still haven't decided yet whether I will be creating the model as a whole piece or as individual pieces and compile them together once all of the parts are completed. I will be deciding this when experimenting with the different techniques I find as different aspects of the armour appear to be more difficult to model than others so may be more beneficial for me to model them separately with different techniques as this may speed up my modelling time. If however I find a modelling technique that will work well with all aspects of the model I will make the model as a whole suit instead of the previous modelling method. I will be making my higher poly version of the model at around 10-15k polys as this appears to be the average poly count for higher end in game models.

After completing this stage I will be Unwrapping the UVW's of the completed model in 3ds Max, then export them into Mudbox and will be adjusting and tweaking the model to give it neater edges and more detail to give the appearance of a higher quality model than the physical model that was made in Max. Once I am happy with the details I have added to the Mudbox model I will then export it and Bake it onto the lower quality model as a Normal Map to give it the desired effect and usability within a game engine.

This is a very popular method of high quality character modelling as this gives a model the appearance of being a much higher quality than they really are, meaning less stress is put on the game engine when running the model. This will also give me a lot of information and techniques to research within Mudbox as well as showing me a lot of the capabilities and uses of Mudbox. Upon completing my dissertation I will have hopefully learned a lot of new skills within both pieces of software and this will also greatly help with employability and my portfolio for the future.