PlayBlasts wont upload

I have tried about 4 times to up load some playblasts from my model but they will not seem to upload. I handed them in as part of my maya files in the clips folder if you do wish to see them. 

There is one of the leg going crazy but managed to fix that. And then just a couple of the other different animations.

High Quality Renders

Animations And Texture Complete

I have now finished my two animations and and texture for this hand in. Am very pleased how everything has turned out so far.

Left to do:

- Lighting for some high quality renders. 

Eyes

 Made eyes completely black. Looks much better than with the white. The eyes obviously need a bit of work altogether but I plan on doing in the second part of the assignment. 

Textured Finn things

Added the same texture to the front spike thing and the finns on his back. Looks good to me. Very happy with the texture.

Spine Bit

I want this part of the body to look different from the rest but it needs to fit in with the body. The first colours I was playing around with was browns and greys. It clearly looks odd (top pic). 

I then tried colours closer to the bodies colour and they worked much better. I like how it has a different texture but still manages to work with the model at this stage.

Close Ups

 Just a few close up shots of the texture on parts of his body.

Crater Bump Map

 I am really happy with how this bump map turned out on my model. It gives it the sort of texture I wanted my model to have from the beginning. And for this stage of the project I think it is up to scratch with what needs to be handed in. Very happy with it. 

Leather Texture

First  colours I tried have ended up being my favourite. I tired darkers brown tones and greys but these colours are the ones that look best together. I now need to work on getting a texture that makes his skin look rough and strong as I dont think this texture does. I do love the colouring of the leather texture though so am going to keep these colours. The bits down his spine and stomach are going to be different from the rest of him but am yet to decide in what way.

Textures

 This is the type of colouring I want on my model and it would allow him to blend in with his desert environment. This would allow him to go unnoticed by his enemies and other animals that might want to eat him up.

I want his skin to look rough and strong. So it can handle the heat of a desert as well at enemy attacks.

Idle Animation Complete

Begun Idle

Walk cycle

Animating

I am now up to animating. Will do a walk cycle and a idle animation.

With my walk animation I want to make him also have small body movements as well just to make it more life like.

For the idle animation some of the movements i could include are:
- Tail wagging 
- Breathing (body moving)
- Head looking side to side
- Head moving up and down
- Toes moving

Moving Leg Joint

 I am really happy with how the leg movement has turned out. It is rather smooth and I think it looks good for this first part of the assignment. All the time weight painting was worth it. 

I also like the shape of the feet alot. 

Weight Painting

The biggest issue I had with weight painting was his legs. It took me many attemps and then I was also told about the mirror weights tool which helped a lot and saved me much time. I just couldnt seem to get the legs to move without strange bits appearing etc. But after many attempts and going through every joint I managed to get it right.

Rigged Model

 Rigging my model was surprisingly simple because of his shape. To begin with I put his main controlling joint in the wrong place but once I realised that it was rather simple to fix and redo.

Close Ups of Model

Modeling Complete

After a few days of modeling and losing many bits of work I have finished modeling to a standard that I am happy with for this project. I like the feet the most which took the most work and deciding. They would either look to human like and creepy or just not right on my character so am glad I got them to how they are now.

Type of Feet

So I played around modeling many different types of feet. I also lost my work occassionaly while doing this which became very annoying. When ever I went to save my work Maya would freeze then would resort in having to force quit the program. But because of this, by the time I was onto modeling them for the fourth time I was fully aware of what I wanted the feet to look like. 

I want them to sort of be like lion feet. With three big toes on the ends and quite bold and rounded. 

Different Leg Possibilties

Extruded legs

 Obviously not modeled yet but have extruded the feet from the bottom. Am not to sure if I like the placement of them. Will play around with otherways of doing the feet and see which looks better when modeled.

Change in Body shape

After looking at my model and asking others what they thought so far I realized that the overall shape need a bit more editing.

I decided to make the back end shorter. This gives the model a much better shape. I like how the torso part of the body is now the main part. 

Will now move on to adding legs and fins.

Also because of doing this I have decided to have only two legs now instead of four. 

Have begun

Evolutionary Process

Comparisons

Quick sketch of where I want my creature to go. As you can see his body shape changes quite a bit. I am now to draw the in between stages of these two images.

First Sketch of Seahorse at initial form

From here the sea horse will develop to have characteristics that allow it to live in the desert.

How it will evolve

Environment Change Back Story

Due to the ozone layer disappearing because of to much pollution, the strength of the sun has become much more. This has resulted in all the oceans, lakes etc drying up causing the whole planet to become one giant desert. The land has completely dried up and only certain animals have been able to adapt to these harsh conditions. Because the disappearance of water occurring so rapidly, many of the planets sea life became extinct in a very short amount of time.

But some how, seahorses managed to survive this rapid change and are now evolving into a creature that can live happily in these extreme conditions. There body is slowly adapting to its new environment.

Chosen Environment