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BSA326 Advanced Animation-xGen

Proposal













In Practice

I tried to use Zbrush a little while modelling the rat character, but because I didn't really know what I was doing I quickly decided it would be easier and more efficient for me to use Maya. 
I tried to use Houdini also when going to begin doing the hair, but again, I didn't really know what I was doing and I thought that xGen was working well enough that it made sense with me to go with that. I built up a few different layers within xGen in order to try and make the different layers of hair (short, fluffier hair on one layer/long, straggly hair on another layer to be the top coat). I found the xGen controls quite easy to work around and use. I followed an online tutorial to get a larger understanding of how xGen worked. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7ijzPEtIyY) 
I had an issue with weird square patches showing on the fur, I managed to mostly get rid of them by bumping the fur density up a ridiculous amount. I think this is what made my renders struggle a lot and there were a lot of errors during rendering, so I'm probably going to regret it when I get to rendering the rat out in more complex scenes... but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. 
I followed a tutorial to make the whiskers with xGen too. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo9n_lYO0wQ). Although the whiskers are sort of working, and initially seemed to be working with the blendshapes within the render window, the connection seems to have broken since and the whiskers are no longer animating with the blendshapes. I can move them using the blendshape window, but I'm not sure how to animate them at the moment. It's all kind of weird. I'm not too worried at this stage though, it just might mean that the rat is less expressive than I was hoping, but I feel like it's not the most important part to focus on right now. I was hoping to have the rat rigged and weighted in time for the proposal so I could see how the hair worked when he was moving, but I didn't have time. I did have time to test out how the hair moves with the blendshapes on the face of the rat though, and they moved well enough. I think. The hair was sticking to the geometry well and it seemed to work. My main concern was how the hair would stick to the ears seeing as they had the most movement, and the hair stuck to them well.


Here is the final breakdown of the look that I made using xGen, and the blendshape test I did along with it.

And here's the final presentation I made for it... 




















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