Character Tutorials

Again, these tutorials are being uploaded later than they should have been, so my apologies. I did however have a separate file for the head before I combined the entire mesh. I'd like to point out at this moment, I tend to do my Maya tutorials on 2010 for 2 reasons - 1. My old graphics card for some reason hates me playing videos and using 2011at the same time, but has no problem with 2010? (strange) and 2. merging vertices in 2011 = the bane of my life! You'll know if you use 2011 that short cuts aren't always helpful.

These were the two parts I had the most trouble with when it came time to modelling, I actually got about 50mins into the shoes tutorial, before I realised a mistake right at the beginning and had saved after that (note to self - multiple saves!). The hands were quite tricky as for some reason, even after following the tutorial exactly, my geometry didn't flow right through the arm, and I had a hard time merging the pieces.

The head - wow - this really took me a while, and I ran into several problems. Again like the car tutorial I usually found I had issues when making a hole in the head (ie. the eye socket) and then smoothing, I got some seriously weird looking edges. After neatening up the mesh, I managed to continue through the videos and I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

This is the shot of the combined pieces front and back. There is a nice sense of satisfaction about it - at the time of completing - this was the first humanoid character I'd ever put together.

The snapshot above is actually all the separate components UV maps, photoshopped onto one image. I did watch the head UV layout tutorial - however - I actually did the majority of it in Headus UV Layout. The programme is pretty good, but not very user friendly. I had to watch a bunch of tutorials on the website before I became even somewhat familiar with the interface. Despite that, it does a pretty good job. I only had some trouble when it came to the lip area, when flattening the mesh, it would fold in on itself. So I made some minor tweaks in Maya.

I'm hoping to finish this tutorial also once the narrative project is complete. I have made a start on the rig and all is going well thus far.