Extended Major Project Begins!

So begins my Magnum Opus! The final chapter in my journey through university modelmaking! In this project I will be creating two pieces of work, one is a live brief. In this first post I will breifly outline the two projects.

Project 1: "Tracking Dinosaurs" live brief from the National Museum of Wales.

In this project I will be producing a short educational documentary about how footprints become fossilized. Many prehistoric footprints of early Dinosauria have been found in Wales. South Wales was a large plain made up of river systems in the Triassic period - about 250 million years ago. During the period of Earth's history the first Dinosaurs appeared. They left evidence in the form of fossilized bones and footprints that can give us clues as to the way that they lived. The purpose of the documentary is to follow the life of the footprint from when it was made by a Plateosaurus, to when it was unearthed by paleontologists - and all the processes it went through inbetween.

My learning aggreement requires me to model the Plateosaurus as accuartely as I can, however I wish to place it in an eductional context that will be attractive to industry at the show.




Project 2: Hobby model kit of the ship "Kosmonaut Yuri Gagarin."

This project is a somewhat unorthodox one. I will be designing a model kit intended for hobbyists, the model will be of the Soviet sattellite tracking ship "Kosmonaut Yuri Gagarin." My learning aggreement requires the digital design as the final outcome, however if time and funds allow I will have the designs rapid prototyped and then mould and cast a few samples for the show.






















The first stage is research, which will follow in this log.

Fur really is murder - Part 3.

Having layed out Tigger's UVs I thought I'd give some fur effecs a go. Boy was that a mistake. Though once I got the hang of it results started to come through, and I'm pleased so far. The first step was to create a new fur description. All you see at this point is white spikes placed all over the body. However, after you edit some atributes like global scale, hair widths and so on it starts looking more like a coat of fur. The first thing you have to do is comb the fur into the directions you want, as they are all over the place to begin with. After combing you get something like this:

Once all the combing was tweaked to satisfaction I started editing attributes such as length, scraggle, clumping, and many others to get somewhere to start with:

The next step is to paint on the length map, so that the hair is the right length at a given point. Other attributes still needed tweaking at this stage. To cut a very long, complicated and laborious story short I ended up with this:

There is still a long way to go, but it's a pleasing start.

There's more than one way to skin a cat

Though I have now met the assesment requirements that I set out for myself, there's no reason to stop there. I think people will see what I have done as more of a "finished product" if he is more complete in his appearance. So, with my spare three days before the deadline I will attempt to texture and fur him. My progress so far has been good. I spent some time laying out his UV's by hand, only using planar projections and then stitching and sewing the UV's together. In order for his fur to work this has to be done, but it also allows me to create textures for his nose, paws and skin easily. Here is a snapshot of the layed out UV's:

I think I have done quite well here, and my mapping skills seem to have developed since the virtual modelling and apache projects.

However when I have finished texturing and fur I will have to delete all the history on the mesh, which will mean I have to re-skin him. This is not too big an issue however, and I'm sure I can do better than my first skin. The first skin process went quite well and works pretty satisfactorally. Though much practice is needed yet. Here's a snap:

The result is pleasing, and he behaves much like the digital puppet he should be, with very few glithches and unexpected behaviours. Here's the first pose I put him in, which was quick and simple to do using the controls I set up:

Dem bones dem bones dem dry bones

I've decided rigging is best left to sailors.

Ok well it's easy to get a little discouraged sometimes I guess. The rig so far is thuswise:



Yes, it looks pretty. But it's not a very good rig. So I'm starting again.
The biggest problem I'm having is (predictably) the flaoting clavicle bones. Because these move o much in real cats it needs to be present and articulated on the rig. However normal shoulders (like yours and mine) have very little play in them in comparison, with rotation being their main method of movement. A cats move alot more, as well as rotate, this makes it very tough to control and getting the relationship between the shoulder and the rest of the leg right is downright solid.
I have learned alot from the first rig however, and I'm no stranger to starting over from scratch. So I'll start again, and do it my way.

Tigger takes shape

I'm more or less at the end of the modelling stage now. I've tried to create a bald cat, but slightly fleshed out so as to reduce the amount of fur I would have to put on him. His poly count is 2470 tris, which is pretty good considering I wanted to keep him low poly for easy fur rendering.

I've re-proportioned him a little, as he was built more like a panther than a domestic cat, so I've reduced his general beefyness but he's still quite muscular as TB is. Here's a screen shot.



I have found out that the workflow for a furred character is this:

• Model
• Lay out UV's
• Texture/materials
• Fur
• Rig
• Skin

So this makes actually applying fur risky time wise. I think that I will procede to the rigging stage, but only build the rig. When I am happy with the rig I can import his geometry and add fur, then skin him. This should mean I can meet my assessment criteria, and go a little further. I think this is safe as the model didn't take too long.

I have also left certain things off the model by request of Steve. To speed things up, I am not required to add an rigged mouth. I.e he will always have his mouth shut. This can be added later. I've also left dtail off the limbs and paws, this can be done with fur and maps instead. this should make him a very efficient, but low res character which would fit Steve's budget in industry.

Caturday

Here's TB so far. This is about five hour's work. Alot of work still needs doing, but it's a good start.

Everyone hates the crazy frog but....

It's a pretty good animated music video. So here it is, for your annoyance.



I think one has to admit that he has alot of character, even if it is intensely irritating.