P5
How To Model A Character In Maya
Design and Concepts
Before you start modelling right away, it's important to know what you want your character to look like. Make some sketches of the character from different angles to see how it might look, some features of the character/model might change as you model them so don't worry about getting it perfect or sticking exactly to the plan
Quick pose concepts like this help more with animating the character later, as you can see how they might move or if their anatomy works. However, Sketches of the character t-posing from different angles (see below) helps best when modelling the character.
Modelling
Once you have a character idea, it's time to start modelling. If you have sketches of the model from different angles, you can import these to Maya and use them as a reference. In my case, I didn't do this and just looked at my pose sketches from a different program
Start off with the head so you have a rough idea of how to model the body. By starting off with the head, you have a better idea of where it sits on the neck and shoulders once you start modelling the rest of the body. To bring out certain features that extend from a body part or the face, for my instance the antennae, hold right click on the polygon you want the feature to be on and select the faces that you want to extrude, then click the extrude tool and stretch/scale then to how you want. This way, you won't need to make a new polygon for each individual feature and saves binding them all together.
After making the head (and a possible draft for the body), add the eyes and any extra features, like the orb on the end of the antennae, but don't bind the eyes to the head so it's easier to texture them later.
After the head, you can either rework the draft body or make a new one and extract the arms and legs rather than have them be separate polygons which need to be bound just to save time. It also makes the legs being part of the body more obvious.
Anything else attached to the body, like hands and maybe feet, make separately so you can bind them later. Before you bind them however, make sure they're placed where you want them before shift selecting them with the body and then going to Mesh, and then Combine (if your hand has fingers, combine the fingers before the palm).
Rigging
After making the arms, legs, etc, you need to make the skeleton/rig for you character. To animate the character, you need a rig underneath the skin/main model so it moves correctly, just like a person in real life.
Put the rig in all of the places that you want to be able to move, which would be the arms, legs, and anything extra attached to the body or head. When making thew rig, always start by putting a joint in the hip as your starting point, and work outwards from there. If your character has knee joints (which mine doesn't) you will need to add an IK handle to the leg so it moves correctly and doesn't bend backwards.
After making the skeleton, you will need to add controllers to all of the joints that you will be moving. This makes it so you don't need to find every single point individually to move the rig, but also so the skin moves along with it once the two are bound. You will also need a controller that moves the entire model so it's easier to move around on it's own when placed in a level, this controller is the parent to all of the others allowing it to move everything at once.
Once all of the controllers have been bound to the rig, you can bind the skin/model to the rig so it can be animated.
Texturing
Now that you have both the skin and the rig, it's time to texture you character. Texturing a model is basically changing a layer so you can add colour, or import your own image to use as a texture (eg, swapping a cube from grey to blue, or getting an image of some wooden planks to turn it into a crate).
To change the texture of your model, select the polygon and/or faces that you want to retexture (you can do faces individually to get specific areas) and hold down right click over them, nearer the bottom of the drop down menu you will see an option that says Assign New Material. The different materials all have different purposes and aesthetics, Blinn and Phong are usually used for metal or anything shiny, and Lambert is used for anything smooth and/or non reflective.
In the Color section, this is where you can change the colour of the model or import a photo to use as a texture.
By clicking on the panel of the polygon's original colour, you can bring up a colour wheel/table and three different sliders so you can change the colour however you want. Your colour history is saved into the X boxes, so you don't have to make the same colour multiple times over. The eyedropper tool lets you pick a colour that's already in your scene, this is good for if you want the colour of a model and it's been deleted from your colour history, or if you want the colour of a model under a particular light or shadow.
If you want to import a photo to use as a texture, click the checkered box next to the Color slider and you should now have access to the Create Render Node menu.
From here, you have a variety of options for changing the texture, but we're importing our own file so you need to choose the File option for pictures, and the Movie option for a video file (I'm unsure if GIFs are supported but if they are they'd be imported through Files).
Once you get to this menu, click on the file icon next to the Image Name box and you can find the image you wish to import on your computer files, it has to be downloaded for this to work and not in an online drive (USB sticks work but I would recommend having the file in the same place as your model so the software can access it easier).
Paperweights/Binding
Even though the model is now bound to the rig, we still need to paperweight it before we start animating. If you move the character without paperweights, you may notice that certain parts of it deform or squish into each other.
First, you need to select the skin and rig at the same time, and make sure you're in the rigging menu (you can change this in the upper left corner). From there, you first need to make sure the skin is bound to the rig with Bind Skin. After that, select the skin on its own and select the check box next to Paint Skin Weights.
Once you've done that, the model should now be in a black and white gradient, with a new pop up menu to the side. This is where you pick your different options for paperweighting. You can select different joints to add weight to in the drop down section, and you can swap between different brushes/applicators and using a colour ramp instead of grayscale.
Keyframe Animation
Animation in Maya is done through keyframe animation, where only the principle frames are set and they transition to and from each other. This means, when animating anything (like a walk cycle, waving your hand, or anything in the environment), you don't need to make each frame individually like you would a stop motion film.
In Maya, your keyframes are presented in the timeline right at the bottom of the window, and depending on what you have selected/are animating a different set of keyframes will appear (if you have any set). This basically means that you can have as many sets of keyframes as you have things on scene.
The best way to animate character movement in Maya is to move the controllers and set the keyframes to them. To set a keyframe, you simply position the object you're moving and press the S key. Make sure when setting the next keyframe to move forward in the timeline so you don't overwrite the one you just made. You can change the number of maximum frames you have by typing in the right hand box next to the frame slider.
Character Animation Basics
Animating a human/humanoid character from scratch and not using mo-cap, as there a lot of different steps to even the most basic of movements. One of the key things to remember when animating is to make the body as fluid as possible and to use a lot of squash and stretch, this makes the body appear as if it's moving more boldly and naturally.
When walking, a character doesn't just put one foot in front of the other, because of the weight distribution between the legs and knees the main body bobs up and down. When you track the movement of the head in a walk cycle, it often creates a wave like pattern like in the picture above, this wave can change based on the width of the stride and the positioning/angle of the torso.
The same applies when running, although the curves of the wave are often smaller and wider because of the lower angle of the main body.
When jumping, the body does a lot of squashing and stretching (hence why the squash and stretch method is important). If the body appears too stiff when jumping, it makes the character look like a clay model and not something that's fleshed out and fully posable.
Design and Concepts
Before you start modelling right away, it's important to know what you want your character to look like. Make some sketches of the character from different angles to see how it might look, some features of the character/model might change as you model them so don't worry about getting it perfect or sticking exactly to the plan
Quick pose concepts like this help more with animating the character later, as you can see how they might move or if their anatomy works. However, Sketches of the character t-posing from different angles (see below) helps best when modelling the character.
Modelling
Once you have a character idea, it's time to start modelling. If you have sketches of the model from different angles, you can import these to Maya and use them as a reference. In my case, I didn't do this and just looked at my pose sketches from a different program
Start off with the head so you have a rough idea of how to model the body. By starting off with the head, you have a better idea of where it sits on the neck and shoulders once you start modelling the rest of the body. To bring out certain features that extend from a body part or the face, for my instance the antennae, hold right click on the polygon you want the feature to be on and select the faces that you want to extrude, then click the extrude tool and stretch/scale then to how you want. This way, you won't need to make a new polygon for each individual feature and saves binding them all together.
After making the head (and a possible draft for the body), add the eyes and any extra features, like the orb on the end of the antennae, but don't bind the eyes to the head so it's easier to texture them later.
After the head, you can either rework the draft body or make a new one and extract the arms and legs rather than have them be separate polygons which need to be bound just to save time. It also makes the legs being part of the body more obvious.
Anything else attached to the body, like hands and maybe feet, make separately so you can bind them later. Before you bind them however, make sure they're placed where you want them before shift selecting them with the body and then going to Mesh, and then Combine (if your hand has fingers, combine the fingers before the palm).
Rigging
After making the arms, legs, etc, you need to make the skeleton/rig for you character. To animate the character, you need a rig underneath the skin/main model so it moves correctly, just like a person in real life.
Put the rig in all of the places that you want to be able to move, which would be the arms, legs, and anything extra attached to the body or head. When making thew rig, always start by putting a joint in the hip as your starting point, and work outwards from there. If your character has knee joints (which mine doesn't) you will need to add an IK handle to the leg so it moves correctly and doesn't bend backwards.
After making the skeleton, you will need to add controllers to all of the joints that you will be moving. This makes it so you don't need to find every single point individually to move the rig, but also so the skin moves along with it once the two are bound. You will also need a controller that moves the entire model so it's easier to move around on it's own when placed in a level, this controller is the parent to all of the others allowing it to move everything at once.
Once all of the controllers have been bound to the rig, you can bind the skin/model to the rig so it can be animated.
Texturing
Now that you have both the skin and the rig, it's time to texture you character. Texturing a model is basically changing a layer so you can add colour, or import your own image to use as a texture (eg, swapping a cube from grey to blue, or getting an image of some wooden planks to turn it into a crate).
To change the texture of your model, select the polygon and/or faces that you want to retexture (you can do faces individually to get specific areas) and hold down right click over them, nearer the bottom of the drop down menu you will see an option that says Assign New Material. The different materials all have different purposes and aesthetics, Blinn and Phong are usually used for metal or anything shiny, and Lambert is used for anything smooth and/or non reflective.
In the Color section, this is where you can change the colour of the model or import a photo to use as a texture.
By clicking on the panel of the polygon's original colour, you can bring up a colour wheel/table and three different sliders so you can change the colour however you want. Your colour history is saved into the X boxes, so you don't have to make the same colour multiple times over. The eyedropper tool lets you pick a colour that's already in your scene, this is good for if you want the colour of a model and it's been deleted from your colour history, or if you want the colour of a model under a particular light or shadow.
If you want to import a photo to use as a texture, click the checkered box next to the Color slider and you should now have access to the Create Render Node menu.
From here, you have a variety of options for changing the texture, but we're importing our own file so you need to choose the File option for pictures, and the Movie option for a video file (I'm unsure if GIFs are supported but if they are they'd be imported through Files).
Once you get to this menu, click on the file icon next to the Image Name box and you can find the image you wish to import on your computer files, it has to be downloaded for this to work and not in an online drive (USB sticks work but I would recommend having the file in the same place as your model so the software can access it easier).
Paperweights/Binding
Even though the model is now bound to the rig, we still need to paperweight it before we start animating. If you move the character without paperweights, you may notice that certain parts of it deform or squish into each other.
First, you need to select the skin and rig at the same time, and make sure you're in the rigging menu (you can change this in the upper left corner). From there, you first need to make sure the skin is bound to the rig with Bind Skin. After that, select the skin on its own and select the check box next to Paint Skin Weights.
Once you've done that, the model should now be in a black and white gradient, with a new pop up menu to the side. This is where you pick your different options for paperweighting. You can select different joints to add weight to in the drop down section, and you can swap between different brushes/applicators and using a colour ramp instead of grayscale.
Keyframe Animation
Animation in Maya is done through keyframe animation, where only the principle frames are set and they transition to and from each other. This means, when animating anything (like a walk cycle, waving your hand, or anything in the environment), you don't need to make each frame individually like you would a stop motion film.
In Maya, your keyframes are presented in the timeline right at the bottom of the window, and depending on what you have selected/are animating a different set of keyframes will appear (if you have any set). This basically means that you can have as many sets of keyframes as you have things on scene.
The best way to animate character movement in Maya is to move the controllers and set the keyframes to them. To set a keyframe, you simply position the object you're moving and press the S key. Make sure when setting the next keyframe to move forward in the timeline so you don't overwrite the one you just made. You can change the number of maximum frames you have by typing in the right hand box next to the frame slider.
Character Animation Basics
Animating a human/humanoid character from scratch and not using mo-cap, as there a lot of different steps to even the most basic of movements. One of the key things to remember when animating is to make the body as fluid as possible and to use a lot of squash and stretch, this makes the body appear as if it's moving more boldly and naturally.
When walking, a character doesn't just put one foot in front of the other, because of the weight distribution between the legs and knees the main body bobs up and down. When you track the movement of the head in a walk cycle, it often creates a wave like pattern like in the picture above, this wave can change based on the width of the stride and the positioning/angle of the torso.
The same applies when running, although the curves of the wave are often smaller and wider because of the lower angle of the main body.
When jumping, the body does a lot of squashing and stretching (hence why the squash and stretch method is important). If the body appears too stiff when jumping, it makes the character look like a clay model and not something that's fleshed out and fully posable.
Comments
Post a Comment