Test Lighting

Semester 1 Summary: Slava's Models

It's Chrimbo, so I'm sticking up "round up" posts for all the stuff  i've done this semester. This post is all about the models i've done for this film only: Waddles the 6 headed beast, a rag doll easter egg and wellies. 

Wings for Waddles:

 I looked at existing model reference from Dreamworks' "How to Train Your Dragon"

These are the Calum's designs which i used inside Maya, while modelling

And these are the results:

As for Waddles himself, here's the run-down:

This is Kirsteen's character design which i tried my best to stick closely to while modelling.

 I was influenced by the construction of existing models of dragons, in particular. "How to Train Your Dragon"s designs tread the silly cartoon/ scary monster line so well that i had to think of them when i was modelling Waddles, especially this 2 headed bugger...

 The construction of Waddles was so odd that my mind instantly jumped to- Hippopotamus. Although really he's more of a reverse hippo: if you were to switch a hippo's back legs with it's front you'd have a structure identical to Waddles since his front knees bend back and his back knees bend forward... much like a human trying to walk on all fours.The folds and evident lumbering weight on a hippo also reminded me of the way Waddles was designed, with fatty rings cutting off his legs at the shoulders.

I took note of Chris' comment on my model before it was entirely finished:; that i could emphasise the weight on it's back end more with a bend in the legs, he looked far too spritely, so baring in mind the bend in the back leg that hippo's demonstrate i added it to my model.

 My master model, all the way round with a clean outliner. Colours!

 More topology was added at the major joints on request by Nikki. I try to keep in contact with riggers near the completion of any models i make, to make sure everything is as they want it before i hand it over.

Jess Doll: This is my turnaround for Jess Doll, 

based, of course, on my character design for our 3rd year film "Jurassic Jess" 

Turning our little girl into a doll involved thinking about what she'd be full of: i.e. stuffing, or beans or fluff? I settled on quite a weighty look, inspired by my own concepts from 3rd year, i always drew her bunches and jumper with weight.

I decided to construct her like a beannie baby doll, sitting on her butt, bent over with weight and dangley arms and legs. Laika's Coraline was the inspiration for her button eyes, a slightly sinister twist! I had in mind, a doll that looked hand made and old and used, not new and shiny, so the buttons were an indication of that. the throw back to Coraline emphasised the "hand made" nostalgic feel i think stop mo. has.

This is a side character from Pixar's Toy Story. In the future i plan to sculpt texture into Jess' hair in Zbrush, and this is exactly the texture i'd be going for; thick wooly ropes.  

 This is my master model:

 The kids' wellies I modelled as "clutter props" for the kids' bedroom started life as Jess' wellies, but i then change their shape to match more with realistic, existing, children's clothes. My final model was also textured by me.

Girl Rig!

It's 5:50am and I've forgotten how to write, but here's a picture of Ellie's body, all rigged and what not.

Bed texture testers

Here's some samples of the patterns for the bed covers for the boy and girl. should update with more texture shots soon. :)

-Charlie

Okay, so...

 After my very late realisation/recollection that the head Dan had been texturing was slightly different to the one I'd been rigging, I've been working on transferring to the rig over. Having some grief with weight painting, but it's nothing I havent dealt with before. 

Expect Sam and Ellie rigs done in the next few days, and some animation by the weekend! :)

Sam Rig is DONE

So, after several different attempts at several face rigs that broke... it's DONE!

And the icing on the cake is... the way that worked in the end only took me 3 or so days. And that's with thinking time! So here's hoping the Ellie Rig'll take no more than 2 days.

So annoying that I've been hitting a wall with this for about 3 weeks, and suddenly it clicked. I mean, it's good that it clicked, but it took so long. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the learning process, but I don't really have time for it at this point!

I won't bore you with technicalities at this point, I'll just stick up a few pictures.
I'll try to put up a video over the weekend of the rig working!

Cheers!

Waddles' finishing touches!

I call him Waddles, because i can really imagine him walkin' funny. But this should hopefully be one of the last modelling progress posts for Ellie's Monster, formally "Monster 2".

 On Chris' advice i bent the back knee a little to indicate the weight of the monster's flank on it. I also added more edge loops around the joints to ease rigging and weight painting.

Wings!

i looked at some reference of how one would rig a wing before i started modelling but soon realised Calum's design was very simplified and would not require all the joints shown above, however, this bird wing reference did come in handy when i was building the more realistically drawn Evil fairy wing: see, below.

 I built the bird wing on 2 layers i started creating a simple cube and manipulating its divisions and overall shape.

 I then extruded faces to make the feathers

 i added topology minimally to achieve the right feather shape

 I built the second layer of the wings the same way

 I rounded the "shoulder" lump

 I added topology to create indented centres and plump sides for the feathers

 Before starting the Evil fairy wing i looked at the bird wing rigging reference (above) and images of bats, as the joint structure is clearly evident through their thin wings.

I started by creating and duplicating 8 cylinders

I shaped them t match the bones in Calum's drawing

I joined them together and added topology to make the spikes seem as if they were pushing out through the flesh surrounding the bone

 I extruded a plane from the edges of the cylinders to create the membrane wing

 The Fairy wing was created using a similar process to the Evil fairy wing

 (once i had created the front/ main wing shape, i duplicated it, deleted the bottom bone i had already built on the base, and attached the duplicate in it's place to save time)

 Before finishing up, i attached all of the wings to the shoulder of the main model in turn to make sure they fitted perfectly, and then kept them as separate objects on their own named layers.

P.S. The inside mouths for all of Waddles' heads are also complete now.