Character Progress

Over the weekend I went to work modeling Murphy some mittens to replace the human hands on the Morpheus rig. I was pleasantly surprised by how simple it was to substitute my geometry in place of the rig hands; hopefully this bodes well for attaching my custom head when I have it set up. There was a little trial and error involved, but not much. Mostly me forgetting to delete the history on objects which messes up the constraints. I also modeled the mitten cuffs separately and applied them to the body geometry as wrap deformers. Also easy. Will probably need to go in and clean up by repainting some weights, but nothing drastic - always good as far as time budgeting goes.

Today I refined the jacket model I started and added some zippers. It's not officially skinned to the body yet, but here's a sneak peek of how Murphy's looking so far! I think his head is a little too big at the moment, but the antlers are pretty much to scale.

Modeling begins!

Thesis Pre-Production and Character Animation wrapped up a few weeks ago, which means classes are over and Thesis Production begins. Phase 1 is to model, texture, and rig Murphy's character, which includes finishing my ski boots, making alterations to the Morpheus rig geometry, and creating his head. Hopefully everything about his head mesh will go smoothly and I won't have too much troubleshooting to do with parenting the rig to Morpheus.

Modeling progress thus far:

Really happy with the result. I already laid out the UVs on him as well, so Step 2 will be doing some light texturing work using zBrush for displacement maps and Photoshop. The eye rig is complete on this; it has local and world settings, plus some blend shapes. A basic face rig is next, then skin weights and more blend shapes to really give him some expression. :)

Yesterday I played with some procedural textures so his tongue is bumpy. This image uses default Maya lighting, but with proper lighting I'm hoping it will be easier to see the subtle bump map that's on his antlers as well.