My Cartoon dog, Spike

# 1 27-06-2005 , 12:28 AM

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I thought I give it another shot on what I have been looking for as to my cartoon dog. I tried to do the video and I still have problems with a few things. One is I am not use to modeling with only one side view picture reference, and the second problem is I notice that the video doesn't really focus on keeping even 4 sided polys. Everytime I try to do the video I always come out with twice the amount of polys that kurt had when going from one video to the next. So I found one solution by finding both a front view and a side view reference dog, and I have been using that as my reference.

I am sort of satisfied with my dog, but I think the eye sockets could be better shaped, have less polys around the snout area, and the polys could be more evenly spaced. Though I guess that comes with practice. Also, if your wondering where the snout is, I haven't got to it as of yet. In addition, I also am not sure what to do with the velcro shoe lace straps as to what would be the best method to animate them so that the dog could fold them over, and unfold them when he is ready to take the shoes off.

So I am asking you guys what would you think be best method to use for the velcro shoelaces? Meaning do you think I should use cloth, hair or bones? What I like to have is for the velcro straps to have a contious flow when the dog folds the straps over sort of like how a snake slithers along its' path.

Also, what method should I use so that the dog's ears can flap around when the dog starts moving around?

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# 2 27-06-2005 , 01:02 PM

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Hi there all,
Come to think of it, this project will eventually be exported to shockwave. So doing some research, to answer one of my above questions, most likely it will be probably best if I used havok for the dog's ears. However I do have another question. I hear it is possible to do havok features in Maya but what I am not sure of is do I just use the Maya's dynamic features such as rigid bodies, and where is this plug-in that can export to the Havok file format HKE?

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# 3 27-06-2005 , 01:54 PM

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Isn't Havok removed from Director nowadays due to licensing problems?

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# 4 27-06-2005 , 08:25 PM

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update

djBlazor,
Not sure I heard anything about that. Though if it is true, I don't think it would apply to Director V8.5 would it? I have to check on that. Also if this does apply is there anything else in replace?

To the rest of you readers,
I appoligize as this thread seems to turning in the wrong direction. I really do want to keep this thread open for my WIP updates. The only thing is it is taking me a really long time to unwrap my uv's considering I am no expert though I do have enough knowledge that gets me by. I have just completed unwrapping the uv's to the head which took me over 4 hours. So I appreciate your patients considering there is nothing fancey and new right now. In addition I am not going to use fur because it is not supported in shockwave, and I could never figure out the baking method. And thanks again for your patients.

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# 5 30-06-2005 , 10:33 PM

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Just, if anyone is interested here is a topic from Director's forum site that a couple of people where saying about havok license. You can find it by click here use.https://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/we...keyword1=havok

It just basically mentions that Tom Higgins had told people that the only thing about havok is that it will not be included with the cd from the verions MMX 2004 up untill further notice. However, it is still usable and it is included when you download shockwave 10. I couldn't find the article that Tom has mention, though as to what others from this link above was saying, it appears that it is still leagal to use So nonetheless considering that I have version 8.5 and havok is still legal, I would still be interested if anybody knows where the Maya plug-in is, and can I use Maya's rigid body features?

Anywho here is my update. Theres not much considering that I have been really busy with other things. I should be able to finish the texturing by Friday.

Oh BTW, This render was done with default lighting. I am most likely not light this project because I will be using with other projects.

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# 6 02-07-2005 , 04:03 PM

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texture problem

Hi there all,
I have been busy as a bee working my tail off and now I have came up with a couple of problems.

1. The first thing is, I was tring to create a yellow stitching texture around the pocket area for the jeans in Photoshop but it came out horrible, and I really don't know how I could go about this. So if you guys could give me some ideas that would be great. I have placed two renders down below with the lighting over exposed purposely to show you the detail on how I modeled the pockets. Meaning if you look at the pic to the right, which is facing toward the side view, I made an indent for the inside of the pocket, and what I want is to create the yellow stitching that goes around the edges of the pockets.

My second problem is if you look at both of the pics, you can see that the jean texture came out really stretched. However, I made sure that the UV's snapshot was set to 512x512, my hardware texture resolution is set to highest (256x256), and the texture channel is set to Color, but it still came out stretched.

also I keep on forgeting to mention that c&c are welcome, and please be honest. Don't worry I wont chew your head off. user added image

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# 7 02-07-2005 , 04:18 PM

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Open the Perps/UV editor layout. Select the shorts and switch to UV component mode. Move UVs around and WATCH how they affect the texture on the model. Do this long enough and you'll understand why the texture is stretching.

As for the look of the stitch, look at some real stitches and compare against your photoshop image. Just like 3d, you should be using references in 2d to get the right look and feel.

AIM: mhcannonDMC

"If you love your job, you'll never work another day in your life."

Last edited by mhcannon; 02-07-2005 at 06:15 PM.

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# 8 02-07-2005 , 05:28 PM

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Mhcannon,
I know that if I move the UV's it will stretch the image. So keeping that in mind and when I imported the uv's to photoshop, I was thinking by filling the entire image with the jean texture wouldn't cause a problem considering that the anything outside the uv's would be ignored. To help explain this better I placed a pic down below of my UV screen shot in Photoshop.

As for the stitching I am going by a pair of jeans that I own. The problem I am having is if I made the stitching any smaller, in Photoshop I wouldn't be able to see it. How I created the stitching is, I used the pen tool, and drew around the edges of the pockets. Then I converted to a stroke with the brush size set to 1. So I couldn't go any smaller. Anywho, I guess it looks more horrible in Maya because the whole image is stretched anyways and I still don't know what to do considering that everything has been layed out correctly.

... and BTW, I had to make the image down below smaller so that it fits the limit size to Simplymaya requirements, but the real image is 512x512

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# 9 02-07-2005 , 06:10 PM

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Actually, I think I figured it out. When comparing the image in the UV editor, and then looking at it in photoshop, the image in the UV editor is much more pixelated. So some how the image most of gotten stretched between saving it in Photoshop and importing it back to Maya. Seems very odd, but I will redo the texture and post back.

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# 10 02-07-2005 , 06:13 PM

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You do understand the the UVs and the verts do not have to match up right? Adjust the UVs to correct the distortion. Move the UVs will not affect the geometry. You might also look at relaxing and unitizing UVs in the help file. The map seems to waste alot of you texture area. A little more time spent moving and stitching the UVs will give you more texture in final product and allow you more tha a one pixel width stitch area.

AIM: mhcannonDMC

"If you love your job, you'll never work another day in your life."

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# 11 04-07-2005 , 04:26 AM

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Mhcannon,
This is what I know about uv's. I know that the vertices and UV's don't have to match up. I also know that scaling the UV's effects the resolution of your texture. In addition, I also know that if I move the uv's like your telling me to do will foul up the alignment with my file texture and that's why I didn't want to do what you said I should do. And the last thing I know is the basics of what the differences are between what all of the different projection mappings do such as plannar, cylinder, and spherical etc.

Though here are the things I don't know. What I don't know is if I uncheced the automatically fit the projection Manipulator option off, I don't understand those additional settings. Another thing I don't know is why does the final results of all the uv's have to fit with-in the 0-1 coordinates when having to scale the uv's afterwards only fouls up the resolution.

Not knowing these things and after reading a tutorial about projection height and projection widths must be equal to all layed out uv's, I figured out why my uv's cause this problem. Another words why the texture was getting distorted was because when projecting the different sections of the pants, I had all different Height projections.For example, after projecting the UV's on the selected faces using the cylinder projections, I was tweeking with the projection tool that maya gives after you apply the projections and I was changing its settings on tring to make sure the uv's where layed out correctly. However, I wasn't keeping all the projection heights the same to all my sections that I have broken up. So for example the right leg projection height was set to 1.658 and the left pants leg was set to 1.234 and so on. Doing that caused the texture to distort like it did.

So After reading this one tutorial, which shows that after you project your UV's you should apply a checker map to it and pick a sensible projection height and projection width that would be suitable to all your sections of UV's. Applying the checker map will help you know if everything is done correctly and they are aligned to each other. Also another thing I found out is that if you are creating your own textures in photoshop, it is better to keep the Hardware texture set to default rather than 256x256 or atleast thats how it works on my computer. I am thing that the time you would set the hardware texture to 256x256 is on the Maya predefined 2d textures such as checker.

Anywho, enough chit chaten, I have worked on my character some more, and started to learn to use the 3d paint tool which is an awsome feature that makes things a lot more easier by allowing you to paint right on the surface of your model. Hoever now that I learned a little more about UV's, I am most defently have to remap the head, and I am looking to see what else I could apply on the dog's head now that I have a basic idea with the 3d paint tool.

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# 12 04-07-2005 , 04:25 PM

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at least I can tell about the 0-1 resolution for the UVs. if you have a homogen texturefile, it would be no problem. but when connecting the UV shells from the whole geometry to each other and you scale it - the texture would repeat itself. that includes the text on his belly, trousers and shoes. this stuff would appear multiple times on the geometry. If your dog is only mapped with homogen maybe furlooking texture, scaling would be no problem. hope I didn´t missunderstand you.

cheers!

Daniel

everything starts and ends in the right place at the right time.

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# 13 10-07-2005 , 12:54 AM

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thanks falott, it still sort of confuses me. I guess what confuesses me is why does the image tile if you specify the range to be 2-2 say for instance. Anywho, I found a tutorial, that simplifies the scalling a lot easier. The trick is after you unwrap your uv's correctly, all you have to do is to select all of the uv's and then goto polygon->Layout UVs->[].
In the option box you set the settings to

seperate "off"
flip reversed "unchecked"
rotate for best fit "unchecked"
layout "into square"
scale "Uniform"
Map Size Presets "1024"

... and then click on Layout UVs

Also for the rest of you I need your opinion with my updates. I was thinking of appling fur. Though I found out that it might not be possible to bake the fur to a lambert
shader. Though a trick I was told is I could try appling fur to a plane, then render it having the camera facing straight toward the plane that has the fur on it and then save it out to jpg that way. Though here is my results and would like to see your opinions on this. Meaning should I jest go with the flat coloring method that have applied in the above examples, or does the reneder fur look ok. Just rember that this is going to be in shockwave so thats why I have been doing it this way.

here is a rendered image, and I will also post a non render afterwards.

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