Character Tutorial
Part 1 – Character Modeling Using
Nurbs Primitives and Sub-Divisions Surfaces Or How to Make a Chicken
From Scratch
by Kris Kapp
I modeled this chicken over the course of
a couple of evenings. I needed a character that would offset my last
one, the Rabbit of the Apocalypse. The rabbit character is tall,
emaciated, and rather sickly. I wanted the next character to be more
robust. So, after a buddy gave me a t-shirt from a bar in New Hampshire
called the Black Cock, I knew what my next character would be.
"The Black Cock in all its
glory"
Before I even started modeling, I tried
to work out how I would do the animation setup for this guy. Since the
beak is going to be a totally different material than the head, I
decided to model it as a separate piece. Then I broke the beak down into
upper and lower sections. I decided to make the head separate from the
body, so I could model the head using nurbs and the body using
subdivision surfaces. I added a ruffle to the neck to make the head part
separate from the body. This would be the first time I’ve used sub-D’s
so I wasn’t sure how they would work with blend shapes. By making the
head out of a nurb sphere, I knew blend shapes would be a breeze to use
for facial animation. Also, I could bind the base hierarchy of the sub-D
surface to a skeleton fairly easily, so using them for the body was a no
brainer. The feet and tail are each modeled as individual pieces. They
are different enough from the main body that it made sense to attach
them to the body afterwards.
When I model, it helps me to have a
sketch of a side view and a front view. The sketches don’t have to be
to detailed, but they give me a starting point for modeling. Once I get
the sketches done, I scan them and bring them into Photoshop. I clean up
the images a little and try to scale them so they are the same size. One
thing that helps me is to make one image and paste both of the views in
it. Then I take the line tool and run a series of black lines across
both views. Make the lines big enough to see clearly but not cover up
any details. After flattening the image, cut and paste the two views
into different files, one for the front and one for the side. We are
going to use these images a as image planes that act as a template in
Maya.
Once in Maya, load up the images
as image planes. Image planes are a pain to use sometimes, so I have a
melscript button that I use to turn them off an on. The easiest way to
make one is to open up the attribute editor for the images plane and
turn the display mode off and on. Then open up the script editor and
select the text for each mode and drag it up to the tool shelf. Here’s
an example of what the text should look like:
SetAttr imagePlane1.displayMode 2; //this
turns the image plane on
SetAttr imagePlane1.displayMode 0; //this
turns the image plane off
This make it easy to switch the image
planes on and off.
Continued
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