Like the other objects that i knew would take a deal of time and work, i created Veepees in a separate file, not just incase anything went wrong, but so id have less software crashes... and isnt 3DStudio Max just so fond of crashing when you are near done, or have made a decent amount of progress.... dont complain, its our fault for not saving regularly. A skill i have yet to actually master.
Just like i did in the design process, i created him basics first. The body.
It took a few attempts this way but i created the hunch back body from the line tool and lathe modifier.
Messed about and added a few more polygons into the structure and taadaa, a big misshapen ball we will call the body for now.
Next i made the head, this couldve been done better. I used a simple chamfer box as it already had the amount of segments and vertexs i needed to mold the head.
Its times like this in 3D Max im very tempted to experiment and use mud box, between this and the next project i will experiment with it, but i dont think ill have the skills built up enough to actually use it properly.
moulded the head to the shape i wanted, leaving bumps, lumps and a gap where his mouth should be.
I decided to move from head to pincers, The bolts are on the NE and NW of his head and slightly skewed, i spent far too long getting them at angles i preferred considering they are barely noticeable, you cant say you werent warned about my odd work process.
The hair is actually the same three hairs rotated stretched scaled and skewed, creating his little tuft of human like hair.
His ears were done so many times, hard to believe considering how they turned out, but still, they took forever.
I started with the goblin like ear, decided against the little hairs, but i may go back and change that and the little legs i didnt include in the slider legs later.
I actually made the goblin ear as close to a human ear as i could, only the wrong size, rotated it more than a human ear and then extruded it into a point, at the time i was happy with it, but on further review it could defiantly do with being redone.
I did the tattered elephant ear next, using an extruded plane, i tried many ways to make this ear, yet in the end the simplest option turned out to be the most effective.
I curved and bent the ear to the shape id designed, if i was to do anything further to the ear it would likely be boolean some extra tatters in there, but it would more than likely cause a hallow look to the ears, so id have to find a different technique to creating the tatters. If im going to be really picky i could use a liquifier tool in photoshop perhaps.
Just to let you know, i will do a separate post on the materials and textures, otherwise thered be too much to explain in the one post. for now i will simpley discuss the model and how i created the basics of Veepees.
I now mved on to the arms, and Veepees being an unsymmetrical Igor, it wasnt a matter of creating one half and then mirroring it, i had to do all his body parts separately, including his oddly shaped arms.
His arms is actually where the clay model (shown previously) came in use surprisingly.
Once you et in there and start creating arms, its hard to remember the finished look, or where you are and what should bend or cease in what way, and the fact Veepees is in a big baggy lab coat made it no easier, however i already have experience in creating messy clothing from last year project, Blobman.
I made one arm and the forearm and part of the hand, before i started the second arm, so it was easier to create the correct pose.
One arm turned out better than the other, if it was a lower poly count the turbo smooth wouldve worked better.
The hands and forearms are simple cylinderchams, with a few vertexs scaled to look more natural, i dont like using the supplied primitives but, sometimes you have to admit they are there for a reason.
At this point i stopped work on Veepees and started a different file for the needle, it is a major element in both his character design and the environment, its essential its done corretly, *see next post for how i created the needle.
Once the needle was done i returned to the character/Veepees, and imported the needle in, and this is where i ran into problem importing and exporting, i got the needle in but the glowing substances material properties were not imported or exported properly. A problem i will fix later, for now im focusing on the model.
I created fat squarish yet rounded fingers, I made them all separately so the could be different sizes and able to grasp the needle naturally.
Im actually quite proud how the hands grasp the needle, granted it looked better before the final tweak and i couldnt get back to the perfect hold, but im still happy with the finished result.
I added two simple spheres onto Veepees jacket, one larger than the other, as buttons.
At this point i took the opportunity to make final teaks to the coat, on the body and arms, to make it a bit more natural looking.
And the piece de resistance, the legs.
Though texturing them was a far larger task than modelling them, modelling them was no boat ride.
I started with one leg, froze the rest of the body as to not interfere, a technique i used in almost every stage of this project.
I know the legs arent all the same but the parts are, though in different poses and size, they are relatively the same, so i made sure to have each section its own object, so i could copy and use them on other legs.
The legs were a modified and extruded compound object, the inter sections a simple hamfer box with its vertexes scaled and moved about.
Keeping to the original design and scale was rather difficult, I used the clay model as reference for size and such, but i had to restart or resized several times, the legs would no doubt be massive in comparison to the body, but they couldnt be comical or illogical, and if anything, they still needed to fit in the very accurately sized room. Ive used proper dimensions in basically everything up till this point, so it was essential i continued this process.
Once one leg was finally done, the others didnt take much time. I wish i had focused more on the legs but i was finding it very difficult to concentrate through the leg modelling, so looking back on it, im not as proud of them as i wish i was.
The modelling of the legs and the eyes would be two more things i would definitely redo if i was to touch up this project at any time in the future.
The eyes i shouldve done in single polys and just skewed and rotated them into shape, but since i just wasnt concentrating or doing my best, i ended up just tweaking a sphere, leaving the edges crinkled and not perfect, i attempted to turbo smooth it, but since it was originally a sphere it took out all my shaping to it, leaving it impossible for me to use turbo smooth.
The eyes didnt end up as comically big as i had originally planned, but i am happy with them.
The pupils are spheres, ones a clone, The lids of the eyes and the eyes themselves copied and scaled bigger, i then deleted the unnecessary parts, and dragged the end vertexs inwards.
Eyes complete, now time for the rest of the face, the pig nose was a simple line mirrored and extruded, the nose holes were actually trickey even though i used a very simple method, its because i was dealing in such small dimensions, and any tweaking was a drastic change.
I used the boolean tool on the nose, uses short fat cylinders, two infact. so the nose was booleaned four times in total, so you can imagine how often 3D Max was tempted to take a serious chunk out of the nose, thus it was a long and tricky process.
Veepees model is almost complete, the finishing touches are in place an the only thing left to model is a barely noticeable feature that makes a big difference and connects to the child original drawing, the round spectacles/glasses that rest on his piggy nose.
once again short fat cylinders were used and placed in th appropriate areas under his eyes without interfering with the eyes or nose or even the head, i extruded and bent a box to create the little bridge.
And at last, after a very long modelling process, He's complete.... well the model is at least.
At this point you are lulled into a false sense of security that it couldt possible take you as long to do finishing touches like materials and camera work etc, near done right? wrong.
We are now at the half way point, fixing problems and tweaking everything until its perfect and then adding materials and textures to everything, and THEN lightening and cameras, and then you are nearly done.
emphasis on the nearly.
0 comments:
Post a Comment