This was my first time adding bones and skinning a character. I thought adding the bones were easy enough but found difficulty when I skinned the character. Some vertexes were attached to parts of the character they weren’t supposed to but I couldn’t find the problem. When I began to animate the character with CAT motion the shape of my model changed at parts but I’m not sure why.
Once I had the majority of my character modelled it was time to add in the details and accessories. I modelled the shoes next and attempted to make the light section of the face out of a plane. I found it very difficult so had to try and find a different way to do it. I also added the gloves and bow. Once I had the character completely built it was time to unwrap it. After unwrapping I could get a real feel for how my character was going to look. When I learnt how to unwrap I found it was a really simple thing to make such a difference. While I was unwrapping I found making the lighter part of the face on the head material was the easiest way to get the shape I wanted.
Before I work on the head again I decided to add some colours to the parts of the model I have to get more of a feel for what the character looks like. Instead of having a plain body I added a top and the puffy sleeves.
I tried to make the head out of a sphere as it seemed the most logical way to go. First I tried to extrude the ears from the sphere and found it difficult so I made the ears separate and attached them to the sphere. Once I was happy with that I modelled the nose/mouth from the sphere by moving vertexes about until I was happy with the shape.
To start off my Minnie mouse model I used a box. By adding segments to separate the body I would be able to get the shape I want and make the arms and legs later. Once I was happy enough with the torso shape I extruded polygons to make an arm, a leg and the neck. By adding a symmetry modifier it meant I only had to model one half of the body. During the modelling process I added a turbo smooth modifier and toggled it on and off to see what parts of the body needed work. I attempted to extrude the head from the body but I’m not happy with the shape and I’m finding it difficult to get the shape I want so I will have to try getting it a different way.
After unpredictable issues occurring, I was pushed back in my project and had a very limited time to finish the work so I decided to change the brief that I originally chose. The first brief would have taken too much time to get right so I went with turning a 2D character 3D instead. For this brief I choose Minnie Mouse. A very well-known character with iconic colouring and design.
To begin with I researched her. I looked at the shape, how she moved and what she wore. When looking at her shape I tried to picture it simplified. The basis of Minnie mouse is very simple so there wasn’t must research I could do on after a while. So I focused more on her outfits and decided on what colour scheme I think she is most known for, which is the red and white polka dots.
Due to lack of time I didn’t want sketch a character that has already been drawn numerous amounts of time. So instead I drew out a simplified version of how I see Minnie mouse being made up.
To conclude this brief, here is the video of my animation. As I said previous, I’m not completely happy with my outcome for this project but I am happy that at least I know how to rig objects in 3ds max which I didn’t know before.