3D clown with textures

This is my final clown with textures it does not have a mouth yet but i was just experimenting to see how it would look like without one this is not the final final texture.

 

This is the final render of my character its all modeled and all the final textures into it. I am very pleased with the final result it moves smoothly and nice and the the mesh does what in need when deforming it. this is now ready to animate.

3D clown weighting

After all the controls are working properly i had to weight my character. i had to weight every joint of my rig individually.
The reason we have to do weighting is to tell each polygons should bend and deform around each joint created so the white area is the polygons that should deform around that joint and everything other polygon should be black because if not it will stretch the mesh and deform the model every time that joint is moved if their are any polygons that are connected  to that joint in white just alil white or grey bit on the body when the foot joint is selected can cause the body mesh to stretch down when the foot moves. so that is why weighting the character is so important we can select exactly what wish bones have power over wish polygons so the mesh stays intact.

3D clown controls

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After i created the rig(skeleton) of my clown i had to add controls to the joints so i could control  were it would bend and   so i could start animating my clown, as seen in the picture. The green circles are the controllers are placed and parented this means they will control the joints that they are next to so if i grab on green controller like the foot one for example it will move the legs up down side to side and also bend it if i wish just like a human body. the dark blue circles are known as pool vectors their function is direct the elbows  and also the knees because as we move our arms and legs the direction of our elbows and knees change if not we would break our elbows and knees. human body moves in arks so we need to reflect that on our characters that y we have pool vectors to give it a realistic movement.

this is my clown with the mesh and the rig and also the controls  showing everything together

this picture is how the clown looks when i hid the rig and its just the controls  this is how it will be like when i animate because we do not see the human skeleton only the body.

3D clown u.v mapping and texturing

After i finished modeling my clown i had to add the textures to it and i done that but U.V. Mapping my character. In this picture it clearly shows my character u.v and how i done it buy separating the mesh into different sessions so i could apply the different textures to the places i needed to give him a more realistic look.

this picture shows how i created the texture of the clown i used photoshop to create this i used my uv  image that i created on maya as reference to i could drawn and paint the areas that i needed giving it its texture, so basically  i created i our textures none of the textures in my clown were textures that i loaded from the internet or anything i drew all my textures myself using the uv mapping i created.

this is the u.v mapping picture i imported to Photoshop to use as reference to draw my textures into.

After i was happy with the textures i drew for my character on  Photoshop i saved as a JPG image file so i could then go back to Maya and create a Lambert on the hypershadder optiion.
Doing this allowed me to import my textures into Maya and apply it to my clown.
After i had applied it to the clown the i had to fiddle with the U.V Mapping a bit more to make it match perfect specially on the body and legs were the joint was so the stripes would match perfect on both sides.
 This was not an easy process and to required many attempts to make the textures perfect. 

3D clown Riging

This is the rig i created from my clown i had to use common sense and create a skeleton for my clown just like a human being has. I done this by  apply the bones and the  joints to the right places just like a real human body has so it can bend the mesh in the right places like elbows knees and every place it would deform or bend. this picture is just of the skeleton itself

this is the mesh with the rig(skeleton) of the clown

3D clown real topology

After combining all my objects together this is how the real topology of my character looks like it alot different form the mesh i originally had drowned but by drawing the topology before modeling it gave me a good understanding of how the mesh would look like.  

3D modeling of the clown part 3

After finishing the shoes i went on to modeling the head of the clown just like the shoes i also used another object(cube), this was again because the head would have such a different shape that i found it easier modeling it from a different of object instead of extruding it from the neck and risking messing up the mesh of the body.
The hair of the character is also a different object its a doughnut that i deleted half and joint the to ends together to make it look like the ends of the hair.
The noise is also a different object its and sphere that i squashed and resided to make it look big like a clown noise.
The eyes are not on this picture for some reason they did not show but he does have eyes i created them but having another sphere and stretching it and squashing to add a bead effect only i also only modeled one eye them copy and past it so they would be exactly the same size.
After i was satisfied with the was all the objects that i modeled looked together to create the perfect head of my clown i combined  them all the neck of the clown.

using the planes again with the character turn around, to model

the 3 different views of the head model

3D modeling of the clown part 2

After i was happy with the body of the clown and its proportions and how realistic it looked, i started modelling the extra bits like its shoes. I chose to model the shoes of the clown from a different cube instead of extruding it from the body like i did with the hands and the legs and also the neck.

the reason for that is because this shoes were going to be one of his main characteristics so i wanted to put in alot of detail, and i found it easier modeling it from a different cube and the i would combine it at the end.

i used the same technique to model the shoe as i did with the clowns body by playing around the faces vertex and the edges to give it as mush detail as possible. i also added alot of geometry to give it the shape needed and the roundness.

I only modeled one shoe i didn't have have to model both this is because the would be identical so i dont the sort cheat way of copy the shoe i modeled and pasting a replica for the other shoe.

3D modeling of the clown part 1

 To start my modeling my clown in Maya i started by importing my character turn around as images on to a plane creating a box this helped me to know the exact demotions of my character and also gave me a reference pictures that i could would from to model my character.as seen on this picture.

Using the reference images from the plain i got a normal cube and started to add mesh and expanding the cube to make the torso of the character, i would would model the torso in the exact measurements and roundness as the reference pictures that i had on the plan for my character turn around. the way i created the roundness of the torso to look like a human body was by adding lots of geometry and moving it around using the edges or the vertex of the mesh this allowed add detail in certain areas like the rib-cage and the arm pits to create a smooth and realistic torso just like you would see in a human.

 After i was satisfied with the torso i moved on to the neck and the arms of the clown i achieved this buy extruding  the faces of the sides and top in the exactly same were a real human body has. this can be seen on this picture. All this time i was still using the reference images from my turn around on the planes to create an accurate model.

 At this point when i was satisfied with the arms and position length and  roundness and also details achieving all this in the same modeling process as the torso using the vertex, faces and edges. i started to model the hands and as you can see i was using the no-smooth mode so it looks more square this is because it is easier to model that way so i could keep a very close eye on the measurements and also thickness of the character it is also easier to spot mistakes in the mess and correct it then if it was on smooth mode.

At this point i had modeled the hand and stated to model the legs but their was a slight issue, one side looked different from the other and that was a big issue because both sides should be geometrical(exactly the same with the same mesh). So at this point i used a tool that is very well known to modeling 3D objects that need the same geometry on both sides this tool is called mirroring what does is exactly the same as if we look in the mirror and do an action the refection in the mirror does exactly the same action at the same time. So that is what this tool does we select half of the mesh that we have created and delete the unwanted half, and the the mirror tool create a exact replica of the half we selected and but we can not select the mesh of the mirrored half only the half that we have selected to mirror from and after that every action that we do on the selected half will reflect straight away on the mirrored half so this makes it easier to control the mesh on both sides and have the exact same mesh. Amazing tool so with that i was able to create the legs for the clown that were exactly the same proportions and not different sizes and lengths.   

character topolagy

before i started to model my character on maya i had to draw my character topology just so i would have a better understanding of mesh my character mesh would look like. Even though the final mesh may not look nothing like this it gives me a better understanding were i need to add more geometry for the places that the character will deform.

my character topolagy.

story board

this is the storyboard for my character what the story boards shows is that the their will only be one camera pointing at the character. the character will appear alone doing nothing at first but then he will scratch his head as to show confusion, then he will turn on his side and walk as if he is walking away from the scene, then u see him bending down to pick something up but you do not see what, that's when the he will come back to the middle of the camera with some juggling balls on his hands but confused he does not know what to do with it so he has a bright idea and  troughs the balls in the air as if he was gonna juggle but because he doesn't know how he fails and the balls just fall on his head instead.

dynamic pose

on the brief it was required that before we started to model we had to create a dynamic pose so we would have a feel of the personality of the character.
this is my silly and fun clown. 

character turn around

After i made all the changes of that i wanted to the character i drew a character turn around to see how the character would look like when i had to start modeling so i would have reference material.

character turn around with texture.

character turn around with on a t pose and with bird eye of the shoes too.

facial expressions

on the my animation brief it saying that is required for the character to show some expression so i played around with  some facial expressions just to have a feel of how i would what my character to look to the specific facial expressions.

this is just some expressions i looked at.

character development

Even though i love the look of my clown i must admit the design i have is way out of my modeling skills even though i like to challenge and push myself i could not never model the character like that in the short time i have and having to learn a brand new program so i am going to modify or redesign re character abit more simpler, modeling friendly in a way so i can create this amazing character and bring him to life.

first i started by breaking down the character the different aspects of what the clown would wear and what i would have to model.

From that i found that the reason the clown looked so hard to model in the first place was because of the clothing, if it was just its body shape i feel confident enough i could model it or attempt to anyway.

So after deciding that i can model this clown as long as it doesn't have clothing just a onzie on the red and white underlayer that they use under their costume. I took in consideration the small parts of his body that will be difficult to model how they should look like so i started drawing the hands, shoes and head and air before i even attempted to model it, this was so i would make my life easier so i would have reference to go back to and see how it would look like when modeling the character. 

the hands on both angles so i have an idea on how they should look like.

the shoes they need to be big and width at the front so it looks like a clown shoe. 

i experimented with it head shape so i would have a visual of what kind of head shape looks better. i like the oval or the egg head looks more clown for me.

The hair i m still not sure what kind of hair i what  but once i do i still have both drawing i can  come back for reference if needed.

why i choose the final charater

For my final character i chose to go with the clown, reason behind my choice was really how many ideas i had for it i can picture it perfectly in my mind how i want it to move and what personality he has already. Another reason the i chose the clown as my final idea was because i kinda relate to the character myself i was always called a clown by everyone around me because i have a bubbly personality and i would do the most random things to make people smile just as clowns do so i can relate to the character.

Choosing the 3 character designs

After i come up with all my ideas i couldn't really decide on just one idea so i had to choose the best 3 designs from my ideas.

This were the final 3 ideas that i chose

when choosing this designs i took in consideration quite a few things. like 3D modeling how easy would they be to model in 3D i feel that the robot and the carrot would be quite easy to model but the clown would be alot more difficult because it is a human body and from past experience they can be tricky to model.

next thing i took into consideration was what i could do with the characters how i could make them animate, i have quite alot of ideas for the clown i would like it to be silly and confused, the others i have a vague idea on what movements i would have them doing but its nothing really exiting. 

testing rigs

After researching into rigs i used some