Bearded Dragon

During the Christmas holidays I decided to model my bearded dragon.

The modelling process would have been relatively easy however I encountered some pretty irritating problems in Maya which hugely held me back. As I posted previously, my software in 2013 had a number of bugs which affected navigating the scene and some specific tools. A simple process such as zooming into a specific area to rearrange vertices would take minutes as opposed to seconds, and it slowed my workflow down completely.

The examples above show the problems I had in orthographic viewports - they would often rotate, sometimes without me realising, which would alter how I'd use the image planes. I had to restart the model a number of times to rectify the problems it caused.

It got to a certain point where I decided I couldn't model with the bugs anymore, so I decided to uninstall and download 2014. Unfortunately, I was faced with more problems - 2014 wouldn't install because of my OS, as well as being affected by problems caused by Maya 2013. I also couldn't reinstall 2013, and I still haven't been able to solve as to why.
I ended up installing Maya 2012, importing my model as an OBJ. Most of the problems have been solved now, however Maya 2012 does still frequently crash without warning, meaning that I'm still losing a lot of work.

My solution will be to do a manual backup of my laptop, wipe the hard disk and reboot to a previous OS. However, I can't do this until a buy a new hard drive! If this doesn't solve the issues I don't know what will!

Getting into Character

In my brief experience of modelling over the past 6 months, I'd usually start modelling my character in Maya. However, I thought I'd take my tutor's advice and start out by making an armature in ZBrush and develop from there. I thought it would also be a good opportunity to get used to the programme so that I can start learning its functions properly.

As a starting point, the armature was good for getting practice, but I could tell that the anatomy was off so I thought I'd start again using the character sheet I'd previously drawn. 

Being so precise in my drawing took a lot of patience - I began with rough tracings of my bearded dragon in photoshop, and made a number of small subtle changes to the anatomy and appearance. I then had to attempt to make the drawings symmetrical in order to make the modelling process easier.

I took these images into ZBrush and made an image plane, resulting in the following armature:

I found that modelling in Zbrush from the beginning was awkward and didn't get me the results I wanted - I also worried about correct topology as this character is something I actually want to rig, animate and work with. As the deadline was also getting closer, I decided to go back into Maya and start modelling a different, simpler character design I'd done previously.

After completing the model, I cut the UVs and took it into ZBrush for texturing.

I felt that the colours and patterns were a little crude, so I tried the process again for practice, making the texturing slightly more subtle.

Link to the rendered turntable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IACA0Sseobk

UV Mapping

In order to prepare for the lesson on UV mapping, I did a short exercise myself experimenting with planar mapping using a rainbow target I quickly made in Photoshop.

During the lesson itself we were taught more basics of UV mapping, using a model made by the tutor.

I felt like I needed to learn more, so I did some practice by myself after the lesson. I modelled a fish quickly in Maya and painted a texture map in Photoshop to go with it. Although the model and colours are a little rushed and basic, it definitely benefitted my learning.