Here’s a colour preview using just shader materials.  I’ve started the UV mapping though, so it’ll be nice to brush some texture into her hair.

I finished the head, added hands and feet.  I noticed that when I duplicated the half-model to complete the missing left side, her head looked a bit wide.  I’ll be fixing that then moving onto UV mapping.  This is fun! Thanks José.

Seen here with temporary simple shader materials …

And with the wireframe overlaid …

I have been chomping at the bit to start this project, titled “GG1″.

[View with PicLens]

The last image is viewed using Maya’s polygon smooth preview feature (as of Maya 2008 – just press 1,2 & 3 on the keyboard), so the model isn’t as high-res as it appears, but it does help to highlight whether or not you’re on the right track.

Also, GG1’s UV’s aren’t set up yet, I just assigned materials to the appropriate faces, just for fun.  A proper UV map will come later.

Thanks to José Pou for the use of his character.

While researching some of the many free character rigs from Highend3d.com, I came across “Blake”.  After an hour or so of playing around with his controls, my son came up to me and asked if I could make him look scared.  So after much direction from a 5 1/2 year old, I came up with the above pictured pose.

I will be exporing several different rigs while I decide upon which way I would like to rig my own character, Mr. Hap.  I might even take Blake for a spin and submit an entry into this months 11 Second Club Competition.

Thanks again to Alistair Murphy for his help and feedback during this project.  With his suggestions I went back into the UV layout and condensed everything into just one map instead of the previous two maps.  I think I will still stick with a 256×256 texture for now. The first round of animations will only have Mr. Hap walking, running and otherwise doing full-body actions.  There won’t be a need for any closeups of the head just yet.  Even so, I made sure to give the head much more texture space than the rest of the body.

So, what’s next?  Rigging, my friends, rigging.

After setting up the UVs last night, I couldn’t resist jumping into Photoshop and laying down some quick colours just to see how Mr. Hap would look.  These are 512 maps so, the detail isn’t fantastic, but not bad.

I am finalizing the UV map.  I just thought I would post what I have come up with, before going back in and tweaking.  After taking these screengrabs, I think I’ll go back and cut the shirt and pants into two UV shells.  That way I can paint either without the risk of the textures bleeding into one anther, not to mention it will just be easier to paint near the edges of each shell.

I was listening to this month’s 11 Second Club sound bite and got inspired to play with Josh Burton’s Squirrel Rig.  I knew I wouldn’t have the time to actually animate 11 seconds of this character before the month’s end deadline, but it was fun to take a break from other things to put him into a few poses.

Here’s a quickly modeled squirrel idea I got while eating eating my breakfast yesterday.  Real simple, but the potential for mischief is there, no?  Maybe I will come back and finish him after I am done with Mr. Happinstance’s UV map and textures.