Chracter building-up
The hat:
The hat that Augustus clown wears is the big top hat, which is made by two Cones. Delete the overlapping area of these two cones to make a hole for the head, so that it looks like a real hat. Afterwards, add Mesh smooth modifier in order to make its surface smother. At the end, apply the colours on it by using the Material Editor (the same process as before).
The costume/ body:
Based on previous research and my character’s profile, the costume of my character--- a colorful jumpsuit, as my character Mr Joker is a very traditional and chipper Augustus clown, and his costume colors and patterns complement the overall appearance---whiteface. Based on the same procedure of making clothes earlier (in February), start with plane and convert it to Editable poly and then gradually copy the edges until a rough jumpsuit is formed.
Select Edge and use the Bridge tool to link two sides of the pants together. Apply Symmetry modifier to make the other side the costume and then use MeshSmooth to make it more real.
The smoothness can be adjusted by its value under Subdivision Amount, by adding more values to Iterations or Smoothness, the surface of the object will look smoother, however the more values we add to iteration, the slower 3D max window responses. So does the Render Values. Therefore, I tried to reduce the Iteration value to reach fast speed before I got to the final stage---all the objects could be rendered at the same time at the end as to control repeating doing smoothness.
Apply a few more colors on the costume by using the Material Editor and Material IDs in order to make a professional clown suit with solid and vivid colors on it. Move the vertex in the joint area to create the collar, also, attach two white spheres as the accessories of the clown jumpsuit to make it more lovely and well-presented.
The shoes:
The clown shoes are special ones, which took me a long time to mimic, due to the unique shape of clown comedy shoes. By following the previous study(in February) on the basis of using a box, change the vertices to adjust the shape of it, and apply mesh smooth, so that a pair rough clown shoes were done at the early stage.
However, the clown shoes looked surrealistic and a great of different from the real ones. As is seen in the pictures below, the heel could be a little bit lower and the colors of shoes could be enriched. What is more, the height of the front should be reduced, as they distorted the elegant appearance and outline of the real clown shoes. Therefore, I modified the whole shoes again and again by vertex. And then, delete the top of the shoes in order to have two holes for the feet and finally apply two different colors on the shoe by using the Material Editor and Material IDs to enable the shoes to have more images and colorful than the old ones, the new clown shoes are done as below, which seems more comfortable and cute.
The accessory:
The nose accessory is simply made of a sphere with red color on it as to create the clown nose that identify the clown from the others. The position of it is important, so that it won’t look too odd or exaggerated. So is the costume accessories, which are made of two spheres placing right on top center of the whole costume.
The Connection:
Each object as an individual element has been connected to each other by Attach option in the Edit Geometry under Edit Poly Modifier. This is a conditional step before skinning.
However, the eyes should not be attached, due to the color matters of the eyeball, iris and lids. Hence, I link onto the bone or face by using Select and Link option, which on the other hand allows the eyes to have adequate movements by itself.
The bones and skinning:
The bones for the legs have been added from the left/right viewport circuitously but not straight forward. It is worth noting that legs need to be compared and adjusted both in left/right viewport but also in the front viewport to make sure all bones place at the right position. After that, give two bones respectively for the feet in the left/right viewport and compare the result in the front view.
The last part is the fingers. Add the bones one by one carefully according to the numbers of the joint, which is known as three joints for one finger, except that the thumb is with only two joints. Based on the “human joint principle”, bones are appended to each finger. Note that it is important that there is enough space in between, so that they will not affect each other after skinning.
The whole skeleton for the body (after all bones have been added in) demonstrate itself as below:
Select the mesh and apply Skin modifier to it, under the Parameters section, click on the “Add”, a window with “Select bones” pops up, choose all the bones from it and press “Select”, the mesh is enveloped by the bones surrounded.
Tick “Vertices” under “Edit Envelopes”, so that the influence value/weight could be seen and changed through Weight Properties. If the color of a vertex is red, it means that the bone will be affected strongly by that vertex, while blue implies very weak or no influence on the bone. The more reddish the vertex is, the greater it affects.
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