Texturing- Man

I followed the same process as I did when I textured the cat, unwrapping each body part and arranging the UVs to make sure the checkered pattern was even all over, though I enlarged the head in UV space to allow for more space for detail. I took care around the legs to make sure the striped pattern fabric I planed to use wouldn't look strange.



I decided to paint on the creases for the pulled fabric around the waist, keeping the model simple with the detail in the texture.



Like the cat's texture, I edited it in photoshop till it looked the way I wanted it to. Once saved, the photoshop file updates in the maya window once you click reload so I could easily make changes and see how the image looks in 3D.



Final textured man

Texturing- Cat

Having experimented previously with fur, I know how heavy it can be to render. I want to keep my models as light as possible to allow for quick rendering and playback that is close to real time and improve my animation in regards to timing. The fur effect will have to be entirely texture based and simplified.

I started off by UV mapping my cat. I think I've become better at UV mapping as this project has gone on, in my last project the textures were simple so accurate UV mapping wasn't as important, but in this project it will be. I textured my cat with a checkered pattern to see and adjust parts of the texture that were stretched or squashed. When all the squares of the pattern are roughly the same size, I can be sure that any textures I create will display as they should.

Checkered cat, correctly UV mapped



As for colour, I wanted to keep to the simple colour palette of a black and white cat, not wanting to complicate things by trying to re-create an intricate tortoise shell pattern. The typical black and white cat has a white chest and underbelly, white paws and sometimes partly white faces.

I didn't want to recreate exactly my black and white cat, Sparky, but something similar would be ideal.



Something like Felix from the cat food adverts. I like the small amount of white on the lower part of his face and the middle of his forehead.



I like how the fur is on this cat. Where the black meets the white there is some overlap with a few strands of hair, represented by a few brush strokes. I also like his pink nose and feet.



I tried to re-create that effect in the texture I created. I like the effect, its simple but still hints at the presence of fur.



Final textured cat

Character Modelling- Owner

Starting off with the image planes, front and side, I modelled the man...



I started with the head and made sure the edge loops flowed correctly around the surface of the face as I did with the cat, especially around the eyes and the mouth.



Then I carried on, extruding edges down the body, adding edge loops and moving vertices where needed.








I modeled the hair separate from the body, keeping it slightly asymmetrical.



I extruded the edges of his mouth inwards to make the mouth sack and modeled simple teeth.



Reading the manual for the face machine, they recommend modeling the eyes closed, so I went back and modelled the eyes closed to allow for better deformation.

Character Modelling- Cat

I set up image planes in new cameras with a front, back and side view and saved a layout with all angles and saved it to my shelf to easily view and switch between them.




The modelling technique I used allows me to match the designs precicely and allows for intricate detail where its needed. Starting with a plane and extruding edges, I followed the designs set up in the imageplanes, modelling one side with the intention of mirroring the geometry over onto the other side.



While the eye sockets here matched the design, the shape needed altered to acomodate a sphere eyeball.

Also the mouth, not clear in the 2d design, needed to be made as the cat will need to open its mouth to meow. I made sure to keep decent edgeflow around the mouth and eyes to allow for better and more realistic deformation when it comes to rigging.






Instead of smoothing the model, creating more polygon faces and slowing down my computer, I just smoothed the normals for smoother shading.

Completed modelling

Evolved Aims and learning outcomes

As the project has gone on, my aims and learning outcomes have changed to be more specific to what I want to achieve and the skills I want to learn/ improve.

Aim

To push myself further in terms of animation and apply knowledge learned throughout the course into a outcome that looks professional

New learning objectives

Improve on timing, character performance and acting with the use of reference videos.
Demonstrate understanding of key animation principles
Advance my skills in texturing, lighting and rendering to achieve a professional appearance

I still want to be able to show the film to a variety of festivals.

Rigging considerations and options

Thinking about rigging, I looked around for suitable autorig scripts. While I could spend the time and brain power to rig from scratch, autorigging scripts provide a short cut to a very high quality rig. The better the rig, the more fluid the range of movement and the animation can be better as a result. As I have no desire to get into rigging as a career finding a decent autorig script will save me a lot of much needed time.

The one I used on my previous project (rigomatic) is suitable for biped characters, but unsuitable for quadrupeds like my cat. Also while it rigged the character I still had to paint the skin weights, a very time consuming process, even though I'm faster at it now than I used to be.

Browsing around I found this promosing script, The Setup Machine It not only creates a high quality rig, it also applies accurate skin weighting. You can also use it to create Quadruped characters, exactly what I need.

Also by the same company, there is The Face Machine an auto rig for rigging faces. I looked at the manual for information on how it works, all you do is reposition curves to fit the proportions of your face and it automatically creates point weighting based on the position of those curves. It looks like a very useful script and if it works, will save me even more time and allow for a greater range of facial movement. Most of the expression is in and around the eyes and the eyebrows so it would be good if I can have a good range of movement there. In my previous project I experimented a bit with blendshapes, mainly for the eyes, so that they were able to blink, but the blink alone needed 4 different heads to get the eyelid to curve around the eye rather than passing straight through it. Just thinking about the amount of blendshapes I'd need for a full face makes me queasy, an autorig script for faces is an ideal solution.

Obviously for the cat, the face rig would be unsuitable but the cat doesn't need as much expression as the man, he just needs to be able to open his mouth, perhaps move his ears (I can do these with joints), move and blink his eyes I've found a good tutorial on a simple eye set up for blinking eyes without the use of blendshapes.

Maquettes

To model my characters in maya, it helps to have a physical 3D sculpture (maquette) that I can hold and turn around and see the character from all angles.

With a wire and foil skeleton and super sculpy exterior, here are my pre-baked models.