This week, I finished my Day of the Dead wizard staff. At the beginning of the week, as instructed by Mike during our one on one assessment support meeting, I deleted the bottom faces of my skull so I could build a separate jaw, making the model more realistic, like an actual human head. I then extruded the edges towards the centre and merged the vertices to the centre to create the bottom of the skull.
I used B to move some edges and faces once I had extruded the edges as the bottom wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked it to be. I didn’t want to completely smooth out the skull at this point in case any changes to the shape needed to be made. Once I smoothed out the bottom, I moved onto the jaw.
I started off with a cube and changed its shape to be longer and narrower. I then extruded the outer faces to create an angle for each side of the jaw. I created more edges using the multi-cut tool and extruded a small area at the back to create the connecting parts of the jaw. I then bevelled the edges and continued to alter the shape of the jaw until it was a similar shape to my reference. At first, I made the jaw much too wide, so I had to match it to be a similar width to the bottom of the skull head.
Once I had the desired shape, I moved onto the teeth. Mike had showed me how to create teeth using smooth preview and the duplicate special tool. Using the duplicate special tool meant that I only needed to UV map one of the teeth and the textures applied to that tooth would be applied to the others of the same shape. I created 2 different teeth shapes, a flatter shape for the front teeth and a larger shape for the molars.
Once I had completed the teeth, I smoothed out the whole model by going to modify, concert and smooth mesh to preview polygons.
After I finished the skull, I moved onto the flowers. I created the flower petals the same way I created the teeth, by using smooth preview and the duplicate special tool. So that I could add different colours to the flowers, I pressed shift and made duplications of the flower so there were 3 different flowers, then used the duplicate special tool on two of the flowers, so I could create 1 red flower, two yellow and three orange.
I found creating the bone handle more difficult that I thought I would, as I couldn’t get the round shapes at the top and bottom to look how I wanted them to. Though using the multicut tool and ‘B’ to create a smooth mesh blend I was able to create a shape that I am happy with.
I placed the flowers on the vine and created thorns and stems for my flowers. considering that at the start of this year I had never attempted 3D work, I am very proud of the model I created. Once finished, I exported my model to substance painter.
I found substance painter a little difficult to use, as I haven’t had much practice using it before this assessment. I knew the colours I wanted to use for my model, so I started by applying solid colours by using fill layers and black masks. Once I started painting on more detail, I found random shiny spots appearing on my skull and petals. When I repainted the areas, they seemed to disappear, then reappear after a while. I managed to paint over them, and they didn’t reappear when it was time to export my textures to sketchfab. I later realised I forgot to bake the mesh as soon as I imported my model to Substance painter, and I think this is the reason why the textures didn’t apply properly when I was painting. Regardless, I am happy with the finished result and will now remember to bake the mesh as soon as I import my model.
