Introduction
This week, Yu and I started to make the second group of poster. Contrary to the first group, this time I may spend a little longer than Yu because I need to make a 3D monkey model without lots of references.
Task:
Make a poster for the second group.
Process
Before making the second set of posters, both Yu and I found that our model could not play animation normally in the unity. She chose to re-rigging, and I chose to continue to study why my blend shape would go wrong. As a result, I found answer. Because I exported the character’s plane, I should select the objects I need to export. It has nothing to do with whether I use blend shape for animation or not, because I have key frame in Maya.
This time we made the second group of posters. Yu was in charge of making soldiers, and I was in charge of making monkeys. Our gameplay is to take the leaf from the monkey poster and place it on the soldier’s helmet. So I want to make monkey models and animations.
Because Yu used simple rig for her panda instead of blend shape, in order to review the rigging, I first asked her how I should use binding to control my monkey poster. Sean happened to be at Discord, and he also asked some useful questions.
The next step is the formal modeling. I haven’t used a biological model for a long time, and some processes have been forgotten. So I went to see a very uesful modeling tutorial, telling how to build a gorilla in Maya using only the cube. There are some useful techniques, for example, you can create a half face first, and then use the instance in Duplicate Special to copy another face, so that you can move only one side of the point to make a model. There is also the model first put the simplest shape, and then continue to add lines and smooth to achieve better results.
Because the head has a side view reference, I can also make a rough shape. But the body is made entirely by one’s own imagination. I made a stupid decision to connect my head to my body, which means I used the bottom surface of the head to exturde out the body. The shape of the neck and buttocks is completely strange, and it took me a long time to move the points to make them round. Later Yann and Sean said that even if the head and body are separated, it doesn’t matter, because my model is relatively simple.
The next step is to modify the action. In fact, my model is T-shaped, which is suitable for direct rigging, but I am worried that there is a problem with the wiring of my model, so I had to do the action first. I want to thank Sean for his modeling skills, so he is very enthusiastic about using TeamViewer to show me how to use the sculpting tools and soft selection to modify the monkey’s movements.
This looks really good.
Then I started paint weight, but I haven’t done this work for a long time and forgot the standard process. As soon as I paint the first joint, the following joints will change accordingly. Later, Yann told me that I can use Flood to accurately control the weight of each point, because the weight on a model will be controlled by a certain point, either this point or that point. I also made a small mistake here. I didn’t close the model of the eyes, so the points of the eyes were painted by me and I didn’t find it, which caused the eyes to be completely deformed.
After adding materials to the model, it looks the same as the poster.
Although I can directly send FBX to Zhu and Jiang. I still go to unity to test my model first, and the result is really problematic. First of all, although the monkey’s face has animation, the model has problems in motion. Second, the monkey’s eyes did not follow the monkey’s head movement.
Thanks to Yann, he told me how to solve these problems based on his experience. First, I need to clear the history of the model, and then select the hierarchy when I choose to export, so that I can select all the bone points. Finally, when exporting, because my model has joints and constraints, I have to check these to export.
This solved the model deformation, the main reason is that I did not clear the history.
Regarding the eyes, because I used the parent before rigging, I can no longer create a new parent after painting weight, so I can only use the parent constraint. Yann said that at this time the model is controlled by the joints, so the father of the eyes should be the joint instead of the model. After I successfully constrained, my eyes moved with my head!
So, with the help of my classmates, my monkey model, binding, and animation are all completed!
In addition, I also went to see the substance paint tutorial. Although this software is relatively simple, I found that there is a video that tells a lot about textures. I think I can learn about textures and materials while learning this software!
Conclusion
After the model is processed, I can send it to my partners! They also just finished studying a very complicated game fluid design, in order to make our first set of games go smoothly. And Jiang also finished studying the game of muscle man, which requires me to continue modeling!