CAT - Materials and Lighting

Summary

"We've added a material to the body that had a texture on three different texture channels, and added two materials to the eyes. We had to rotate the eyes outward to make them look good for this character. Next, we'll rig the character with an armature (an armature is sort of like a skeleton) so we can animate it."

USEFUL TIPS
CTRL ALT NUMPAD-0 - snap camera to current view
SHIFT P - preview render (drag to area)

CAT - Mod - 6 Torso Legs and Feet

Summary

"We created the torso, legs, and feet in a series of extrudes and vertex movements."












Having finished creating the model I've learnt a number of infinitely useful techniques that I'll use in the future, certainly for character animation, and importantly for making the models I need for my 'power ranger' animation.

CAT - Mod - 5 Neck and Shoulders

CAT - Mod - 4 Modelling the rest of the head

Summary

"That's it! Now you have a face with enough geometry that you can animate facial expressions. Next, we'll create a body for the character, before moving on to rigging and animation. Get ready for more extruding and moving!"

• I extruded the mesh to give more loops for the head, then chose the four centre vertices on the final loop and extruded.
• I switched to rear view and using G I 'grabbed' the vertices and moved them towards the centre, 'snapping' them in place. (back of skull)
• To fill the gaps I selected four vertices and pressed F

I next used the ALT box select tool, and loop selected the mouth, extruding it backwards into the head. Then closed off the mouth (faces), and then shaped it to close (new loop), scaled back of mouth.

Finally I changed the mouth expression to be 'bored', by lifting and lowering vertices.



USEFUL TIPS
CTRL 1 - Rear view
ALT B - select what part of mesh you want to see

CAT - Mod - 3 Creating the face and eyes

Summary

"We extruded the mouth further to form the face, added an eye, then duplicated and mirrored the eye using the 3D Cursor as a reference point. After a few more tweaks to the mesh, we now have a face with eyes and eyelids. Now we can finish making the head."

One thing I found very difficult was keeping the mesh and its vertices balanced. I needed to be constantly aware of the overall shape I was creating, and it was an alien process to me really. (see image)

Making the eye

• I added a new loop in place for the eye, and then deleted the two 'edges' for the eye holes.
• The eye must be able to rotate independently so I added a UVsphere (rings 8, segments 8)
• I positioned the eye where I wanted it, set smooth and added subsurf modifier.
• Placed cursor in centre of head (would be important for duplicating eye) changed to 3D cursor
• Duplicated and mirrored sphere (SHIFT D, CTRL M, X)
  

USING LAYERS
In the future when having really complicated meshes it is good practise to have different parts on different layers. So I selected both eyes and put on layer 2, so the head is on layer 1, I then selected both layers in the 3D window so I'd be able to go on as normal but with the ability to see them separately.

Looking just at eyes I needed to mirror the axis so they both had Z above and X to the right, it was the opposite on the second because it had been mirrored.



USEFUL TIPS
SHIFT S - cursor to selection (centres cursor) ALT R - clear rotation
CTRL 3 - look at other side
ALT right mouse click - selects surrounding loop/vertices

CAT - Mod - 3 Creating the face

I 'lifted' the mouth up by extruding the above vertices and shaping like a head. Proportional editing was very useful, one can shape the vertices around the selected area and keep it all relative.

I had previous experience that sometimes when using the subsurf modifier
black blocky lines would appear, I learnt that by recalculating normals you can eliminate these. (EDIT/select all/CTRL N)

CAT - Mod - 2 Creating the mouth

Summary

"Great! You've learned the primary tools for modeling: Grab, Scale, Rotate, and Extrude. These skills will be very important in the next part of the tutorial. We started the mouth and then smoothed it using Set Smooth and a Subsurf Modifier, and saw how to apply the modifier to Edit Mode."

This was a very useful tutorial, yes I had used all of these techniques before, but it helped to familiarise the optimum results one can get from them. I'd never really modelled complicated/human like shapes before so it was a welcome thing to be doing.

Using loops was new to me, it's a technique used to add more vertices so when tweaking the mesh the user has more control and can manipulate the shape they want.

Creating Loop

• CTRL R - to enter loop cut mode
• Position loop
• Left click - confirm area
• Position along area, click mouse scroll, to centre.

Then it was all about tweaking vertices, changing positions, scale etc.

CAT - Modelling - 1 Setting up the mesh

Summary

"We created a simple mesh, deleted half of it, and then mirrored it. Now we can model only one half of the character, and the other half will automatically update."

This tutorial used pretty basic techniques that I already knew, though I hadn't really explored using a mirror modifier, so that was useful.

USEFUL TIPS
// when adding a mirror - clipping - means the vertices can't cross over
// click left mouse button in place - press C to center

Character Animation Tutorial (CAT)

Obviously I'm going to need to rig and skin a character, and need to know how to create the sort of thing I want, so I've found this 3D character tutorial that covers everything I need to know.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Animation/BSoD/Character_Animation

I will start by working through this.