Term 2 - Weeks 4 - 6 - Organic Modelling in Maya - T-Rex

Over the last couple of lessons we have been learning more about modelling organic things in Maya. (As we started this in class, I foolishly forgot to document my process as usual so the images here are of the nearly finished piece.)

We originally started with the usual image planes set up for us and a simple box ready to build a T-Rex out of. We extruded edges and faces to fit within the 2D image plane of the side view, while all of the time checking the 3D view to make sure it wasn't becoming deformed in the wrong dimensions. All of this section was fairly straight forward; only adding edge loops or extrudes when there was a significant change in the flow of an edge, keeping the topology correct, making sure the polygon count stayed low.

The first thing I did find interesting however was how the arms and legs were first created. The process of deleting faces, then beginning to extrude the edges instead was weirdly a concept I had not used yet. It has some dangers to watch out for compared to extruding faces which is more simple. Some times I found that triangles would appear around major intersections when extruding the wrong edges and also I had to be more vigilant with the extrude tool because it is much more temperamental than when extruding faces.

After all these it was fairly simple following the tutorial. The hands and feet were a little fiddly at first but easy enough when you sit back and think about the problem for a few seconds.

After the mesh was complete and I added subdivisions I merged the two sides and began to do the UV's. This is where I do have pictures...

I used the planar mapping tool to map down the X axis and then using the process of selecting the edges and cutting I went about doing that for the whole model to make sure seams were only where necessary or well hidden, like on the underside, or on the inside of the leg. I then arranged the UV's so the head and body have the largest surface area for better resolution. I tried to arrange them better but my 'select shell' tool is having problems and when I select only 1 shell it either leaves behind some edges causing horrible stretching, selects some edges from other shells or a combination of both. It's still happening like this so will try to look into why it's doing it...

This is the final image after subdivisions and smoothing: