In this project, my job was to create a CG teddy bear in Maya. I learned how to build it from simple blocks of different parts of the body separately, and then put them all together lastly. I created the legs and the body separately, and I bridged and merged the edges to merge them into one polygon. I also learnt how to manage the topology, since it’s not a regular shape, I had to cut and insert edges to make sure that there are no triangular faces.

After I’ve done the base modelling, the biggest challenge was to create the fur. I’ve never used XGen in Maya before so I had some issues with the values and attributes. The hair was not dense enough and it looked not puffy.

And then I also realised that I should create the fur on a duplicated shape of the base model, and deleted the faces on eyes, mouth, and the foot. In this way, I could avoid the fur was covered in those areas, which I don’t want to see that.

At first, I only added one Clumping in XGen so it looked not very dense, I wanted to have more clumps. After some researches and suggestions from my classmate, I figured out to add more layers of Clumpings to achieve the effects that I wanted, and also what some modifiers do and how to generate them, such as Noise and Coil. This process took lots of time just to adjust the values and wait for the test renders back and force.

Final Render

Following up on the last post, we learned how to modify the subsurface to make the ears more realistic.

We added some edge loops around the middle of the eyebrows and the nose. So we could create the wrinkles by moving the edges in and out to improve the frown.

Same way to do the eyebrow raise. We added more edge loops on his forehead to create the wrinkles.

This week we started to do facial rigging. Step one was to create the joints and constrain them to the face geometry.

After that, I moved on to paint skin weights. It was a little bit tough to do that because when I painted on it the geometry got messed up, so I had to think about what the weights will be influenced when I rotate the joints. I need to keep the mouth open to check what it’ll be looking like while I was painting the weights. One of the problem was that when I paint on some small points, they wouldn’t be affected. Then I figured out a way to fix that is to select the vertices and flood them. It’ll also be more efficient to paint on an area and then start to paint on some details.

We created the controllers and constrained them to the joints. At this point, I was able to transform the three parts of the head.

Next, we started to modify some facial expressions through blend shape in Shape Editor. I used one of the Sculpting Tool to shape an angry face.

I also made eye blinks.

And the shape of skin change when the mouth opens. In order to prevent the mouth opens too large, we set limitation to the values of rotation of the controller.

We also made a couple more expressions.

A tip is that you can use the front camera to do different expressions, and use this to pose the model in Maya as a reference.

We did a bouncing ball animation and learned how to change the bouncing behaviour through adjusting the curves.

Soft ball curve VS hard ball curve.

The curve of the soft ball is more dramatic to make it bouncy. The hard ball doesn’t need to be bouncy so the curve is more flat.

Final Animation

We also experienced how to start a rig of a robot

We learned how to arrange the order of parent and child relationship of each section in the Outliner.

Therefore, when I select the upper body in the Outliner and rotate it, it rotates like a chain reaction. The child is following with the parent part.

We also created joints for the legs and constrained them to the appropriate part.

We learned how to paint a customised bump map from a texture image in Photoshop.

Firstly, I created a black and white adjustment layer. And then I put up the contrast and blurred it. Next, I cleaned some grey noise with Dodge Tool. It basically just make the area you painted overexposed.

In Mudbox, I created a plane and imported the bump map I just painted in Photoshop from Add Stencil button. When I double click on the stencil I imported, I could start to sculpt it from the bump stencil.

Next, I imported the diffuse map to paint the colour with Paint Brush Tool.

We also used the bump map which was painted in Photoshop to make the brick wall in Maya.

We learnt a new way to create models, which is using curves and evolve from the curve shape to a polygon.

First, we drew half of the outline of the object we want by using the CV Curve Tool in the front view. And then revolved from the curve to create the polygon.

So I got a bottle like this, I was able to adjust the shape of the model by moving the curve point.

I created a plate in the same way.

We also created a curtain shape using the CV Curve Tool. First of all, I drew the outline and duplicate it, and moved it to the top. Next, I used the the Loft tool under Surface tab. I was still able to adjust the shape by moving the curve point.

Final Render

I realised that it’s very important to have lights from different direction, otherwise it would be too dark in this scene from inside.

We also learned how to paint texture in Mudbox. Before that, I modelled the fireplace in Maya, and exported as Obj file. And the brought it into Mudbox.

In Mudbox, We need to import the displacement and the diffuse of the texture photo from the add stencil button. The texture photo will be overlapped under the model. And then I started to paint over it.

We learned how to make a realistic CG bread in Maya, including Modeling and texturing.

Firstly, we created a high-poly sphere , and then use the lattice tool under the Deform tab. It’s important to mention that the sphere needs to be created from Platonic Solid with cube primitive selected. I spent some time on figuring this out in the beginning.

With the lattice, we were able to drag the lattice points around to modify whatever shapes we want this sphere to be. This is how the bread’s shape were made.

Secondly, we need to apply texture to the model. So we cut and sew the UVs in UV Editor.

After I corrected the UV, we moved on to apply the bread textures. I learned hoe to use Sculpt Tool to sculpt on the model to modify the shape and make it look not flat.

Next, we need to create a loaf from the copy of the first bread we made. I created a high-poly cube and place it where I want the loaf to be cut. And then I used the Difference Tool from Boolean under the Mesh tab.

After I cut the UV, I applied another texture to the front mesh of the loaf.

Sometimes we will need to modify the photo of the texture in Photoshop to match with the UV, that makes it easier to align the UV in Maya.

I used the same way how I cut the loaf with the Difference Tool to create this slice of the loaf.

Lastly, I created a plane and applied wood texture on it. I put everything together and rendered out in Arnold renderer.