Overview of my 3-D Character

Alright! I'm done!!!!! That was an adventure. Let me tell you. I have wanted to kill, burn, destroy, and obliterate this dang mac. That didn't happen as I have a project. That I finished on time. Go me! Though I did have my struggles.

I really don't think it was that hard coming up with the idea of this project. I was asked to make a wizard dual in a town surrounding a castle. I first needed wizards to do that so duh, I made a 3-D character. Though I've seen better, I think I've done well for my first time. I think that this quarter the main focus is the modeling and the work I've put into the modeling. This basically was the plan for the whole project in it's less detailed form. For the 3-D character I had a set plan that kinda failed. On August 29th I blogged about my plan.

The face. That was such a struggle. Oh Emma we need a camera! That would have made this quarter seem like more fun than it was. I got so mad at my computer. Days after class I would just leave and pout. Emma who sat next to me thought I should have a camera next to me so we could record and enjoy me freaking out to what went wrong. That probably would be a very funny video. It would show me on nights when I stayed until 9pm or when I just wanted to give up. Very interesting time.

Back to the face. The basic structure was easy to make but making it a round structure that looks realistic from a plane was difficult for me. I eventually gave up and came back a few days ago to fix the cheeks. I also struggled with the ears. I need to figure out a great way to make the ears. Maybe I should make and attach the ear before mirroring the face. I wonder if that would also work for the hair. Huh. The things you think of when thinking about projects in hind sight. Another part of the face I struggled with was the eyes. I needed to place the spheres inside the socket right and form the socket the right way. That struggle is real. I think that describes my struggles with the face very well.

When making the face I realized that I had no time this quarter to rig my character. I was barely going to be able to finish modeling by October 1st. At least that's what I thought. I was quite sure I wouldn't be able to finish rigging my character. I was and still am sure that I will have struggles with rigging. I should have stories of me yelling across the room for help. So I modified my timeline. I don't remember if I posted my adjusted timeline.

So here is my adjusted timeline:
9/5-Model face
9/12-Model Body
9/22-Model clothing
9/26-Textures, Lights, and tuning small details
9/30-Rendering

After the face I modeled the body. This wasn't very hard until I mirrored it. I didn't have much detail in the body. Though that meant I'd have to add more detail in the clothing later. I think I would just add more detail in the body so I wouldn't have to do it later in the clothing.

The clothing was pretty easy. It was more annoying than a struggle to add more detail to them (clothes are a duplication of the body with the parts deleted). Not very hard.

Textures weren't much of a struggle. The hardest part was getting all the right faces the right color. Other than that textures where really easy. Lights could have been better. Getting the right color for the light was the hardest part. It needed to be yellow but not a thick fog like light of yellow but a light and airy yellow that is also somewhat clear and transparent. Once I got back into lighting realm it was pretty easy. Small details weren't that hard. They weren't to terribly annoying. Though the new spots of small details got to be annoying. But the face wasn't very annoying as it has been weeks since I touched it. So the fine details weren't a killer.

Rendering. That wasn't my favorite. I had to remember how to render and what to do for rendering. I remembered fragments. But I haven't rendered something from Maya since I made my moving logo. Well something using the batch render feature. That was around March. That was a small struggle. I did find it and was able to change the batch render settings and the Maya render settings. After Effects was easy. Rendering from After Effects is so easy. After Effects isn't to much of a struggle.

 Lynda.com saved my butt so many times this quarter! Oh my goodness! Though most of the stuff was easy, the instructor gave an easier and far more efficient way of doing things and I'm so glad I watched Lynda the whole modeling process because my character would have looked a whole lot worse without it.

If someone asked me what I would redo in this project I would say the whole thing and that I'd just start over. That may seem harsh, but I think this is the baseline character in my 3-D character career and that by making more 3-D characters I will be able to model better characters in the future. That's why I'd rather just start all over then try to fix this character. Now this is harsh, I know. Even though it is very harsh I think I did a very good job for my first 3-D character model. Time wise I think I'd want longer chunks of time to be able to work on my project so I could just work, work, work. But I do think this is a decent first attempt.

I hope that through this I can do future projects better and that somewhere someone will find this helpful. Or cool because this isn't easy. For those of you who want to see my wizard, here he is: