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Showing posts from October, 2025

Reflective Journal: Week 12 - Turntable

I've just made some adjustments to the moustache and hair. I added some more edgeloops across the moustache to help keep its shape a little. The hair could probably use some more structure as well and it's not quite finished (gaps where it connects to the head) but I don't think I have the time. I've adjusted where the hair sits behind the ear (where the ear will go). We are planning on setting up and rendering the turntable at the Thursday workshop or earlier. A majority of the modelling is done - we've still just got the rest of the jacket (the fluffy details are a little finnicky to model), combining the vehicle parts, and the 3D ear model + attachment. Jasper has combined the vehicle parts. There were a few parts that had too many edgeloops such as the wheel bars(?) which would have made rendering even lengthier so I've reduced some objects and deleted some duplicated objects that I think I've managed to identify. Antonio's parts have some topology i...

Reflective Journal: Week 11 - Attaching Things

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Monday I've finished modelling the hair. I've managed to avoid any triangles or n-gons although I'll need to connect it to the scalp a bit better (if I find the time) and that might involve some triangles. These would mostly be in hidden spots such as behind the ear and near the nape of the neck. Modelled the inside of the mouth. I'll stop it here because the back of his mouth will mostly be covered by the teeth. I mostly felt I needed to model the interior since the inside of the cheeks would be showing. Will probably need to model gums but I'll save this for if I have time since it's quite an unnoticeable detail. Modelled tear ducts. I made the neck 16 sides and managed to resolve an existing triangle in a kinda rough way I think but it doesn't matter too much since it's in a hidden area. I did adjusted the body's neck to be 16 sides as well. I was having a lot of trouble with parts of the head rotating, moving and scaling separately when I tried t...

Technical Notes: Week 11

Shared OneDrive files are good for working on one Maya project as a group. I don't tend to trust OneDrive though, as sometimes it doesn't sync properly or I can't log in on a campus PC (like right now :( )  Our group has been working on separate Maya project spaces, saved to our P drives. For connecting pieces or referencing parts between our work, I've created a shared OneDrive folder for us to place the Maya files that we intend to share with each other. This saves some confusion when dealing with each other's multiple incremental saves (figuring out which one to use when combining things) as well.

Reflective Journal: Week 10

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progress img I'm working at a pretty good pace. I should be able to finish this basic head within the week and hopefully I'll have time to reshape it by the end of the week as well. The base head is done. It's not perfect but it doesn't need to be since I'll just adjust it from here to fit the character design. I adjusted the nose to be pointed down and larger, and squared out his jawline. Oana has given me some pointers on adjusting the face using the soft selection and sculpting tools. This has been useful in making big changes to the form without disrupting the overall topology and while keeping things relatively smooth. She also noted that I should add an extra edge loop at the tip of the nose to keep its form sharp. Here's the head with the adjustments made largely using the soft selection tool. It's looking a lot more like the character now. I mostly configured the mouth and squared the jaw out, pulling the cheeks out as well. I also stretched the head...

Technical Notes: Week 10

Soft Selection and  Sculpting Tools     These tools are both good for selecting and moving an area of the of the model. This is good for making big, smooth adjustments - pushing and pulling     press b to toggle soft selection      b + middle-drag left or right to increase or decrease the size of the falloff area starting from 0.      b + drag left or right to resize the falloff area starting from the last radius value. I modelled the head this week and didn't really come across many issues. I got more practice on different tools, working from polygons, and pulling things with the soft selection tool.  With all the different parts of the head, I'm working with many more objects in one scene than I had before (head, eyeballs, teeth, eyebrows, moustache, and teeth). Because they've all been symmetrical parts, I've been really getting the hang of using the duplicate special tool to create matching sides that are linked ("Instance"...