13: Troll:Problems

As said I was given the role of Troll Modeller, Texture, rigger and animator and left in charge of the Trolls Development, any problems or mistakes were my problem to deal with.

Since The Trolls Concept and Turn-a-round was already made I started modelling, now with an agreement with my tutored I stayed away from Blender, and worked only in Maya. The Trolls design offered a challenge; the design shows the troll to have a rock lick growth on his back (back of the spine to the “hair line”. As well as a stone hand. Whitest going throw the processes and needed steps…

>modelling > UV un-mapping>texturing>rigging>binding and animating

I came across several problems,  (please note, I neglected to take screenshots of the following fixes)

Problem 1: Modelling (miner)

Problem here was working out how to model a loin cloth, since game characters can only be textured one side, I didn’t want the risk of having his cloth go invisible inside unity, so I needed to a way to double its thickness without making it stick out, or be a separate object

Solution: 

I extruded the ring of faces that were around the trolls belly and lower spine > I Deleted the unneeded faces so I was left with two pars. Then I started to extrude them downwards, moving vertexes around until I was happy with the end result> finally I extruded the now Loin Cloth model part, and same as before deleted any unneeded faces> then merged the vertexes to their original locations

 

Problem 2: UV map and Texturing

the problem here was my own fault, not an error or lapse of judgment. An old happened from Blender passed over (the thought that i could UV unwrap any time, even after rigging and binding) but i was wrong. 

the mistake i made was, i re mapped a part of the trolls face AFTER

 rigged and binding the Mesh, this meant that the new parts of the UV did not have any respected mesh to bind to, this lead to the textures of some areas (mainly the forehead rock) not staying.

Solution: only option I had was simple but annoying, and that is to unbind the rig/skeleton and re bind it, problem was solved and lesson learned, >Once bounded, do NOT touch or re map the UVs!"

Problem 2: Rigging

the problem here was small. and easy to fix. the Troll has a bag, this meant i needed to make a control bone for it (so the bag wouldn't deform with the leg/hips) this bone ended up not being used for animation. a 2nd bone we also needed for extra motion was for the Trolls belly, this bone kinda broke the rig. well detached the Root Bone From the Hip..

solution: 

the solution here was simply re arranging the Riggs Hierarchy and grouping.