Sackman George
 

I’ve been working on a new project in Autodesk Maya. I got the idea from the Little Big Planet video game character, “Sackboy.” I have modeled and textured him so far, will be working on rigging and painting weights soon. I have not done much animating so this will be a first, figured I’d make an easy character to practice on.

Here’s what I’ve got so far.

Sackman “George” is what I’m calling him. I have layed out UV’s textured him and made a displacement map with the texture to make him a bit more bumpy. This is still a work in progress so the eyes will be better and the bumps from the burlap sack wont be protruding through them.

http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/4...eorge72001.jpg

And these are the UV’s I laid out for him. Didn’t include the texture in the UV’s because that would just make it hard to see my layout.

http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/1...ckmanoutuv.jpg

Hi Rhetoric Camel
I like the texturing are you going to animate him.......dave

Thank you. Yes I will be, I'm working on the rig right now actually... I've only tried rigging one other thing and it didn't turn out very good. So here's hoping this one comes out better!

Hi Rhetoric Camel
I think he looks funny (in a good way) I would like to see him animated hope you get on well with your rigging............dave

Here are the blenshapes I have made for the head. Not sure if I should do eyes as separate blendshapes, but going to keep those eyes with those expressions.

http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/1...blenshapes.jpg

ok I've been trying to figure out my problem
I created the blend shapes, went to Create Deformers>Blend shapes Option Box
Envelope set at 1.0000
Origin World
Target Shape Options Check Topology

when I create the blend shape and I click on one of the shapes and use the middle mouse button to see the blendshape, the original head moves to where the other head is, instead of just the mouth closing the whole head moves to the right over top of the blend shape of the head with the closed mouth.

Any ideas what could be causing this? I was following the rigging of a low poly man tutorial from simply maya to guide me while doing this. But I'm not getting the same results as Kurt.

figured out the problem, had other objects parented to the main head, and I had froze transformations when I shouldn't have. Needless to say I had to redo my blend shapes, but the good news is, they work now!!

New blend shapes

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/1...blenshapes.jpg

now off to rigging.

I think you remember thing better when the sort them out for your self, comming on nicely..............dave

I've actually got a huge notebook dedicated to maya, every time I have an issue I right down what the issue was and what fixed it, so this was yet another thing to jot down in my notebook.
Thanks for the comment, I appreciate it!

Have him all rigged will be painting weights today... last time I did this it was a horrible mess and I gave up on that project. This time I will not let it defeat me!! haha.

Rigging was easy, now painting the weights has proven to be very hard to get the hang of. I'm constantly doing undoing redoing smoothing and so on. But I've gotten the majority of him done.

Was testing the hip and knee which I just did and checking the deformities I realized it looked like he was taking a sobriety test. Looks like he's passing

Legal Limit George:
http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/7...testgeorge.jpg

Please excuse the lighting it was quickly thrown together to see how it looked lit up a little bit.

Looks good. Any ideas on what you'll be having him do?

Thank you.
Well there are a couple ideas. But first I have to learn how to animate, so I'll be learning with this little guy.

I would like to make an animation short with him, and also try my hand at match moving and putting him in a video. But that's still further down the road. Basics for now since this is my first time animating .

Loving how he's come out so far RC,

and he actually made me laugh out loud with the sobriety test pic...lol

Was wondering, I know you're going to use him to learn to animate, but have you thought of what kind of background you might use?

I was just thinking a 3d version of the Little Big Planet Game would be amazing, and give you quite a wide choice of what to model and where to put it. Plus you can practice a load of different moves with him what with all the objects you could throw in there.

Just an idea, hope it at least inspires you a little and you get some cool ideas.

Good luck with it mate, I'll look forward to seeing some playblasts in the future!

Thanks a lot I appreciate it, glad you like it. The sobriety test pic made me laugh I had to share it on here! haha.

Of course the scenes from little big planet popped up in my mind when I was thinking of a scene for him to run around in. I just might have to do that, of course with some differences.

alright I have taken a break from this due to some computer issues (stupid trojan viruses).

Before I get back into it, I've been thinking about this guy and what I want him to be able to do. I want him to interact with objects with physics. Is it too late to do this since I have rigged, skinned, and painted weights or can this effect still be added to him even at this point?