Self evaluation, AKA, the final post!

It sadly came to my conclusion the other day that I would not be able to accomplish what i set out to do, which is why in this post I'm going to summarise what I did wrong, and how i can improve myself for next time. Hopefully over the Christmas break I will continue working on this project, attempting to fully texture the main model and then later rig properly and animate it!

When we worked on our project, although both of us had created enough development work before we started modeling, when we modeled we decided to model pretty much in Mudbox straight away (though I made an extremely basic mesh in Maya beforehand), instead of going from Maya to Mudbox. Part of this was because we were both slightly concerned as to how to model in Maya, and secondly because we had completely forgotten what we had learnt the previous year. If we had some classes before we modeled, I think we would've been able to achieve everything as we set out to do.

Both myself an Emma used PuppetMaster (suggested by Steve!) to rig the characters easier, since by the time we got to rigging we didn't have as much time as we had hoped. The rigging worked great, however, the painting weights with our extremely high poly models caused A LOT of issues, and at the end of the day was not achievable to get it done. As you can see some posts below, the models when rigged would've been extremely hard to sort out with painting the weights, and we just simply didn't have enough time. Over the Christmas break I hope to continue rigging my character, and then attempting to animate the model as well.

However I have learnt A LOT, and this project has been extremely useful to my knowledge in 3D modeling. I learnt a lot about the development process, colour, and making final model sheets to help create the model. If I do continue I may even somewhat restart the project, and at which point I'd post the process of it here. I will still set myself a deadline, probably about 5 weeks or so (since this term was spent on two projects, hence the time we had), and try and accomplish it COMPLETELY in that time.

Earlier on in the blog I created 2 animation tests to aid me in my process, this was what I was going to animate Wee Eck doing, so hopefully when I continue with the project I can accomplish this in my original claymation vision!





Here is a final render of the model pretty much finished, the only thing I sadly couldn't achieve was the texturing (and obviously the rigging as I mentioned!).



So all in all the project was of great use to me, and that's why I shall continue in accomplishing my claymation piece, I'm also heavily looking forward to the environment project, since this I believe will also be a great help to me for our short films in the BA year!

Finished textured head!

Here's the final finished textured version of Wee Eck's head, I must say I'm EXTREMELY happy about the final outcome of this! I look forward to working more on the project over the Christmas break, since I think it would be great to finish it at some point.

Hopefully I'll be able to finish the final textured head of the full body! I also hope to nicely render each, demonstrating what exactly I've done.

2 storyboard ideas

Although both myself and Emma could not accomplish exactly what we wanted to do (though we'll attempt over the Christmas break!), I've decided to attach the storyboard concepts that Emma had created for the project. If we had more time our piece would've been like one of these, as originally envisioned in the claymation style.

Idea 1



Idea 2



Sketches by Emma!

The progress with Wee Eck's face at an incredibly high poly count!

As I mentioned earlier I decided in making a second model that will go alongside the standard model, this model however, focuses just on the head. The poly count here is 512,512!

As with the full body, I still need to texture this.

Higher poly model progress!

I'm still somewhat dabbling in rigging, and I do hope to get a rigged model done in time, however, my main attention is making a higher model poly version of the model in the "claymation" style I originally attempted to achieve. All I now need to do is texture the model.

Problems with rigging, or more to the point, painting.

Ok so after slaving hours upon hours on painting the weights, I have come to the sad conclusion that I will probably not be able to accomplish what I wanted to. The automated rigging system that was suggested for us really did help a lot, and I thank Steve for suggesting it. But I really wish I organized things a little differently in terms of the progress, such as making a low poly model in Maya first THEN going into Mudbox to work on it. This would cause painting the weights to be even easier, so it saddens me I didn't do this.

In light of this I believe it's probably best to just focus on making the model I created even higher in detail, and then fully texturing the model. I also believe it'd be good to just focus on a separate even more detailed version of the head along with this.

I will however still try and give off the illusion that it was created with plasticine, which, with the proper texturing and lighting should work perfectly (I hope!)

Model finished, rigging nearly finished, now it's time to paint the weights!

Ok so I'm currently rigging, and thanks to Steve (our tutor) I have managed to use an automated rigging solution for the character, all it really requires are for the weights to be painted (as can probably tell witht he images). After which the texturing will then be accomplished, and applied to the rig.




After which my animation is probably still on track to being accomplished!

Progress of Wee Eck thus far!

Ok guys, here's an update to the mesh i've been working on for Wee Eck. I'm considering in making a second model so that there is a bit of choice for the character, I will be using one of my previous character design concepts to create another model.

Moom animation tests!

In order to create believable animation for the final short piece, I thought it would be necessary to do a Moom animation test, demonstrating what exactly I'd like Wee Eck to do. Bear in mind that myself and Emma are still coming up with a way to introduce both of our characters, and that this test was only done in basic blocking to ensure I know exactly what poses I'm going to do.



Here's a test I also created not long ago, to demonstrate splined animation.

An inspiring piece of animation

I've seen this for a while, but I felt it would be worth sharing with the world!

The film was made at Gobelins (France), one of the leading colleges for animation.

Model sheet!

I have finally accomplished the model sheet, and now will be ready to start modeling the model in Maya!

After I have achieved this, I will then be taking the model into Mudbox to sort out, and clean up. I must say I'm not looking forward to the rigging, but that's what this project is all about, to learn and progress. Besides, I have the animation to look forward to!

An update!

Wow, finally, an update! As I’m sitting here, listening to music, working on my final model, I felt, why not make a new blog post?

Since I have not yet done so, here are a few of the initial sketches I had created to design Wee Eck. The design has actually come quite a way, and I hope the final model will be represent what I wished to achieve.








I’ll post up what I’ve created in the next few days, and I aim to get the character fully rigged by the end of the week. I'm hoping to start the animation this weekend.