It is extremely difficult to make a work in progress picture of a worm or caterpillar type creature not look obscene. Especially in the early stages of the model.
For most of this week I didn’t work on anything. I came to realize that I had not really taken a breather between getting the Birthday Card out and starting on the Halloween Card. And while that is how most people have to work, and how I might work if I had
an idea that really excited me, it isn’t always the best way for me to work. And, it isn’t how I have to work. At least not right now. For now, it’s more about having fun, learning things, and creating quality work.
So I took a little time to think about things, and I decided not to work on the Halloween Card this week. Instead, I decided I would try modeling something that was fun to draw and I think would make a fun character to model, or at least to get to see modeled. Remember this little guy from the sketchbook last year? Well that’s who I decided I want to model. Yes, he’s a worm or caterpillar type thing.
I didn’t get started on him nearly as soon as I had wanted. Several things got in the way. But as I finally got to sit down and start to think about how to model him I also started thinking about how to texture him. I don’t think that using one of the stock materials in 3DS Max is going to get the look I want. I’m really going to have to do some custom texturing or painting. This led me to looking into some of the texturing software out there. Particularly the stuff that lets you “paint on your model”. I’m looking into 3 packages, I think there is another but I don’t remember what it is. They range in price, and I suspect in capability. I’m looking at Mari, Quixel, and Substance Painter. I’ve looked at them all briefly and I’ve come to the conclusion that I am going to need to test them to see which is going to do what I need and be the easiest to work with.
Being able to better customize the materials and textures on my models will be extremely helpful. I expect, provided I do a good job with them, that they have the potential to add considerably to the artwork. A custom material and texture that makes the pen look like it’s been held between someone’s teeth adds significant character to that pen, it gives it a life. Not to mention the polish, and realism, or not, that can be brought to a scene by being able to use custom materials and textures. I think this needs to be the next thing I work on while I continue to model interesting scenes for greeting cards.
On to the frustration. And a little more about work in progress worm pictures.
I sat about creating the worm. I decided that connecting a bunch of spheres together was the way to go. It could give me a pretty good base to start with. So I created a sphere. But the head isn’t totally round it’s a little flat on top. So I used an FFD modifier to be able to squash the top down a little. I squashed the bottom up a little as well. I collapsed the modifier changes onto the sphere and then I made copies of it. I positioned the spheres so they overlapped and then deleted the overlapping polygons. This let me then attach one to the other and then I was able to weld the vertices together so that I had one object. I did this with every sphere, connecting it to the chain before it.
When I got done connecting all the spheres I did a little scaling using the soft select so I could make the tail in a little skinnier than the head and shoulders. Then, I decided to pose it. Here I found that for some reason it was too big to use the same FFD modifier I had used on the first sphere. I couldn’t figure out how to adjust the size of the lattice so that it was all around the object so I scaled it down and then applied the modifier. I was able to get it to work and so I set about trying to make the worm look like it was sitting on a surface with it’s body and head upright. I moved the tail out to the side and up, I did some
rotating and more moving of parts using the control points of the modifier. I had to pay attention so I didn’t get too much deformation, pinching, or skewing in the model. Finally I had roughly the pose I wanted.
As you can see, there is no way to make a work in progress picture of a worm at this stage in the process not look obscene. It really is the beginnings of a worm like creature, I promise. But hey, I learned how to do a screen capture from within 3DS Max. I can even add a label to it as I create the capture, you probably can’t see it, it says WormGuy at the bottom.
And then I shutdown the computer and went off to bed. Here is where the bellows of frustration happen. This was the point that I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to pose the worm. I would be much better off to leave it in a T type pose and then rig it, yes,
rig a worm. One of the nice things about creating a rig and using that is that during the weight painting phase you get to see and have a little more control over how the bones cause the model to deform. It can help to cut back on the bad deformations when it is
time to pose the character. Yes, bellows of frustration. Or the utterance of a choice curse word.
And so the next day, I started over with the worm creature. I followed the same basic steps though instead of squishing the bottom of the sphere I left it a little elongated and created more of a defined head/neck thing. Once all the spheres were connected I did some scaling using soft select to get a bit of a graduated scaling. Here he is with just the basic shape all put together and just the smallest amount of taper from top to bottom.
Then it was time to start on the features. I started with the nose and mouth. I used the cut tool to create some better edges and polygon shapes for the nose. Then I extruded the polygons away from the surface and then rotated them so it looks like the nose is upturned. Then I created the mouth shape using the cut tool for the extra edges I needed for the right polygon shapes. For this I extruded the polygons into the object to create a gaping hole sort of thing. You can just barely see it in this profile. You can see the taper here better. I also ended up needing to scale up the upper body and head some. I used the soft select for this too.
Here’s a screen capture of what it looks like to use the soft select with the scale tool.
So that’s where I’m at with the worm guy. I’m going to finish modeling him and then get 
him rigged so I can pose him. Creating the rig should be interesting. I have a feeling it’s going to be a little more complicated than you might expect. But it will be fun to see it come together. I’m also planning to try the hair and fur tool. This little guy has these hairs sticking out from him but they are quite thick. I’m hoping to figure out how to use the hair tool and create the hairs or spikey bits that way. Then there is the texturing. That will be another thing to learn on this project.
Don’t forget to check back to see how the learning is going and how the worm guy progresses. Once I get some really facial features going hopefully he will cease to look as odd as he does now.