Intro & Reference:
So for this assignment we were given the task to model/sculpt, UV unwrap, texture and present a ‘Cute Character’ of our own choice. We also given a limit of 40000 polygons for the scene. Immediately I thought of an Instagram account for a cat called Bone Bone. He a fat cat with big eyes and usually wears a backpack. Now in one of his posts the owner of the account photoshopped a cowboy hat on to his hat. And this gave me my idea for my model.
Development:
I began by doing some quick concept art for the model and assets. I then started in blender to block out the model to get a rough idea of the proportions. Now this is where I started to struggle; as I was used to using maya for all of my modelling I now had to use a different software. This made my workflow quite slow and frustrating. And because of this I just couldn’t get the proportions right on my model so I looked up tutorials on YouTube to help me. In doing so I found a tutorial for a cat sculpt. I decided I was gonna try to follow the tutorial but add and change things to make it my own. This made the whole assignment much more enjoyable. After I had sculpted the cat, I then went into maya to create the hat. To create the flow of the brim I turned on soft selection which would move other vertices around the selected one. I then ran into a problem where the top side of the brim had black faces, meaning they wouldn’t show up in substance of blender. I realised I created this issue early while making the hat. So I made another but this time added another layer around the brim to give it another face. Next I UV unwrapped it and imported to substance, again I ran into another problem where I couldn’t get the model to export while smooth. This was an easy fix, I just had to covert the polygons to the smooth mesh preview. Once the Hat was textured and ready, I went back into blender to UV map the cat. This was when I realised that I was way over the limit for polygons; around 800,000. To cut this number down I added a decimate modifier. Once it was under the limit I UV mapped the cat and imported it to substance for its textures. The model was then basically done so I uploaded it to sketch fab and also done a quick render of the cat in blender.
Outcome:
Reflection:
Overall I have really enjoyed doing both hard surface modelling and sculpting. I did struggle a bit with sculpting, particularly in the beginning of this assignment. Because I was now used to the UI and shortcuts for maya it was a little frustrating switching to blender. But I’ve a good bit more knowledge in it now. But in the end I think I was able to produce a decent model; with the help from the YouTube video. I think the area I’ve improved most in would be UV unwrapping. I struggled with it during assignment 1 but through practice and our group animated shorts, I’m confident in it now. I really enjoy the modelling aspect of animation and I cant wait to see what we do in the future.