Piano Modeling

By EJ Halvorson 

Modeling characters is a lot harder than it looks. Originally going into the character modeling side of things I foolishly assumed that it would be rather simple since I concept characters all the time. Working with high poly modeling is something I have done before, and never had too many issues with. In the end I wasn’t able to fully create something 100% game ready, but I am proud of what I accomplished and learned. The process I used was three steps: Concept art, model, texturing.

Piano Ortho Concept Art

Creating the ortho for Piano was the easiest part for me. We began with rounds of concept art which were then voted on by our team, and the winner became the final design. The next step was to simply make an orthographic of the winning design. I had made an orthographic before, and Piano was no different. One thing I did struggle with was the ribbons and the scarf.

Piano Modeling

Modeling Piano was very difficult. I struggled with the mesh, and the smoothing. I found out a lot during this process as I watched endless YouTube videos and got help from our Character Lead Kris. In the end I created a full model for Piano that I was very proud of. 

Piano UVs and Model 

When it came to texturing that is where I struggled the most. Even with everything UV’d I was unable to figure out how to texture everything in time. In the end basic colors and shading were all I could accomplish. Overall I am very proud of the Piano model as this was a dip into something I had never tried before, and I learned a lot!