Technical Slop

Pui Pui Entry 15

Time for the face. You do remember Pui Pui's face, don't you? I saved it out to another file to work on the morph targets and all that.

I didn't spend a whole lot of time on the his face because I kind of messed it up. At least, it's pretty messy for my first morphing face. I thought I was being all clever and stuff, but my inexperience really started showing. Let's just say that the geometry wasn't the greatest for morphing. As a result, I only did one morph target for a total of two faces: at rest and squinting. No big deal.

There you have it - his two nasty faces. I could have fixed a lot of the problems with some more modeling, but I just don't have the strength for it right now (or probably any time soon).

Yeah, so I've got a cheap face and an equally cheap texture. Time to merge it in and slap his face to his skull. Uh-oh, a problem.

Back when I saved his face out, I thought I was being clever with a face dummy to align his real face to. Well, it didn't quite work out exactly like I thought. Ran into two problems and another problem that I couldn't pin down.

Problem #1: When I created the dummy, I didn't create it in the top viewport. Creating it in another viewport means that the local axis will be different than the world axis. Not exactly good. That means that I will have to rotate his face around. Not totally a big deal, but it is annoying.

Problem #2: Back when I had to re-adjust the Biped, I should have re-aligned a few things, like the dummy face to his real face. You see, when I had to fix the Biped, the dummy face moved around with it but his mesh face didn't. They were thrown out of whack.

Problem #3: This is the unknown problem. Not only did I have to rotate his face into place, but I also had to move it along two different axis. Even with the re-adjustment of the Biped, I should only have had to move his face along one axis, the local z axis. Something else beyond #1 and #2 must have went awry. No clue what it could have been.

Okay, so I finally get his face pretty much where it belongs. Yeah for me.

That pretty much means I'm done.

Here is a pseudo final render:

That's a pseudo final render because I have done a few tweaks since I did that one. I'm just too lazy right now to do another render.

Sure, Pui Pui could stand a lot more work. Like better textures and fixing the distorted 'M' on his forehead. Could stand some geometry fixing as well (lapels and hands). I'm also not happy with his head and face in general. But I am done. Pui Pui has served his purpose.

Purpose? What purpose?

My own edification. I learned an awlful lot by going through this. The things that I learned here will go into my next character model. Basically building experience and nothing more. (Why I decided to share with you folks is another matter entirely, and that's something that I really don't want to get into.)

I'll keep him around and play with him some more. Some day I might even redo the whole thing for a more presentable Pui Pui. Not anytime soon, though.

Hopefully I'll get the gumption for some more closing comments in the next few days. Until then, I'm off to bed for some much needed sleep.

G'nite, folks.

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