Nah Model near completion

Sigh...the last two days has been somewhat eventful, well except for today that is. Today I came in with a mission in mind, to get fruther in the completion of my compositing project, but today turned out to be a crappy, F.U.B.A.R. experience. I was basically trying to export my my movie file into Maya to work on and the difficulties I faced on that was just a real itch. First the computer wouldn't let us render or save, it was saying that the name we save it in is invalid even though it gives us a name to save by default. Also after Gareth hepled me for so long trying again and again magic D. Shufflebothom and his sidekick Dan Edgely I think, came to the rescue and finally managed to get it exported into Maya after so much hassle with naming the files right, because of Mayas knit-picking. This took me well overe lunchtime, but it didn't stop there. The footage was to slow to work with because the tiff files were too big, so we had to import again and...yeah it was just a bad day but I found a solution to my problem.

Anyways let's go to something more positive, yesterday Jamie came in and helped me with my mask and head plus Lewis helped me with it as well, above are the results. Also the skirt was a lot more simpler to do than the tutorial I posted Jamie used a tool make a poloygon and extruded it to fit around my character and cut vertices in it to make it into a cloth-like skirt.

I'm very happy with my model so far, it could use some more tweaking but, I'm considering texturing it in a very short while. Also Lewis gave me a great tip to speed up the modelling process of my work flow. Since I'm gonna model another human character, he suggested that I cut and save some body parts from the Nah model and mold them to the character I want. So I'm think of deleting the character I have but only leave the torso and modle it into the shape I want.
Time is running out so I think this may be a pretty solid method so it's worth trying, ain't got nothing to lose, well maybe I do but not something serious. Anyway stay tuned for my next post, because the next model will be Bak Bak Van Bak.

Nurbs Patch Modelling....Socking? Part 2

Alrighty from what the book says, it will impossible to connect these two into a smooth transition because of the toplogy, so the sphere will have to be rebuilt using the rebuild surfaces opt (option). I will have to create more spans for it.

Like this. I made a mistake in this pic, I thought the sphere has a 8 spans in bot the U and the V but it looks like one of them had 10. You'll see what I mean by looking in the rebuild surfaces option. Phew got a little confused there, the book says to cut it into 9 pieces, you see each thick line represents the end of a particular surface, so I had to make sepearations 3 verticle lines and 3 horizontal 3X3= 9.

Like this, I know you can't see to well but if you look for the thick blue line, imagine those from left to right and top to bottom. The two colours represent two different surfaces. Next I'd have to do the same thing for the Cylinder then selct the 4 isoparms that flow to the corner of the sphere....Like this. Afterwards I delete the both ends of the cylinder and I select the top of the cylinder and the top of the sphere. Then I select the attach surfaces tool with the rebuild surfaces tool, while making sure I use the keep CVs option.

Like this. Seems like we're well I'm almost there, just need to close the gaps in the corners. Argh! my photoshop does not want to work for me now but I'll try and post an image later all that's happened is that I did the same process for the corners in the sphere. Jus make sure when you cut the isoparms it's where the two surfaces joined, for a while I've been selecting the thick ones. You'll know you've got it when you try to select the 2 and one of them is purple.

Wait, wait...it's working. Well here you know what I'm talking about, but interestingly enough it seems that the joining process will only work if you do it in a particular order, or maybe it's just me, but it seems that whenever I choose a surface to attach it would go nuts on its self. Oh well nearly done.
COMPLETE: Now to get this you do a whole selection on the whole model and you use the Global stiching tool. Ideally this is supposed to close the remaining gaps however, it didn't but you can sort it out by clicking on any surface that you stiched, and in the inputs section you fiddle around with the max separation value, in small increments until the gaps go. In this case the value was 0.1 so I put it up to 0.5. Well I hope this will be useful, it should be because there's a section where it says detach the hips surfaces, this is what is done to make the skirt but it then goes on to say component mode....? Anyways it seems that the book shows how to model using polygons and in NURBS, this is you need lots of visualisation experience in order for it to look perfect. Well I'm sure this isn't the only way to model a skirt but at least I've found a tutorial that may help my problem solving. Stay Tuned.

Nurbs Patch Modelling....Socking? Part 1

Yo, today I'm stepping away from my model for a bit and I'm learning about Nurbs Patch modelling. There's a method that I've come across called Socking, I haven't gone deep into it but it but I know that it can help when modelling difficult complex shapes like the shoulders for instance. What's going on up in that picture above is a detached sphere, it has been detcahed by me making it into an isoparm which turns it blue. Now when that happen you have to look for the linethat seems ticker than the rest andwhen you've found it, you select it and you then select the detach surfaces tool and it will cut it in half. The tool is the 4th from the left in the tool box. After that you then turn it into an isoparm and look for the thick line oppsosite the one you cut. Then you delete.

The reason why I'm learning this is because in my Maya 7 book it models 2 characters one of them being female. After looking through some of the section on the female it came to a bit where it said detcah the hips surface at the second isoparm. This section is in regards to creating the skirt, so I'm gonna learn the basics about isoparms in order to create a skirt for my character. Now what I'm gonna do with the cylinder and the sphere is turn it into a one joined object that looks like a simplified version of an arm and shoulder. I'll post some images of my progress as I go along. This is the first part, so stay tuned for the second.

The Gods, The Funnies and the Inspirations

This is I'm sure you know the famous band Gorillaz artist is by Jamie Hewlett. The thing I like about this art piesce is the simplicity of lines he uses on the characters and the fact that not much shading is involved but it still manages to make the art stand out.

Ah yes Timon, from Timon and Pumbaa he definitely played a part in my character creations especially Jappa, the Jamiacan silverback Gorilla

Sean Galloway... me, Lewis, Josh dunno about sam though are all envious of his simplistic style and his ultra light use of lines to help for his characters. We all wish we could draw like him.

Khary Randolph, if there was an artist I'd like to be like he would be one of them. This man has worked on numerous projects for numerous cartoon and comics one of them being Nickelodeon. Here's his website to learn more...http://www.kharupt.com/

Oh my gosh this guy's sick hot! At drawing I mean. His style reminds me of Disney a little. He definitely sent me into a drawing frezny when I was trying to step away from anime. There are other artist out there but these are the ones I wanted to show. I'm alwas thinking and trying to expand and right now I'm in the middle of creating my own storyline and characters for my own amusement, I'm also working on an experimental style so keep it on the down low you dig?
Here's the web address...http://www.herrerabox.com/blog/

God of War 2 From Myth to Legend Doc 1

Since I didn't do any research, from the industry. I decided it was time to go ahead and do it. Now this vid was not what I had in mind to post. You see the vid is about the making of God Of War 2 but I wanted God Of War, but this is good enough I suppose. It bascically shows how they took Greek mythology the mentality of the main character Kratos and mold it into a sick videogame. If you haven't played this game or the one before it GO BUY IT NOW! I'm serious.

Ahhh....this show has held a special place in my heart. Whose Line is it Anyway I know I did this before but I wanted to do another to refresh y'all memories. This is the inspiration I used to get the idea for a spoof informercial. Just watch it, it's good...it's got high views on Youtube so it must be good.

Head & Mask Attempt

It looks pretty basic right now, so I dunno if it's right to be calling it a success or not. No problems were encountered here, so here's the method I used.

1. First I created a sphere by going to Create-Polygons Primitive-Sphere.

2. I scaled it to the size I wanted and positioned it to align with the top of the torso.

3. Next I deuplicated it and chopped it in half, by this time I realised they were too round according to the reference I had so I decided to select both and slim them down a bit.

4. Lastley I did the same process for the sphere except I went to cylinders. Then it was a matter of aligning them and that was it.

I'm not sue how I go about making the mask look good, like how to make the cylinders merge into the mask. Also the 2 holes for the eyes needs to actually seem like holes that the eyes see through, not just texture. I'm gonna need Alexs help for this however, I got no clue on when he's gonna show up, otherwise it's gonna be another study lesson of looking in my Maya book. Either way times running out and I don't have time to idle. I think If I manage to get this model done before the deadline then that's a real achievement for me, it would be nice to have to but I'd have to be sniffing something to think I can get that done. Sigh....anything else I need to say...well I've been working nearly two hours on maya and posting anyways so I might as well take a break, but before that I got one more thing to do, stay tuned!

Hand Refinement

Short post on this one. Yup as you can see I've refined the hand, wasn't too much trouble just a simple matter of adding vertices to improve the shape and flow of the topology. There's not much to say on these pics. they're all self explanatory.....however

There's another problem bugging me. The skirt that my charater wears is something I'm gonna need to conquer. But After looking at the Maya book, I figured that it's going to have to do something with Isoprams. I just have to locate the tool and see if I can apply it to my model, but my spidey sesnses tingling tells me it's not gonna be easy. Since we're on the subject of clothing I found this interesting tutorial on Youtube about ncloth wrinkles in maya. It basically shows you how to create a bed sheet of sorts that looks like it flows in the wind as it drops through the air. See interesting. Anyways I did try to create the skirt by clicking the waistline verticey points and extruding them take a look at the bottom.

Yeah the first attemp was when I selected the poinst and decided to extrude, Maya decided to do this for me....strange isn't it? Next I decide to use the move tool and this is the result, look at the next pic for all you boys and girls who want a little fanservice LOL!

Yeah needs some work, obviously not the right approach to go through, so I'll have to play master Splinter and ponder on this matter further. Although before I do that or more ideally in the mean time I'll start on the head...how hard can that be? Stay tuned, peace!

The hand Is here Baby!

SUCCESS!: Man on man I'm very pround of this. Primitive but proud, this is what happened when I attempted this. First the thin you have to do after refining the arm is extrude the faces at the end of the arm to the rough length of the palm. However surprise, surprise a problem happened. There are 4 faces at the end of the arm and when i extruded 3 of them went backwards and 1 forward, when I tried pulling the otherway it did the opposite. After racking my brain for a few minutes I took a look at the faces and deleted them when one of them went inwards, but no luck the same thing happened. I pressed Z to redo and take a closer look, I couldn't figure out what was going wrong, that is until I turned 3/4 close up on the edge of the arm and saw I had 2 faces imbedded into eachother. How this happened is beyond me, but I deleted them and thank God Almighty that solved the problem. Phew, next.

Success: The palm had to have and extra edge to help define the knuckles. In fact I'd say the edge was just behind, so I used the edge loop tool and like the book said pull the edge upwards a bit. It also helps to extrude just the faces that will be the fingers, but to do that I'd have to create 4 parts with the edge tool. I also had to pull some vertices back and join and merge some of them in order for the typology flow smoothly....at least look like it's flowing smoothly.

Success: Ah here they are the fingers, my proudest achievement of this model so far. To save trouble it's better to extrude one, then get that finger into shape before doing the other, unlike the last time I did all 4 together and it caused hell for me. Anyways there were loads on vertices to move and scale, pull back move forward line up and so forth. The thumb was done in the same fashion except it came out as just a big block when extruded, so it needed an edge ring tool to help with refining the shape of the thumb. I also intend to do the same with the fingers for refinement.

Success: I'm really happy with this right now. This is the result of it looking smooth....I know I'm not out of the woods yet, far from it. But I'm happy to know I succeeded without too much hassle unlike last time. Well next ting is some refining and I'm gonna try and create the skirt...that should be interesting, also if everything goes according to the plan I'll have the basic head too. So, stay tuned...gonna rest now.

I gots a 2 toes and 2 arms!

Success: I've finally been able to create the foot. Man these damn vertcies were killing me, so I had to create and delete some in its place in order for this to work smoothly. I'm pretty happy with the results so far but there's still a lot more to do to this model. In my prvious post it looked like I had to small triangular feet, actually that's exactly what I had so the good book said to extrude them to the soles of the feet, so I did.

Success: The next thing to do was create a verticy to create the toes. However since I was only creating one toe it made things simpler for me. Although on my first attempt I did it, but then the verticies began to mess me up and the points had a helping hand in the department of trying to make my mesh look bruck up. For instance when you look at the foot from one angle part of the mesh looks like it's caving in on itself and from another angle it looks like it's poking outwards. So in the end it took me about three attempts to get it. Thirds a charm right. However I still feels though some points need to be rounded off a bit to make the leg look more natural, rather than PS1 graphics like.

Success: Well after the toe was extruded from the verticy I created. It became a simple I mean troublesome errand of making the foot more defined. Jeeze even from this angle the foot don't look right, even though I looked at it in the front, side top and 3/4 views. Anyways I alos refined the sole of the foot as best as I could, if you look near the side of the heel you can see where it's rounded off a bit. In conclusion the foot was a pain, just like everything else, but I was able to pull myself through. However as I said earlier I may need to go back in and make some final adjustments. Man the topology really gives me a headache sometimes. Next!

Success: Still to early to call it a success but yeah this is the start of the arm. Back when I was modelling the torso I though I had it modelled good enough for the arm to be modelled. But as I had forseen another proble arose. The topology need a little cleaning up and I had to make a shape that could be extruded to make the arm. The shape was basically a square, didn't take too much effort to make but when it came to extrude it was Nightmare on Elmstreet. The arm was extruding upwards and at the edge of the shape it was expanding, but luckily I've had this kind of experience before so I went in, repositioned and scaled it to the way I desired.

The arm was a bit wonky, some of the points were not level with eachother and so more adjustments was needed in order to shape things nicely. After that I had to shape the arm according to my reference. Not too hard, just a simple matter of using the edge ring tool to mold it into shape. I wanted to make sure that the arm was lager than where the elbow connected and further up the arm, I wanted it the same. Some rounding off was need so I moved the verticy points (the ones that formed the corner of the shape) downwards and some moved inwards. But then I realised something....

The verticy at the top of the arm was not completely connected to the shoulder so had to fix that at the top and bottom of the arm, it was leaving a weird shape that hard to explain, it looked as though there was no bone, a joint or indication of muscle there. But anyways thats fixed so for now some refinement needs doing and then...the....HAND! "Gulp" stay tuned...

I got legs!

Success: This is the close up of my body...obviously. Yesterday I made some effort to try and refine the pecs as much as I could. However there were some things that I couldn't understand within the book, so I kind of skipped a section and went to refing the lower area for the legs.
However I'm getting a little worried, everyone seems to be moving so fast with thier modes, like Josh and Lewis in particular. Then I realised why I go into much more effort into refining everything I can, so it's only natural, I realised this after seeing how different my model is from thiers. Anyway moving on...


Success: YES! IT HAS LEGS! Yup this is what my model looks like so far. Kinda looks like...well I'm pretty happy with it so far, looks like my skill level. Though I suppose I could strengthen the belly a bit more, like make it rounder in the front of the belly. If you look in the pic above there is an indication of a belly button. Although I still feel as though I'm taking too much time, feel like I should be further. The quality the model that people do in an hour is...mind boggling. Anyway less moaning and more working. Next is...

Success: Here are the legs which weren't too difficult, just took a damn long time. Cearly there is some refinement to be made. I've done the top dog knee caps which I'm proud of (yeah...). Any ways the refinement needs to be made and then the arms and the hands. which I'm dreadding, But I'll do it. That's all I got to say right now, stay tuned for the next post!

Refining neck & sexy pecs

Success: ??? Well still a bit to early t call this a success. Basicaly what I doing is trying to refine the neck muscles and shoulders. While trying to follow closely to the book, the edge that shoots off diagonally to the left (above pic) is the shoulder split.

Here it keeps going until it reaches the back. This is the stage on where the anatomy for me really gets me confused. Though I'm trying to follow it, it still feels like I'm aimlessly putting in edges, taking them away and putting them in again. Anyway next is...

Success: ??? The chest refinement, here is just the angle off the pic I've used to show you where the chest starts. The edge starts from the middle and then crosses under the shoulder, through the face that will be extruded for the arm and then ending at the back.

Dunno if I mentioned this but there's this setting that I used, you go to mirror duplicate options and use the settingsx to -1 and geometry type instance. What this does is, any changes made to one half of the torso, automatically does it to the other. Yahoo! "cough" "cough" moving on...

Here I just thought it be good to show the face of the arm extrusion, pretty isn't it -_-! You know for some reason I just know I'm gonna bruck up this model. I'm not even sure if I'm following this right. I need Gareths help to guide me through this dark forsaken hour. Well on the next episode of MY DEMISE...more refinement on the chest, lower torso and stomach. Will I succeed, or will I crash and drown in my own fusration? Find out on the next episode, stay tuned!

Maya torso making of Nah Nah van Nah

Success: This is my first attempt at making the torso. I used a cube with sub-divisions along the width to 4, height 2 and depth 3. I know that no methods are written in stone, some people use a sphere to make thinks a little more simple, however I'm following the Methods of the Maya 7 booklet, which is at the intermediate level. My friend Lewis says it's better than the original, but anyways I'm experimenting here. So I to make the cube into this work of art, I switched to verticy mode and moved the points to the refernce pic, (go below to see the refernce). This wasn't difficult just have to make sure that you look at the top, profile and front views to match the shape of the pic.

One thing I feel that I should add is the fact that, my computer is Vista, which means that Maya does not work to full performance. I only learnt this recently, the damn thing freezes almost by any simple commands such as when I was setting up the planes I couldn't move pivot points to the origin (middle) of the grid, because it froze! So I had to do it manually by looking at the 4 views.

Success: Next after making sure everything looked good in the 1st stage I extruded the torso up to the mid neck height of the reference pic. The book then says to create horizontal line edges for the mid belly, top belly, bottom chest, top chest, low neck and then mid neck. So you have 6 lines to mess with. The next step is then to move the verticy points to the shape of the body, this is were the itch in the ass comes in.

FAIL: My first attemp at trying to make the necessary curves to the structure of my pic. Now since the book is showing how to model meeper, a character of a 3-d singing movie, I can't follow the necassary movements of the character with my own...obviously. The problem is I got lost where the v-points (verticy points) are located. Things started getting clumped together so much, that they started flickering.

FAIL: I tried to persevere trying to closely follow the example shown in the book, but I think my problem was I was constantly moving from front, to top to side....I was basically everywhere. So I closed and went back to stage 1.

Success: After thinking I decided to concentrate on one view point first trying to follow the example, then I'd move to the front. This is the side view, kinda looks like a kidney bean shape. At the front things started looking more promising, I'm moving points trying to catche that similarity of shape in the book. What I mean is that in the front view, the book shows shadows in the model that indicates that the v-points are not in single file but some are angled differently to one another. Still got a little ways, but it's getting there. Still have this issue in getting lost in the v-points.

This is the reference of Nah. Now you should have a clear view of what it is I'm trying to achieve. The points on the side of the torso are messing me up, so much that it looks a bit like a netted mess. However I can still persevere on this, if things get worse...I can still use the sphere method to make things quicker. However I believe even that that have its problems, but this is it for now later tonight or tomorrow there should be some new developments. Stay tuned!