Modeling problem:

During the whole process, I have been struggling for creating a nice body of the character, as there are certain edges not connected to each other very well, which affected the whole character’s movements, due to the tiny holes everywhere; different methods have been experimented to pursue for a better visual effect. Even though I didn’t employ it at the end, but I would like to mention it here, as it was a valuable study process for me to gain some extra skills and experience apart from the classroom-exercise. Modeling the whole body with reference image is one of the useful methods, which I learnt from the tutorials that existed online. The tutorial source is: http://www.bauervision.com/3dsMax_Modeling.html

First of all, import the relevant images (including front and left view) a material bitmap in a plane which will be used as a reference image placed in the background. Start with drawing a box from the chest and then Convert it to Editable Poly to clone a lot more boxes down to the ankle (the same methods as we make the clothes, pant and shoes earlier). It is important to see both the mesh and background image, so I set the object (box) visibility: 0.5, so that the box becomes transparent, which makes it easy to follow the shape of the reference image.

Following the same procedure, make the arm and then apply Symmetry as to get the other side of the body and Material IDs has been used to enrich the color of the clothes . TurboSmooth has been employed to make the mesh more accurate and to smoothen the whole object.

However, after I completed the modeling by using this method, I wasn't that satisfied with the result, because the body didn't look like a clown’s style or either the costume. Even though I considered and tried to modify it into a clown’s jumpsuit, but it became even worse and difficult to proceed from that point. Finally I gave up with such an “advanced” tutorial and turned to the original method and my previous experience with creating clothes and shoes by using a plane, which Jo gave lecture in the classroom. It seemed that I learnt more from what she taught and more convenient for us to adopt it and bring it into practice.

Regarding the bones, I was planning just to envelop the bones by adding a biped and I did try that at the beginning, as I took for granted that it would be quick to complete skinning for the whole character. However, something unexpected happened. For instance, the mesh didn't go well with bones and quite hard to adjust the single bone from a biped, especially the fingers, which would influence each other so easily if there is a slight overlapping in between. Furthermore, as the size of biped was originally fixed, so that it was hard to change one single bone within a biped. Also, the distance between two objects, normally it is the joint area which makes it mismatch with bones. According to all the disadvantages above, I turned to adding bones one by one and skinning it at last.

Render problem:

A certain render problem has been encountered in this process; I also consulted some fellow students regarding my problems, they really tried to give me good suggestions but still couldn't find out the reason why it happened like that. Eventually I figured out that the Exposure Control under Environment and Effects option was set to be Logarithmic Exposure Control which resulted in low quality of the rendered images as well as all the animated scenes. Then I set it back to Automatic Exposure Control and it rendered out quite high quality images.