ANIM2001: CGI-1

This Week i began to tackle the UV mapping, i followed a very hand tutorial (linked below) which diverged from the Lynda tutorial quite significantly. i chose to follow this tutorial as opposed to the Lynda tutorial for 2 reasons. 1. the Lynda tutorial was done some 4-5 years ago at this point, and Maya is massively updated since then, so it is a better idea to follow a more contemporary tutorial, and 2. This method allows me to minimise the amount and size of files i use on my model, meaning that my model will be better optimised and render faster. In addition to these, this tutorial pointed me at a set of official tools that are not advertised in the actual program itself.  my method is as follows: To Begin with, i watched the tutorial, which pointed me in the direction of a Maya Plug-in from Auto-desk itself (publishers of Maya). This plug in, labelled BONUS TOOLS, has an auto unwrap UV tool. While it claims it is an Automatic tool, you still have to manually cut the UV's y...

This week was the final stages of my build were underway, i began by creating the looks hairs at the front of the hair and by the ears. to do this i created a cylinder, made one end a point by scaling the edges down to the point, the extrudes and rotated to match the t-pose. i then combined them with the larger overall model. to make the larger hair strands i employed the same technique but flattened the mesh so they were no longer tubes. I had left a hole at the rear of the hair so that i could make a ponytail this week, This build was very straightforward process, i extruded the hair out from the hole, and expanded to create the large volume of the hair, and then as i rotated and extruded down i then made the mesh smaller until it became a point. i then tweaked the topology to make it look less symmetrical, as a pony tail wouldn't be like that in real life. Once i was happy with the tweaks i had made to the ponytail, i duplicated the hair strands i built earlier an...

To build there hair, i found no tutorials that i found useful for the construction of my hair, so i had to create it from what i had learned in maya through this course. It was somewhat poetic that the last part of my build required me to build something without help and solely with the tools and techniques i have learnt over the past months. To Begin with i created the hair in 3 parts,  the sides and the top. I built the basics of the top of the hair last week. So to begin this week i began with the sides of the hair. To Begin with. i created a polygon sphere, and cut it in half, i then cut out where the centre of the hair would be, i then extruded the faces of the hair out to give it depth, however when i put the hair on top of the head this looked weird, so i cut out the faces on the bottom of the hair, and moulded the hair around the scalp of the character. Once i was happy with the 3 pieces of the hair mesh i merged the mesh and merged the verts to the centre, i then...

This week i wanted to focus on finishing the Face, this included the mouth bag, complete with tongue and teeth. To do this, i had to really utilise the duplicate tool and use it to its full potential. To start, seeing as i intended to have the model's face as symmetrical as possible, till the end, i cut the model in half so i could see the inside of the mouth easier while i build it. I decided that this would be easier than constantly hiding and showing the mouth, as i could always have the face on reference  to line up the teeth with the jaw. Here are the teeth that i created, following the Lynda tutorial, i found this build much easier than i thought it would be. i began with a polygon donuts and cut it in half, and then cut off the top half of the faces, i then made a box and scaled it down to fit the size of the gum ,i then extruded into the box, to make a basic teeth shape. I wasn't really concerned about going into insane detail with the teeth, as it not would...