So it’s allergy season here. Honestly with the way the weather has been messed up I think it’s been allergy season here since Christmas. I feel like I’ve taken so much allergy medication that maybe I should buy stock in the company. It can be a little
frustrating to need to take something so often and after a while I wonder if maybe I’m taking it out of habit. So this past week, I tried to cut back. I’m one of those people that the stuff that works best for me, and causes me the least amount of other side effects is the stuff that puts me to sleep. I figured if I could cut back and not take it as often I might be more alert and get more done. As it turns out, I have the choice of fighting off the sleepiness from the medication or the tiredness caused by the allergies. So, yeah, not taking the sleepy allergy medication so I could get more done, not a very effective strategy.
I guess, if I had to have a week that lost productivity, better it be this past week instead of next week when I’m on vacation from the day job. I’m hoping to have larger chunks of time to work on something, anything, and make big progress.
I was having an email conversation with a friend today with regards to creating the balloon letters and the math of it. My friend said that the balloon letters were basically cylinders and that I should be able to make the base shapes and then merge them together. This isn’t wrong. It’s true. It could work, sort of. The way I was reading and understanding what my friend was saying, didn’t seem like it would work. And the way I was understanding it, I don’t think it would. However, manipulated slightly differently, it might. Or at least it would be closer to working. That aside. As I was trying to explain the caveats to what my
friend was suggesting, I came to realize that I might need to make a small demo video of some step or steps of modeling something. I’ve got to figure out how to do that so don’t expect it any time soon. It also made me aware that I might need to put together
some sort of primer for reference. Again, probably not too soon. Or maybe start it and keep it as a work in progress until I can get the whole thing really polished. One more item for the list.
Now on to what I did manage to get done over the week.
I finished modeling the Robot Hand. It needed another joint or knuckle for the fingers and
the tips of the fingers. Not too difficult. For the most part I’m working with base shapes that have a small amount of transformations applied. I used the copy for the last set of knuckles and then scaled them to fit the end better. Then I copied one set of bone cylinder things and added them on top. I spaced everything and did a little bit of scaling. Probably the most difficult, and it wasn’t very difficult, was getting the tips rounded. The copy I made had the top concaved to cradle the sphere being used for the knuckle. I needed that top to be convex and rounded. I don’t have a lot of edge loops there so I could do the whole thing manually and it worked out a little easier than using the soft select for this. I selected one edge loop at a time and transformed it into it’s place and then for the very center I just selected the vertex and moved it. I did a little more adjusting. Again, not too many edge loops, so it wasn’t an arduous task.
I did a little more adjusting before I attached all the parts. I tightened up the bone bits that the knuckles sit in so that you see a little less of the knuckle. I also adjusted some of the sizing a little. The main hand part got some refining. I moved some edge loops a little to help soften the corners some. Not too much, just a bit. With that done I selected the hand part and attached the knuckles and the finger bone parts working from hand to tip. I just attached. I didn’t join or weld any of it. I want to try to keep some of the mechanical with the bones looking like they are sliding over the the knuckle spheres.
I decided to work on the materials for the Robot Hand next. I want it to look mechanical and a good way to do that is to use a metal material. I tried using a brushed metal but it was so flat that an aluminum or stainless steel looked like a flat dull grey. Even a brass or copper didn’t really come off. So I adjusted and chose a semi-polished finish. That helped mostly. I probably won’t know for sure until I get the hand in a scene with something other than the default lighting. Polished metal needs light and other things to reflect for it to be most effective. Right now things look a little dark.
Ok. Almost there. Two more small things before I start creating bones for rigging. I want the hand in a position as if it has a body attached and it was standing in a T-pose. So I rotated around the x axis and then around the y axis to get them in the right position. The last thing. I need a second Robot Hand. To get that I used the Mirror Tool and made sure to make a copy while mirroring in the x axis. Now I have two Robot Hands that need bones and rigging.
The letter balloons are modeled, they all have strings, I have two Robot Hands, and nothing to do that I could use to as an excuse to keep from starting the process of creating the bones and setting up the rig. Guess that’s what I’ll be getting started on next.
The hand rigging will be a little different than with Sticks. Even accounting for the difference in the hand shape and the missing body for the hands. With Sticks, though you can’t see it because of his hand shape, he does have 3 fingers as well as a thumb. That’s what the tutorial used and it worked ok for Sticks even with his block hands. This hand has 4 fingers and the pinky finger isn’t going to need quite the flexibility as it would with a more organic hand. It doesn’t really need the ability to roll inward. I don’t want it to look too “alive”. I don’t know if I will leave that ability off or just not use it in the posing process.
As you can see, as close as I am to being able to set up a final render for the card, I still have work to do. I think I will stay on the allergy medication this week. Even with having to fight through the sleepies I have a feeling I’ll get more done. At least I hope so. Check back next week to find out how this experiment works out.