Gyarados

# 1 24-05-2012 , 06:52 AM

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Decided to sketch up some refs since I've never done a legit character before. Drawing helped me identify some nooks and crannies I would've missed had I simply grabbed some sprites from google, and allowed me to change some of its characteristics a bit to match what I wanted it to be...

I've already got the body, so I just need to build the head and attach it, texture, and then rig him. All this for one shot of a Gyarados eating a guy dressed as Pikachu...

Important question though... am I shooting myself in the foot by starting from a mouth open position? (since this is his more iconic pose, it seemed like the right place to start)

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Peter Srinivasan
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# 2 25-05-2012 , 07:52 AM

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Head has been modeled. The jawline's edge flow's not right, and there are a few other places with similarly imperfect edge flow, and a few tris. But overall it should animate as expected, since I was at least able to move the tris and edge issues to what I BELIEVE are less critical locations. Either way, not bad for a first real creature head... attaching to the body and UVing tomorrow. Should I UV before or after attaching to the body?

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# 3 25-05-2012 , 03:47 PM

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Looks like a nice start

- Jake

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# 4 28-05-2012 , 07:20 PM

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Help: Dynamic Tentacles

Okay so I've got the UVs layed out (I could've done better, and I've got some hard lines that I'd like to smooth out, but I've got a rather nasty deadline, so this'll have to do) and textures drawn, etc. Very simple stuff here. My question is with the tentacles.

I'd like them to be controlled by the jaw's motion and simple ncloth dynamics, but I can't seem to get the ncloth attached correctly to the jaw (tentacles are separate objs). I've tried attach to surface constraint which keeps the mesh in place nicely but when I move the base mesh or its faces, the tentacles stay in place. I've also tried the parentToSurface script I used a few months ago (it uses follicles as parents) and that didn't seem to work either. How is this usually dealt with?

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# 5 28-05-2012 , 08:32 PM

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whoops! never mind about the attaching problem. I just needed to update the simulation. moving forward!

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# 6 29-05-2012 , 08:30 PM

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so I have almost no time left, and it turned out the simulation issues were still there. I had to opt for just attaching the whiskers to the jaw. Also, after rigging, I realized that next time I do anything like this I'm gonna plan on doing blend shapes for the jaw, cause this skeleton rig is just not working the way I hoped. Blend shapes should be much better. Wish I had time to rig his eyelids too, but I don't :< Animating later today after reshoots

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# 7 30-05-2012 , 03:59 AM

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Help! Normals issue

Okay, so I've got an issue. You will notice in the non-smoothed render that certain connecting edges are still hard. I've tried "set normal", "soften edge", merging verts, reversing normals, and selecting a vert on it and then "convert selection to shell" which, as expected, selects every single vert on my Gyarados. The hard edges are there in smooth render too.

I UV'd this guy in pieces - literally extracting parts many times until I had each part I wanted to UV i a separate mesh node since I was using RoadKill to map him. I recombined the meshes after UVing which of course preserved the maps, merged, and I have verified every single connection point has only 1 vert. Anyone got an idea why my guy still's got hard edges?

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# 8 31-05-2012 , 09:29 PM

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Okay, so It's done. A million problems, but it's passable for what I needed to do. Gotta love deadlines.

He comes in at the end. He floats around a lot cause when I rigged him I didn't think ahead enough. He needed to have his root closer to his belly so that could stay centered on the ground. Oh well. Next time.

https://youtu.be/ytRm_p03xSQ

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Peter Srinivasan
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