Back to more Funkatmyer the FunkyBird this week. Though not quite as much as I would have liked. The day job really took it’s toll. Lots of long days that meant I was out of steam by the time I got home and found I had little time or energy for working on much more than feeding myself. Or kicking things. Though, even kicking things was a 
struggle by the end of the week.
As I mentioned I still have studying to do for the day job. I can’t say that that got a lot of attention during the week either. But it got some at the weekend. My feathered companions helped out by insisting on my presence for a while. Some days there’s not much more to be done other than sit while they eat and fuss and preen. These can be good days, and excuses to get some studying in.
I wasn’t sure I was going to get to work on Funkatmyer this week. The way things were going I was sure I was going to run out of steam before I even got the file open. I finally got there though.
I decided that it would be a good idea to get his tail shaped so that he is more 
complete and ready to have more accessories. It helps to have the full base shape before adding accessories. What if I wanted to give him cargo shorts. Not having that tail added would make it a bit annoying. As it was I had to adjust his jacket once I added the tail. The jacket was cutting into the surface so I had to reshape the back side.
When I started to shape the tail, the jacket was kind of in the way. So I hid it from the view so I didn’t have to worry about it and I could get the shape just right. When I got done with the tail and was ready to reshape the jacket I got a little frustrated. In 3DS Max I can freeze an object so that I don’t have to worry about moving it or changing it’s shape or anything like that. I can also set things to an x-ray mode so that I can see through them. I’m guessing that one or both those options might be available in Maya, probably through a script, but I couldn’t find either. I didn’t want to accidentally get the points on 
the body while trying to select the points on the jacket that I wanted to move. And since the jacket points were inside the body where I couldn’t see them, that was a possibility. To see the points I used wire-frame mode. I’m not terribly fond of this because it puts everything in wire-frame instead of just what you need. Of course, since I couldn’t put the body in x-ray on mode it was really my only option.
As you can see from the images, it worked out ok. I got the tail all done and adjusted the back of the jacket to lay over it nicely. I even added another light to the scene so that you can better see the back side. Without it that side was in a lot of shadow and you couldn’t see the tail very well.
Next up for Funkatmyer will be either the earphones or the boots. Not sure which I’ll go for first.