I've been really struggling with the modelling of the toy, particularly with the arms and legs. Because of this I have made no progress on my model at all. I looked at a couple of tutorials on how to make arms and hands but these were for human figures. There wasn't anything that focused on modelling toys.
Because of this I have now decided to change my toy idea to something that is a lot simpler to create. I am now going to be creating a Creeper. This is a very simple model but because of this I will be able to leave myself time to be able to create a rig and anything else I need to do. If I continue trying to make this ball with arms I will find myself continuously struggling and then most likely not accomplishing the creation of the rig.
It's been suggested that I also add a little bit to the model, just to change the design a little bit. These suggestions were along the lines of, facial hair or to give it a hat.
Modelling of the toy
Since this is a very simple model, not many steps were needed in the creation.
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| By pressing the "insert" key and then holding "v" you can snap the rotation point to a corner. Then by pressing "insert" again and hold "v" once more, you can move the object and snap it to the corner of another object. |
As this is supposed to be a model of a toy I am thinking of using a tool known as the Crease Tool. This tool will give the model a smooth edge to give off the look that its a toy, rather than how it currently looks.
Making the rig
I only know the basics of making a rig and I did have a few issues creating it. These were mostly caused by the fact I was missing steps in the building of the skeleton.
This is my skeleton for my model. To create this I used 3 tools, the Joint Tool, Mirror Joint, and Smooth Bind. I began with the spine and create 5 joints. The base of the spine (which connects to the feet), the chest, the neck, the eyes and the cranium. Even though my model doesn't have eyes I have put a joint there just in case I wanted to make the eyes movable.
After making the spine I made the legs, although I only needed to make one leg since I could just mirror the joint. As soon as the legs had been completed I needed to parent parts of the skeleton. Parenting is basically making it so that when you select a part of the skeleton, you also select the parts it's attached to. For example, I have parented the top part of the legs with the bottom part of the legs. So that when I select the top joint, it'll also select the rest of the leg.
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| When selecting the top joint of the leg, it also selects the second joint as well. |
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| The same thing happens when I select the base of the spine. |
Once all the joints had been made and placed in the correct positions I needed to bind the skeleton to the model. Using Smooth Bind is how this is accomplished. I had to attach each part of the body individually so all I needed to do was select the part of the skeleton and then the corresponding part of the model. Then just use smooth bind to bring it together.
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| Since my model doesn't have much it can do besides walk I don't have a range of poses to put it into. However this pose at least shows that all parts of the body are functional. |
One change I made to my model during the creation process was the removal of the crease tool I used. I felt that it looked better without being rounded off so I decided to remove it. Also, the components of the model didn't align too well, in my opinion, so reverting back to it's boxed figure was preferable.
The model itself is fine on it's own, however, it hasn't really challenged my abilities with modelling in 3D. Since I was struggling to create the arms and legs for my prior idea shows that I need to allocate time for myself to practice modelling. In doing so I also need to learn how to create a finished rig.
My rig is a fairly basic creation since I've only utilized the joint tool and the smooth bind. I was made aware of a tool known as EP Curve Tool which add the transform points around the joints so that you don't need to click on the joint directly like I currently have to do. The reason I haven't used this is because I was unable to find a tutorial that explains how to create them properly and I ended up running out of time.
However, even though I didn't create a fully complete rig, it is still functional and I should be able to use it for my compositing project.
