Bare Bear Model & Texture Tests

Today was a very productive day as we finally got maya work underway as a team. I had the simple task of modelling bare bear and so began by referencing the final concept designs for him. For previous character models I have always scanned in front, back, side drawings to use as image planes however for bare bear it was unnessasary because of his simple geomtric design.

It took me pretty much a day to model the entire character clothed and naked. The clothed version was simply a case of duplicating the naked head and creating a pouch like opening for his face to peep through. I then scaled it and only inserted the visable faces of the naked head within the hollowed out hat (saving on polygon count). I also modelled a beautiful zip to emphasise the fact he's in an all in one suit. Plus I can get some awesome secondary animation on it when the time comes.

The body was a very simple cone shaped mesh, curved with the back straightened. I also sculpted in a seem line for the stiching running down the centre of the bear, as he is after all being stylized as a toy. We all agreed the legs and arms did not need to be physically attached to the body as they would look more stitched on and floppy hanging from a point. It won't affect the rig at all.

Huge debates occured over the shape of the legs and arms, stumps, paws, cones, sausages, thumbs, no thumbs, mits etc!!! We should have established these fine details before modelling really but I soldiered through the stress and went with what I thought looked best; a mitten shaped palm with a thumb (for when he picks up objects during animation), and a wool stuffed arm in a cone like shape. Legs were also debated but I insisted stumps would look crap and there would be no nice heel role for animation. I therefore included rounded feet, again which looked like fabric stuffed with wool.

The nose and eyes were simple spheres shaped slightly to look like black beads/buttons. The mouth has yet to be modelled as it was looking noticeably like a moustache when attempted. #

I then called upon Alecs help to run a few texture tests to see whether the model was working, plus lambert default depresses me. We worked together with a few fabric textures we had found earlier in the week to recreate a wooly suit and cotton face. We only played around with the clothed bare bear for today. Below is the progress, which I am fairly happy with.... for tests!!



For the above render the same fabric texture and bump was applied to both suit and face (colour changed in PS). Hmmm it's ok. Lacks depth and cosyness. Bit of a cheat to use the same file twice but hey it looked suprisingly good. The suit needed more of a noticably different texture I felt, more of a knitted look. The two textures used can be seen below.





For this next render the cotton texture was left on the face as we felt that worked as his bare skin. However the suit was given a dense wool texture an bump very similar to that of the sack boy characters in little big planet...



As you can see from the render above, it was a slight improvement and highlighted the difference betweeen his bare skin and suit more, in terms of materials. It definately still needs work, but he's already looking alot more snug! Below is the texture which is actually a photo of a wicker basket found on a texture website, but works perfectly for woven wool.



Tommorow I need to sort out the mouth, zip seem and tweak the textures alot more to match the lighting in the environments we will be using. I want to experiment in achieving a higher quality look to the model, as I feel it looks slightly like an in game character at present.