I spent another day trying to make the best model I could. The problem with the earlier versions I made were that the parts didn’t blend into each other, so it was hard to add clothes that weren’t blocky as well. There were more tutorials I found that helped me create a custom base mesh, and I was adamant to find the most efficient way. Work smarter not harder they say, a lot of what I’m doing is probably a shortcut to creating a custom character for Unreal, but hey if it works it works. Seriously, Pixar and their employees have my utmost respect, even more than before. Not that I can truly fathom how difficult their works are. I have barely scratched the surface with 3D modeling.
From a simple stick figure it slowly evolved into a strange humanoid beast. Much like the monster in The Thing, great movie by the way. After a lot of trial and error, and jumping back and forth between Blender tutorials and custom mesh tutorials I found a way to make sure the mesh matched the skeleton. There were a lot of problems at first, mostly cause the model wasn’t symmetrical. Good thing I learned how to mirror models, that made the biggest different. Eventually I used the color code trick for the specific parts.
I tested each muscle constantly, cause I made mistakes with assigning the wrong parts to the wrong bone, which causes a number of problems. Finally I was able to get it working and it looks great so far in Unreal. Next is to refine the model, then add clothes and accessories. I think the hard part of the model is over.
GG out.
GoldenGratus Games 