Prop modelling

Well the characters have now been completed which i am so relieved about, that was a very hard challenge for me, i have learned a whole new way to modelling and i must say that i am really pleased with the results, i can not wait to get them rigged and to start bringing them to life. I think being able to model the characters and animate them is really something amazing. I never thought i would be able to do this and is so excited to bring the animation together.

But in the mean time, i now need to fill my time and help my other team members. My main roll was to model the characters and animate, but there is a rather big gap in between them, so i have asked karl if he needs any help with his prop modelling as he has not really been able to model any toys yet as he has been modeling items like toy boxes, shelf, chest of draws, so i think this will be a good opportunity to help Karl. I have already thought about some things to model. I am going to start on the exterior scene first as there is nothing in the garden to suggest that this tree house is actually in a garden. I am thinking of modeling a slide, swing, a sandpit and a toy house which summer could go in to play. I first need to get some drawings down onto paper and look at images online to see how these things look as they will need to be safer as it is for a young child, so i need to think about soft edges and the design which would attract children to them.

As A Team!

I thought it was about time that i wrote about how we all are getting on as a team as i have not really done that as of yet.
I feel fairly confident as a group, we all get along well and communicate everyday with out fail, a lot of this is through our Facebook group which has really helped us to see how each person is getting along. As we are the second smallest group in our class i think we have a lot more on our hands. Each person has a lot more tasks to complete then any other group which is putting some pressure onto us. Karl and I are a little limited in what we know and what we need to learn to complete the animation. Ryan knows quite a few different things which is a great help, but i need to make sure that all the tasks are fairly handed out.
Karl and I only really know how to animate and model where as Ryan knows how to do them as well as UV mapping and Texturing. So he is a little more ahead of the game if you like. We still need to cover Rigging, lighting, Rendering, Sound and Composting. Karl was originally going to try and take on Rigging for Dan's unit but has decided not to do it now, as he is not confident on trying to do this for such a big project. He has spoken to Laura who is in our class and is interested in Rigging for us, which is great. I do not know much about her rigging skills so i may need to see what she has done previously to see if she is able to take on our characters. The good thing about our characters though is that we only really need the facial rigging to be done well as that is what we are mainly focusing on. So blend shapes will be very important to us.

Now that the characters are complete, i was next set up for animating, but that is a rather big gap, so i need to look into other tasks. I know there is more modeling to be done, for example Summers toys as there are none at the moment, and the exterior scene is looking a little plan so i may need to model some of the garden to bring it to life.

Karl is still sticking to modeling props, i have been really impressed with the props he has modeled so far and i am happy with how he is working. The only thing i would say is that i wish he was a little more willing to try and learn new things. I know it is hard as i am normally the same, but i have made sure to push myself this year to do the best i can. Karl is more about getting his head down and working alone until he is finished, which is fine but i think it may help if joined in a little more.

Ryan is currently modeling too, he is modeling the tree and tree house which is coming along nicely so he knows what he has to do for now. Ryan and i have been working a little more closely than Karl and I as Ryan has been asking me a lot more questions on how should things be done, is this okay, should i try out this instead. So i am glad that Ryan is trying out different things as he is modeling and giving me examples and asking me what i think may work best for the animation.

I am pleased to say that there has been no problems with us three and although we have a lot less people then others i am hoping that we shall be able to get everything completed to a high standard.

Continuation of Pandy

Since the body and leg had been modeled, most of the modeling now becomes easier apart from when it comes to modeling the head which should be interesting. With one leg modeled all i had to do was mirror it. This ensures that both legs will be accurate and this also saves a lot of time.

Now to start with the arm, as for the body and leg i start off with a plan, which i still think is he best method to modeling, i feel i have much more control with what i am doing.

I have jumped a few steps as this is the same process as the other parts. Now you can see the rough form of the arm. I have put it down to his side to see weather it is long enough as a 2D picture can not always be 100%.

Once i was happy with the length i put his arm straight out so that i could start to form his hand a little better. At first i was a little unsure on how to model his hand due to him being a teddy bear and they don't have fingers. This did not take long to resolve as i started to look into teddy bears more in depth, some had no form of a hand what so ever which is not how i wanted Pandy to be as I had to think about how he was going to hold the touch in the animation.

Here is a closer look into how his hand is looking, it is slowly taking form but still needs some work to it. At the tip of the hand you should notice how thin it has got. This was a mistake at first as i did not intend for this hand to be like this. but started to think to myself that this was actually better as this could be shown as where the material of Pandys hand is joined together.

Now Pandy is really taking to shape with just the head to be modeled and then some adjustments to his arms and legs.

Once again, a plane has been used and i moved all the vertex's to roughly get the outline of his head. This looks very strange at this point compared to the rest of his body.

With the same steps as before his head is now complete, but still need to add the features to him. I forgot to add a side profile picture, but i had to make sure that his face was not flat as there is a curve to his face for his nose and mouth. This was fairly straight forward of just pulling the vertex's from the bottom half of his face outwards and reshaping it.

Here i have now created a little nose for him. I was unsure on how to proceed with this as i was unsure if i should make it separate and then place it on, or f i needed to try and model it on his face. I worked out that i needed to play around with the vertex's to get the outline of his nose and then from there all i needed to do is extrude it. Extruding is such a handly tool and never knew of it until modeling the characters.

The same method went for the patches around the eyes. This image was mainly a test to see how it worked and i was really pleased with the results, as i did not just want to place a patch through texturing. This helps to make the character to be more realistic.

Well since the beginning i was looking forward to making Pandy as i knew he would be easier to model than Summer was. I think he has turned out very well and looks a lot like the concept pictures which is a great achievement for me, as Summer had to be changed as i was modeling her and was a little concerned that this was going to happen for Pandy. He still has some work to be done but the hard part has pasted. I need to create a mouth for him which may be a little difficult as our concept image does not show a good indication of that. From here his arms, legs and head all need to attached to the body. Now that i have modeled in this way i have started to wonder if it would have been easier for me to have extruded from the body and then shaped them to form an arm and leg which could have then been mirrored. This would have meant that the arms and legs are already attached together. As this was only the second time i have modeled a character i am still learning, but i am glad to notice that i am spotting out the different ways in which i could have modeled and now know to try in that way in the future to see how that goes. Trail and error is a big part to modeling. There are so many different ways to model, and there is no wrong way to model, but i think there are ways to make them easier for yourself and i just need to experiment more.

Group meeting with Mike Smith

Not long ago we all wanted to talk to Mike about our work to see what he thought towards it and see if there could be any changes to be made to improve our work. He seemed pretty pleased with how things were going and happy that out storyline had changed and is now understandable. He said something to us which we had never really thought about before. Mike asked us why we do not have a house in the exterior shot. At first we said that from the way we was going to have the camera angles you wouldn't see much, but Mike made a good point when we said that the tree house would look like it is in the middle of no where. Mike told us about a programme called Google Sketchup which is a 3D modelling programme but you would not have to do much work for it to be modelled. I researched into the programme but had no idea on how to use it so i said to my other team members that i would model the back of the house using Maya as i was on the modeling stage. Once some of the toy models have been completed then i shall model the house.

Pandy Modeling

Well the modeling stage is here and this is what i have done so far. Dans unit has really helped me to be able to character model, i had done any tests to see which would be the best method to model. With many trials and errors, i found the perfect way which suited me most. As i had learnt this at an eariler stage, this has helped me to be able to model faster and to a higher standard.
Here i have set up my image planes of the side and front so that i have reference for what i shall be making. The templetes shall help me model to the size and scale i need.

Here i have set my a image plane, that i have placed over the body, from here i will need to shape the outline of his body. I have also changed sub divisional lines as you normally have ten horizontal and vertical.

Now that the outline has been done, i then had to start curving the sub divisional lines so that they are more circular so that they will to form the body more.

Here is how the body is starting to take shape since i have been moving the vertex's.

Now with the outline of the body roughly done i then had to start pulling vertex's back to create the side, from which then can be remodeled. Using the side template was a great help for this as i was a little unsure on how far back to place the vertex's.

I have now deleted one half of the body, which seems crazy, but i learned that you can mirror shapes. So here, you can see four different windows, each with different angles to help me shape the body. The bottom right image needs a lot of work to be done. All i have to do now is move all the vertex's lines to the outline of the body as my image plane.

Here is how half of the body now looks after moving a lot of the vertex points, you can now see how much shape it has taken and looks pretty much like the template.

With the great mirror geometry tool i have mirrored the other half of the body. This tool is going to be a great help because it cuts down most of the work by half. But even then, there is still a lot of work to be done which takes many hours to complete.

Now with the front half of the body done, i now need to reshape some of the work i have previously done, as it now looks far to straight at the back.

Here you can roughly see the body done, it still needs to be tidied up, but i now have a space for the head to be placed on as well as the back partly completed.

Now onto the next body part, i do the same steps as i did with the body, this is pretty much a repeated method for each body face i make from now on.

The foot was fairly easy to make as it only needs to be basic. As i was making the foot, i thought it had to be all perfect and symmetrical, but once this was not happening in Maya, i actually realized that teddy bears are not normally made up perfectly, so this actually came about to be a happy mistake. There still needs to be a little more reshaping round the front, but altogether it is not to bad.
Here is the stage i have currently got up now, and had done this fair quicker than what i has expected. I can now mirror the leg, which nearly makes them complete so that i can start working on the arms. The head shall take the most time and i have a few things to work out in order to model his face correctly.

If you look at the image above, you can tell that is image the model looks much smoother, this is because i have used a tool called smooth, which adds its own sub divisional lines to make the model become smoother and more complete.