penguuuiiiins...

When I got home from my xmas holiday I cracked on with some little bits of maya here and there continuing on from the penguin I started way back at the end of the summer. I was up to the stage where I would texture the penguin so i set about doing that, this was something i had done before, but I was to texture this model using paint effects which I had not used on a character model previously. It didnt take to long to get the hang of it and I did my own little pattern down the side of his chest instead of copying the flowers directly, this process was quite easy and fun and with some more practice using the different tools I think this would be handy to texture this way in the future on certain models I create. Below is a images of the paint effects on the big z character i made.

I then went on to make the skeleton of the penguin which was easy enough and straight forward but I did it anyways for good practice and I discovered the x-ray feature which was useful for seeing through the geometry partly while making the skeleton. Once the skeleton had been made it had to be binded to the geometry, there where several different methods covered in the chapter skinning from the most basic of parent binding where by the geometry is parented to the joints, to smooth binding where by the skin needs to weight painted to the joints. I will refer back to all these different types of binding as and when the need may arise for different models that need skinning. Below is a image of the penguin with its geometry smooth binded to the skeleton and x-ray turned on so you can see this.




The next lesson I looked at was blend shapes which is something I haven't done that much of in detail before, it was a short section and very easy to follow and you could see the results easy, and I think if I had textured my characters face a bit better and i spent some time tweeking the different emotion shapes I could spin out a large variety of blend shapes for this character. It is a very quick way of moving the vertices to achieve different mouth and eye shapes without distorting the original characters head or body. I have found this tool very useful for achieving different emotions in the characters face and I found that if you slide between more than one at once you can achieve something different between the ones already made. Below is a few of the different blend shapes i created using this character.