Sub-Divs

Some thoughts about sub-divisions.
Sub-division are quite effective in modeling organic things, if you need really smooth staff is the
good choice. But! :)
When you come to the point of texturing, you'll find it quite messy. So did I. It is really difficult to sort out UV for sub-division surfaces. Because of that I had to convert all my sub-divs to polygons in order to sort out textures. Jaison said that smoothed polygons requires less resources. Also he mentioned that mentalray has some problems in rendering sub-div. He showed me a sub-division proxy for polygon object, which could take you close to editing polygon as a sub-division.

sub-division proxy

bump mapping in progress

Yesterday I have staerted to make proper textures and bump maps for the crown. That's what I have got so far.

Actually when a see what could be done with bump map a start to realize, that propapbly I have done some extra modelling, half of the ornaments I have made, could be easily bump mapped. Especially bottom part with gems.

bump map test

Today I've spent a little bit of time investigating how to make crown looks nice. As you can see basic form is quite plain and looks boring, it asking me to put some ornaments on it :) Bump mapping is the way to do it.

So I have made a quick tester texture and bump map to see how it going to looks like.


result:
I think that is the way to do it, so I am starting to draw texture and bump map properly, to make it looks nice and clean.

UV Layout

I have started UV map my model. One more time I appreciated Digital Tutors video lessons :)

This is my first UV lay out for this model - time to learn from mistakes :) As you see this UV is not very smart, because is has some sews on the visible part of the model, which looks very bad when you make your texture a bit grainy, a line appears along all the border, we don't need that, so we make another UV from scratch :)

In this case I have made visible crown and neck jewelery and tried to organize UV sews that they would be under them, so they would not be invisible.
I haven't touched a jewelery yet, it s going to be a next step, after sorting out textures on the head.

That's new UV layout with some textures painted on it.

That's how it look on the model.

Time is going:

And we got some results, which I am quite happy with :)
What do You think?




Modeling is coming to the end, though there are quite few thing have to be done. This week Iam planing to finish up modeling and move to the next step - texturing (haven't done it properly before, so going to learn it)

How Iam going to do it?

It is right time to use the book called Maya character animation, which I have bought last year from Amazon,(was waiting for delivery about 2 months:)

As I mentioned in my statemetn of intent I am am going to learn Sub-div modelling, so I found appriopriate section, qute good and straightforward tutorial how to model a head (exactly what Iam going for):

Time to model.

So we get a general idea how to do it, its time to start:
For the beginning we play with sub-divs to learn general principles:




Well, seems to be working :)

It is time to start making something closer to truth. Using images I have found earlier I have made image planes that I need for modeling:

Front image plane

Side image plane

Crown front plane

Crown ornament front image plane

Using this planes we quite effectevily start to create general 3D models:





Iam getting excited, because I haven't done anything similar to this :)

Sketches

I have chosen these images as a main reference for designing my 3D model. At all these pictures Krishna is the same age and has similiar dress and jewelerries.






Looking at the images I tried to portray characteristic feature of the Krishna - eyes, moth, nose, jewellery etc. Here are some of these sketches:

Images research.

Because this personal development project is more about getting some technical skills, I decided not to develop a character by my self, but use one already exists.
I was looking for some image references, to base my model on.
Here are some of them.

Krishna in Vrindavan

Krishna in meditation

Krishna playing his transcendental flute.

Krishna and Radharani - Divine couple.

Krishna and his brother Balarama in Vrindavan

Krishna with flute.

Krishna with flute.

Krishna with flute.

Krishna with flute.

Krishna with flute.

Krishna and his mother YasodaKrishna and cow in Vrindavan

Krishna and his mother Yasoda.

Krishna with flute

Krishna and Radharani - Divine couple

Aren't they beautiful? :) I am sure they are!