Character Body Design part3.

With a model for the character created I could now begin animating the biped for my first scene.

Before the biped can be animated however, the mesh must first be attached to the bones. This requires the use of the 'skin' modifier to attach mesh and bone and begin animating. However, for unknown reasons, the skin modifier would not attach the bones to the mesh and consequently, the mesh would not be affected by movement of the biped!

Due to this, I have been forced to use an alternative method and turn to the 'Physique' modifier which is also used to perform the same task. the major difference between the skin and Physique modifiers is the fact that the later focuses more of envelope 'weight-editing' as opposed to vertex weighting, which is ultimately more precise.



The Physique tool works by creating a circuit of 'veins' throughout the biped which can be edited to perfect it's weighting affect on the surrounding model surfaces. Each section features a selectable envelope which is used to adjust the weight settings and area coverage. The trick with this, is getting the correct shape from the envelope, otherwise too much or not enough surfaces are affected correctly to prevent mesh-tearing..



So far I have been unable to produce a clean flow of motion using the current model design, this is down to the model being too bulky, which also has caused issues with setting the Physique envelopes correctly to prevent this.

Character Body Design part2.

To create the character's robe, I used the technique of the garment maker method and created a flat editable poly to fit the character's body shape using the 'Line' tool..



I then duplicated this using the 'symmetry' modifier to create the back section of the robe. Next I positioned both the front and back faces of the robe to fit neatly either side of the model, leaving a small gap between the model and the robe.



The next stage was to close the gaps between the two sides of the editable poly. This was done by simply selecting to opposite edges and using the 'bridge' tool to create a polygon between them. Once this was done, I continued to make small adjustments over the entire robe shape to create a more realistic appearance..



Once I was happy with the look, I added a 'turbo-smooth' modifier and began adding some minor details to the robe such as a rope belt which can be seen in the screenshot above. At this stage I also imported the wizard hat I had made previously and scaled the model to fit the character..

Character Body Design part1.

This stage of development has so far presented numerous problems with the appearance of my character. My design includes the possibility of using the 'cloth' modifier to simulate a more realistic robe for my character to wear but has so far been difficult to get the desired effect, thus taking my ideas back to the drawing board.

My next attempt started by first creating a rough biped shape and placing this inside a rapidly sculpted model which reflects the biped's shape..

A copy of the head is carefully positioned with the body, however due to conflicts with the existing 'morpher' tool state, the head can not be attached to the body. Following this, I then used to 'line' tool to draw the outline for the intended robe design which will sit over the body. This technique is common practice in preparation for creating garments using the garment and cloth modifiers. However previous experiments using this technique proved, time-consuming with no guarantee of a clean finish at the end..



For this experiment, I created a simple under-model for the body and created a robe-shaped garment using the garment and cloth modifiers. As you can see here, there are numerous cracks in the mesh which consequently give a very messy look. Unfortunately, I underestimated the size requirements of the model which caused further issues but any attempt at changing the mesh without removing the garments would give many undesired effects. For this reason, along with the time needed to accurately test and adjust a suitable mesh shape, I decided to take an alternative approach.

Final Face Morphers

With further tweaking and careful adjustments, I have been able to create my three main face expressions using the 'morpher' modifier..

This allows me to simulate different facial poses throughout my animation, as part of my design, this will have a major impact on the effectiveness of the way my character portrays his emotions.

The screenshot shows each 'clone' of the original head (far right) with an additional pose, which can be mixed to create several other expressions.

Character Face Experiment 2

After reviewing the result of the first attempt to animate the face, I went back to the drawing board and thought carefully how else I could approach this...

Previously I used the 'FFD' modifier to simulate eye expressions and movement and decided to try this method out for the facial expressions..



As useful as this tool can be, for the purpose of its task here the vertices were being overstretched and is not the effect I wish to display when animating my character. So unfortunately, the FFD tool is not suitable!

My next idea would be to try using the 'Morpher' tool. This is a simple animating tool which allows different vertice position to be copied by a 'parent' object from it's 'child' clones. In other words.. each clone of the original object will be a different shape and the original object can 'transform' itself to appear the same as a selected clone.



I began by experimenting with simple 2d images using planes and editable polygons to represent different facial expressions. The object on the far left is the base (with no modifier applied) and the object directly next to this on the right is the base object with the 'Morpher' modifer applied. Currently, this object has a mixture of expressions applied to it and can be altered using a percentage setting to define how much of each expression is applied via the morpher.

Character Face Experiment

So now i've done some research into how i want my character to communicate his facial expressions, I need to experiement with different methods of achieveing this pretty early in the development stage to discover what works best..

To start, I created a simple sphere and used the scale tool to modify its appearance to make it slightly taller..



I then created a copy of this shape, slightly larger than the first to act as the exterior of the face, using the 'see-through' setting under the object properties to see what im doing..



Next, I created a simple cylinder and positioned it across the front of the face. This will be used alongside the 'boolean' modifier tool to cut this shape out from the exterior sphere - effectively created an eye slot.



The result came out rather messy and some tidying of the vertices needed to be done before a usable shape was made.. Applying a turbosmooth to both spheres made the model start to look how I want the face to be shown on my character.



Then I wanted to see how the eyes could be incorporated into this design using materials..



As the image shows, this looks very messy and not the look I want to achieve.. I may need to consider using another method of creating the face or eyes to resolve this.

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To Summarise:

Pros:

• head and face can individually rotate

Cons:

• Eyes too rectangular
  

Magic tricks & Props

Initial ideas for the content of my animation include the use of hats (to pull items out of), which is a common magic trick. Other tricks may include levitating objects, making items disappear, causing objects to unexpectedly explode etc.

One of the main props I would like to use in my animation is a signature magician's item.. a wand, to which there are countless designs on the web to choose from..