NURBS to Polygons Issue

At one point when I changed the NURBS in the dog model to Polygons I noticed that the dog had lost some of its definition. This required some careful cleaning to get the character back to its original standards.

My Mirroring Experience

I was very pleased with my modelling work today and I finished making malf of the dog. My next task was to mirror it and join the control vertex points to make the complete character. Unfortunately I then experienced a few challenges - with the way Damon looked when I was linking him. His face collapsed a bit in the middle not a great look! Eventually I got around this look and then the model looked good.

Progress Update: Modeling the Dog

Here is my basic rigging

In the modeling of my Dog (that I have named Damon as he is evil) a lot has happened and I will keep all of the updates under this post.

Dog Images Used

For my modeling I have used 2 images one that is a side view of how I want my dog to look and one from the tutorial. I am obviously using my side view character design more as this is more important to the final model.

Legs and body

The modelling and rigging for my dog (Damon) is now finished. I am pleased with the result. To do the rigging I followed several different tutorials which I found on the Internet

Moving ears blend shape position. I will use this when my dog is walking and barking.

Sitting blend shape position

Barking blend shape position

Sad blend shape position

Here are the "Blend Shape" positions for the dog model that I have created. There is one problem though with the sitting down position. It will not work because the rigging does not move with the blend shape tool. Because of this it will not work properly when I try to animate the dog.

Dog Designs

I wanted to develop a range of different dogs and characters and then make my final selection using the best elements from each.

Here are some of my favourites:














I am pleased with this drawing and would probably like to include a part of this and the drawing above in my final character

New Idea

After brain storming many different ideas I thought of a new story idea and decided that what I would like to use as the dog as the new character. I thought that a dog would be good if I tried to make it look evil and help Jack Nicholson attack Wendy (Jack's wife) as I feel that it would be fun creating an evil mans best friend. I also have an idea to make it look like a ghost. I thought that this would work well in the clip as Jack Nicholson is holding an axe and finding it difficult to walk (as you can see below).

Will Not Be Using Penguins Anymore

I will not be using penguins in this assignment anymore as I have now seen that the clip from "The Shining" which is in the snow is too dark to do the tracking in. I am also not happy to use penguins inside the hotel in the film because there is no snow and I do not really want to add it inside the building. Hence why my dog was a much better choice.

Penguin Character Design

Here are my designs for the penguins.

I like the penguin in the middle on the page below. I think it would work well in the animation





































I like the design below. For the animating I would use the same model for both but with a few small changes to make one look less intelligent. This character idea does have a problem though, it may not look as good when it walks because of the body shape.

I would not use teeth though for the less intelligent one (below right) as penguins do not have them.
I would probably leave its tongue hanging out of its mouth instead.

Maya Live

Here are some the scenes that I have used Maya Live on.

Modeling Tutorial in the Background

I decided to use a tutorial to occasionally refer to while I was modeling my character.

Storyboard