Bipedding My Models

I now had my main two models created and had put materials on them. The next step was to create the Biped's to fit them so that they could be animated.



The first step was to ceate the biped for the Goose. I thought this would be harder to create as it is a more irregular shape as oppose to the Farmer, which resembles the basic biped shape.

The first thing I needed to do was take off the "Arms" of the biped as the goose only has two legs. I then increased the amount of "Neck links". This was to enable me more movability in the neck, which is the main part of the Goose that would be moving. I also added some more "Tail" links to enable me to move around the Tail Feathers of the Goose. I am not sure how much animation will be done with the feathers but I thought they could possibly be used to make the animation look better. The final change I made was to the feet where I added three toes as that is how I had made my Goose.

I then created the Biped with the adjustments made and re-sized, moved and scaled it to fit the body of the Goose. This would obviously have to be adjusted as different parts were moved. I started with the head and the neck and got them placed how I wanted as shown below.


I then worked on getting the "Tail Links" into place. This would enable me to animate the "Tail Feathers" when it came to actually completing the animation. I did this by "Scaling" the links to make them longer.


I then worked on the legs. Scaling, rotating and moving them to make them fit inside the mesh.

The Goose Feet - Edited the toes by rotating and scaling to make them fit the toes.

One problem that did occur was trying to make sure all the biped fitted into the mesh. The angles of the legs coming off the hips made this very difficult. After speaking to other classmates and the lecturer I was shown an option to solve this. In the object properties of the model there is a tick box for "Renderable". If this is unticked the biped does not actually come through the mesh on the render's but still has the correct animating affect.

This is not recommended on a large scale but I was only using it for very small amounts of the biped that were coming through.

I then started work on the Biped for the Farmer. This was a lot easier as I used the basic biped model for a human. I then just had to move,scale and rotate some of the bones to make them fit.

The Farmer Biped


I did the same for farmer's hand that I had done for Toes of the Goose. I extruded the fingers and rotated them to fit into the mesh of the hand and fingers.

Farmers Hat + Eyes

Apologies but i forgot to post this before my post about the Materials. After creating my farmer, I needed to add Eyes to his head. TO do this I created 2 Circles and converted them to Editable Poly's. I then selected all the vertices of them and used the "Attach" tool to attach them to the head of my farmer. I repeated this process for the other eye and Mouth.

I also decided to add a hat onto my farmer. This was very simple to make but I feel makes the farmer look a lot more realistic. I started off by creating a cylinder. I decided on the height of the cylinder to decide the thickness of the hat. I then increased the amount of "Width Segments", which created a cylindrical effect coming out from the centre of the circle. I then chose the inner cirlec of the hat and move it upwards to create the room for the head.

I then selected the centre vertex and used "Soft-Selection" to gradully increase the selected area. I indented this area to make it look more like a hat. I also moved the vertices around the edge of the hat to give them a bit of an upwards curve.

Materials

I now had my 2 main models made. These were the models that were goign to feature thorughout the animation so were therefore most important. I now needed to put some colour to them because at the moment they just looked plain.

The main tool I used for this process was the ability to "Set and Select ID's" for individual or groups of Polygons. This meant that I was able to select a group of Polygons and then give them all the same material. It is a great way of saving time ratehr than adding it to each Polygon

I started off by working on the Farmer.

The Farmer - For some reason the eyes come up black on this image however you can see them properly in the final render below.

The Farmers Shoes and Legs.


The Farmers Belt - I added a leather material to the belt however it does not appear in this screenshot. It appears properly in the final render below.



The Farmers Belt - I created this affect by getting an image of some "Leather" from the Internet. I then added the leather material to the belt.

Final Render of the Farmer - The leather material of the belt and the Eyes are both now properly viewed.

I then moved onto the Goose.


Side View of Goose



Tail Feathers of Goose


Beak and Eye of Goose



Final Render Of Goose