Well, major modelling is complete on what has come to be called Ripley; my first-ever 3D character model. I’m not at all happy with the hair; it’s a simple extruded loop mesh, far too many polys, far too complex looking for this character (the character’s body, btw, is around 870 polys unsubdivided — A PlayStation One could handle those!). I have an idea as to a v2 hair which I’ll work on tomorrow.
Rigging the model with a skeleton was time consuming, especially assigning the vertices, but once you keep yourself calm, clear and methodically checking every step you do (and saving often!) it soon becomes, if not second nature, at least an enjoyable exercise. I only had one mistake; a single stray vertice unselected in the lower thumb, which caused the whole thumb to warp when I moved any part of the palm or arms. Fixing it was a ten second process, but I’ll tell you, the first time I rotated the arm and watched the thumb stretch and squeeze like chewing gum, my heart sank a litte and I wondered how I was ever going to succeed in 3D.
Tomorrow I should finish the hair, and get working on a simple dojo for the character to muck about in. There’s an animation challenge I’d really like to get something done for.
To think that up until a week ago I knew next to nothing about Blender (Samir has been tutoring me at every step), and already I’m considering animation (something even Samir knows nothing about vis a vis Blender)! Oh well, only way to learn is to stick both feet in.
