FInal Crit- Grumpy Moose and Lucy

The Making of Lucy by Emily Clarkson

Onto Texturing!

Needed a break from the skinning process. I have yet to sort out the skirt, but also the bunches. bt I feel I may need back up in order to figure out how to achieve this. In the meantime however, seeing as Lucy is UV mapped, I jumped straight in and Textured her.

Adding just the freckles,  made Lucy look a little pasty so I decided to tint her cheeks slightly and give her a little more colour despite the fact she's supposed to be a cartoon character.

 

So finally after working my way down the body. I got to the eyes and I decided not to UV map the eyes. And that shaders were better. However the only issue highlighted is that those eyes are not quite centred...

 However I'm chuffed with how the eyelids look having changed a few of the faces.

Now for the rigging. I'm hoping I'll be able to fix the eyes here… and also get those joints done for the skirt and bunches. In any case. She's well on her way.

Skeletons and Skin's

Skeleton

So a bit of progress has been made. Lucy was given a basic skeleton complete with a 'ribbon spine'. Ideal for a cartoon character for the squash and stretch features it possesses. Its a fairly quick process, the long bit is the next bit. The skinning- attaching the skeleton to the model and ensuring movements between joints are corrected.

                             The ribbon spine completed            Addition of legs, hips and pelvis

                  Addition of the arms shoulders and hands              Finally the head

Lucy's complete skeleton!

Skinning

Below are playblasts of skinning tests as I was adjusting the weights between joints. These corrections help make the characters movement more natural when the joints are later manipulated during animation.

Below is a sample of the arm movements. Testing the wrist, elbow, shoulder and clavicle.

This bit is of the most fiddly and long winded section of the character. The hands and fingers

Now for the main body. Movement shown in the chest, spine joints and also the pelvis

Next comes the motion in the legs. Testing the motion of the hips and knees. 

Finally comes the motion in the feet and ankles. These ones bothered me most in that the ankle pointing down looks too soft. The thing is, there is only one ring of vertices assigned to the ankle joint itself.

The only bits left to do are to add joints to the bunches in Lucy's hair so they can react when she moves and the same with her skirt. I'm still not entirely clear on how to achieve this but I'm sure I will work it out shortly!

Lucy's getting the UV treatment...

I have just spent the last two days plastering Lucy with the brightly coloured UV maps. And after some interesting and frustrating sessions of unfolding items like hair and socks she's finally completed.

Modelling Lucy

So with the general look of our main character (now named Lucy) established I got started on the model making within Maya. I immediately ran into a hurdle with the head in how to create the eyes for this character. Despite our simultaneous tutorials with Alan covering modelling a head, the eye shapes are nothing like you're average eyeball. Needing back up I decided to drop the head and move to the body and block the majority of that out instead. I think its going quite well so far...

For a first attempt with the geometry mirrored it didn't look all that bad! But theres a long way to go yet.

Creating the sleeve puff but was really quite easy (I wasn't entirely sure how it might go) But trying to do the collar however wound up being a bit of a mind bender... not wanting to mess up normals and things. i' still not sure if its correct or not. It looks ok for now at least.

This is the end point after two sessions of modelling the body. I thought I would try and add to the detail creating a clear place for the buttons to sit. Its not so bad thus far. My next stop is to create the buttons to sit on the front and then get into creating the arms and legs.