Character Process

(Double click on a picture to enlarge)

If anything is to small to see you can double click on a picture 

Sketchbook designs

First thing I did was come up with some sketchbook ideas 

  

Started with several animal cause I always find them easiest to do develop aswell as robots I had a robot idea on the beginning.

 Here are 3 other characters that I designed and modeled as test practices in maya

 Design of final Character

When i had first hadn my character in mind hw was more humaniod but i try one idea with him noral and the other deformed.

 Also tried giving him more character and making him posh with a Monicle and more bulky and stronger looking.

 Also tried fat and skinny aswell which would of changed the way my animation would of turned out

also  had a mode humaniod version that would of been.pretty fast and more calm than idea 1

Final design and colour 

  

 This is my final character it was idea 2 but with a few changes like the feet has added toes.

Turnarounds

Color tests/ turn around

Had to do the turnarounds twice one with the helmet one without in the in the end I made the shoulders slightly bigger also

Topology

Model 

This is the beginning of me making a model it has beads for the joints and eyes the legs are made out of poles as for the arms they could of been made out of plastic like the helmet.

Animatics

Here are the animatics to the animation the final ankimation became a fusion of a three

3D model on Maya

Here is an early attmept at me modelling evereything was easy to make expect the arm which I designed and model 3 or 4 times before get them the way I want.

The wonderful process of Uv mapping 

 here is my Model with Uv mapping that help show me where everything is.

 

Pieces of my arm and palm without the thumb 

 

 Some problems I faced when uv mapping is that cuting uv which was always a problem and the fact 

Here my Uv mapping mostly done 

 Texturing 

This is my try at texturing the problem I had first was that I couldn't get the glass screen to appear I tried    turning the opacity down in photoshop which is the program I used to create the texture. 

I also copied a metallic texture in photoshop over all the parts that are meant to be metal. 

Then I learned that jpeg make fills spaces that should be see through black or white so by changing the file to a Png we got the screen see through however it was causing problems for the texture overall.

This pattern I didn't really like but it did give of a vibe that my character was hot headed.

This Scheme didn't look good 

This scheme also didn't look as good as when it was designed in 2D

 

I liked this on but when i asked others they said it was not a good green 

The original 

I like this one but I wanted the metal more pearl white and less silver 

So by going back to a jpeg I learned that to make parts of my model have different textures I had to assign blinn, hyper shade and anisotropic to selected parts and not have the whole think as a lambert.

After playing with the Lambert, Blinn and Anisotropic a bit I Came up with this as my finial design 

Rigging 

When rigging I had to make sure that first I was no longer on Polygon mode which is for modelling to Animation.

To rig we had to use the joint tool for the bones after I had to IK the joints and because I was making a robot and I didn't want the legs to bend so I had to first hierarchy the Models Joints ( The spheres that are the hip, Knee and ankles ) and then Rigid Bind the Legs (cylinders) and the feet.

Then I had to create controllers to make it easier to move the legs

The spines, Arms and Fuse had used smooth bind instead of rigid.

For the Hands I had to use the set Driven keys

 This was done by Selecting a Controller to be Driver and setting the key so when u move the driver the selected joints would move with it. had a controller for the fingers and the thumb

This is what my hand looked like after The skin was attached 

Wire frame

Rendered version