APCG 493 Fall 2014 Week 5 9/26/14

I rearranged some edge loop and vertices on the shoulder arm of the tiger and also added in an extra edge loop on the back leg to evenly space the geometry on the hind legs. In addition I also rearranged the topology flow of the arms towards the chest area and deleted some bunched up edge loops on the front legs. I've also created a club like tail with spikes around the club. I used the sculpt tool to smooth parts of the mesh to uniformly space the body and face geometry of my tiger. For UV, I used the planar and auto mapping UV to map out my tiger's body. Since the face had quite lot of complex shapes, I've decided to break some of the head piece apart  for easier UVing instead of UVing the head as a whole piece.

For the UVs, I used planar mapping on certain parts of both the face and body of the tiger that needed the correct orientation facing direction. Then I used auto mapping on some of the smaller and simple parts. During the weekend I'll refine and fix more of the UVs as I connect them to their respective parts. I think I'll leave some UV pieces disconnected because it can get really messy if all of them are connected and stretched out.

Some of the automatic mapping didn't work that well. I was able to use some of the parts that was auto mapped but a majority of the body I had to redo the UVs. I left out the head UV and began on the body first since it has the most parts to UV first. Once I get done with the body UVs, I'll start focusing on the head UV.

APCG 493 Fall 2014 Week 4 9/19/14

This week I made some changes to the body of my tiger model. Added in a few edge loops to the tiger's belly and pulled some vertices on both the arm and legs of my tiger to create flap and crease between the armpits and thighs. The flap and creasing on the hind leg was a bit tricky because it required more edge loops and geometry to create the indentation on the thigh and curves. I've also added claws to the tiger model and made them curved. Other things that I've done was rearrange some of the vertices and edge loops on the face, mouth, and eyes. I started on the head crest for the frontal skull of my tiger and it seems tricky to get the shape right since it might require a lot of edge loops but its a good thing since I won't connect the head and body together but keep them both as separate objects. At the moment I'm still currently deciding which parts of the head crest to extrude from and connect to in order to form the outer parts of the crest.

 

I decided to extrude a long outward geometry piece for the side of the head crest and connect the side head piece to the lower jaw instead of extruding the entire crest on the side of the face. This extruding method worked a bit easier than extruding the entire side of the face altogether from my last experience. I also managed to manipulate the side head crest and spikes better this way.The hard part may be UVing the head crest but I think I'd just break it apart section but section to UV them easier.

APCG 493 Fall 2014 Week 3 9/12/14

This week I restarted my tiger model from scratch and remodeled it based on my new reference images. The arms and legs of the tiger were a tricky because they were connected to both half the body and not sticking out from the side. I had to extrude geometry of the arm from both its chest, arm side, and shoulder to get the correct arm sticking out and downward. The leg also had the same problem but I got around that too. For the tiger's face geometry, I decided to test out a half box and it seemed to work out pretty well but I just need to refine the topology and complete the head. I also kept the body and head as separate parts because the head geometry might have more edge loops later on than the body and more complex. I've also modeled the body to be more slender and sleek on the top view as a tiger's body should be. The tail hasn't been added on yet because I plan to use a conceptual design for it instead of the original tail.

I haven't put the ears because the head crest will cover it any ways and I plan on working on the head more. Same thing for the tail except that I'm still thinking of a new design for the tail.