Week 2

Week 2 saw alot of modelling practice. This was done from tutorials in a book called Maya for Games by Michael Ingrassia. I feel that the modelling practice really helped me grasp the concept of modelling within 3d space and it helped me get more comfortable with using the perspective view when modelling as opposed to the orthographic viewpoints. I also modelled my first human hand, head and body and really managed to understand the whole process alot better. 

This tutorial taught me how to use new tools within maya such as Blend shape and how that can help model which is how I modelled the fingers. I then went on to create a basic rig for the hand. 

(I apologise for the pose if it offends you but I thought it was hilarious) This basic rig was created using the Joint tool and then the mesh was attached using the Bind skin tool. The only problem I found with this was that when I moved the rig around the mesh deformed at certain points. I found out that this was because I had to paint the skin weights on the vertices by hand which is something I will bear in mind next time. 


Toby Rutter - 'its likely just a skinning problem, you need to paint weights per vertex telling maya which verts to move when a particular joint moves'

Above is the face I modelled again based off the tutorial. I found this tutorial extremely useful as it gave me an insight into how to model a face and how and where to start as I had no clue previous to this tutorial. Some feedback I received about this head from my fellow peers. 

Matt Hart Pretty good for a first :) the nose goes mega thin towards the top tho, lips are done well.

I found that Facebook is an extremely useful tool for getting feedback from fellow peers and so I will continue to post my work via Facebook aswell to gain this valuable feedback.

Modelling this head gave me the confidence to go on and model my own head without a tutorial so using some images I found on Google Images I managed to create this....

I would like to further work on this model once I have got abit more confident with modelling and I hope to model the body aswell to create a full 3D Darth Vader. 

http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/visualdevelopmentofdarthvader.html

(Great link to the visual development of Darth Vader which I found very useful and also very interesting)

I did model a low poly body for the soldier which gave me a great understanding how to model a body using reference images such as a character sheet. 

The plan for week 3:

• Monday & Tuesday  - Model a low poly human (Not sure if i'm going to do a male or female)
• Wednesday & Thursday - Research texturing and create simple textures for low poly assets.
• Saturday & Sunday - Rig the low poly human and research rigging methods.

Next Monday I will post the review for the week.