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August 2001
Chicken Head Setup
by Kris Kapp -- page 4
(Your first dance
with the chicken? Get caught up with the first chicken scratch
here)
Continued from
page 3
I added some detail to the top of the
beak, just a couple of ripples to add character. I plan on converting
the whole beak to Sub-Ds to make it smooth. I didn’t follow any
particular order when making the UVs for the beak. I selected faces
that lined up and made projections for those pieces. Then I scaled,
rotated, and sewed up the individual UVs as needed. Some parts aren’t
continuous, but in the case of the inside of the beak, it didn’t really
matter.
UV map of whole
beak.
Now I have a poly head and beak. With more tools becoming available for
SubDs, I am finding less and less reasons for using nurbs. They do have
their advantages but for complex branching, surfaces, polys are
becoming more attractive. If you only have Maya complete, Dirk Bialluch
has created a connect poly script that works much like the subdivision
surface tool. I think you can get it at
highend3d.com. I haven’t used it
yet, it’s something that I need to check out.
Poly head and beak.
Joints for the Head:
The skeleton structure for the head is pretty basic. I added a few extra
joints for attaching the beak and also where the head connects with the
body. Basically, its the NeckBaseJT, NeckTwistJT, SkullBaseJT, SkullJT,
and SkullEndJT. These aren’t the most original names but it was pretty
late when I was doing this step.
Layout of head
joints
One thing you might notice is that I don’t have the beak or joints for
the beak in the graphic, above. I am going to skin
the beak separately and later parent the joints for the beak to the
skull. The main problem with doing it that way is getting back to the
bind pose. It’s not that big a deal but if you are not aware of the
problem then it can be a pain. The skeleton has to be in the bind pose
position if you want to add influence objects to the skin. I am going to
use a curve to deform the eyebrows and another for the eyelid, and I am
going to add the curve as an influence object for the beak so the
skeleton has to be in the bind pose to do this. But I am getting a
little ahead of my self, so first we need to smooth skin the head to the
skeleton. I like to use only 2 or 3 max influences when I smooth bind
the mesh to the skeleton. For the head I only used 2 influences. Once
the head is bound, we need to adjust the weights using the paint weight
tool. Open the tool and select the SkullEndJT and flood it with a value
of 0. Then toggle the hold weight option on that joint. Next select the
NeckBaseJT set the value to 1 and paint around the bottom of the neck.
What you want is for the bottom of the next to not be influenced by
other joints so it stays stationary when the neck twists.
Painted weight
values for the NeckBaseJT
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