Feline Unit : Proto 019

- Final renders : rendering in an environment

I wanted to put Proto 019 in an urban environment by night. The building part is a scan that I downloaded from Sketchfab (https://sketchfab.com/artfletch) and the props to bring some life in this scene, come from Quixel Megascan.

I think this is my last update here. It was a great experience to participate for the first time in a contest of The Rookies, it will surely not be the last time ;)

I wish good luck to other robot creators ! Thanks for watching :D

I show you the different steps of my compositing done in Photoshop :

- Lookdev

As promised, here are some shots of lookdev so you can fully see my textured robot. I chose a blue and red light to remind the police, and a white rim light to give volume to my cat robot.

Final renders of my robot in its environment will come next. I hope you'll appreciate it :)

Rendering with Arnold for Maya

- Texturing

Hello guys ! This is the texturing update time :)

I rushed so much until the final renders because I have to catch up on my school projects at the same time. I was taken by the time but here I am today to show you my texturing on Proto 019 :D

It was made with Substance 3D Painter and a little bit of Photoshop to paint the screen parts (face, paw). I wanted my robot to have wear, damage, because hey, it's a police cat above all ! Even though this damage comes from hits of bad people who profit from the failure of Proto 019, which is its naivety and empathy towards anyone.

I present to you some evolutions of the process below :

(Some lookdev renders will come soon so you can see what it looks like when everything is assembled. Can't wait to share this with you!)

- Unwrapping UVs

New update !

So, I unwrapped the UVs, I tried to keep the same texel density everywhere (honestly, I've never organized my UVs so well until today xD).

I will texture 4 groups separately. One group for the head+helmet, one for the body, one gathering the paws and tail, then one that I named "accessories" I mean everything that is not body (armor, cables etc.)

I'm not familiar with UDIM so, yeah, I wanted to play it safe^^

- Posing

You can see here the posing I chose to do. I want it to be menacing but cute at the same time. To be done, I tilted its head and I will put it a cuty face when I'll come to the texturing, with the eyes like "^_^" and cat mouth like ":3".

The process was quite tough, basically I wanted to do the posing in ZBrush but I got some struggles with the robot accessories despite the Transpose Master. 

I did it in Maya, although I had to rebuild its joints to make it cleaner. And I replaced its accessories by hand to fit its pose.

- Modeling

Hey, I'm back :D

Here is my update where I show you how the modeling went. It's still in blocking phase and in T pose but the details and posing will come later when I'll switch to ZBrush.

I'm pretty satisfied with the shape and proportions of its body. I tried to put a maximum of roundness to bring this "cute" side that we are looking for.

See you in the next update !

Thank you for reading, if you have any suggestion i'm open to it. I wish all the best to the contestants ! :)

- Concept

I'm not a very good drawer but I think I put most of what I imagined on the paper !

Proto 019 is wearing several accessories : 

- Defensive (armor plates and helmet)

- Offensive (a 3-hole gun for each arm, a taser as a tail, claws)

- Communicative (antenna to its helmet, flashing lights, screen face that can show different messages as "Halt", "Danger", in a neutral mode we can see his cuty face)

I present you my moodboard ! I found all these pictures on the internet.

Wanting to make a cat robot, I naturally searched for cat robot images, shapes, accessories to add, and the texture/color that I'm looking to do.

I was mainly inspired by the works of Lordyanyu (link : https://twitter.com/lordyanyu?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor), I fell in love with the shape of the bodies of his robot rabbits. So I asked him for permission to use these shapes for my cat robot, which he kindly gave me permission :)

Here is how i'll proceed :

- 2D Concept on Photoshop

- 3D Blockout / Modeling in Maya

- Unwrapping UV in Maya

- Posing in ZBrush

- Texturing in 3D Substance Painter and Photoshop

- Rendering with Arnold for Maya