Week 1

Alright, so this whole past week has been dedicated to not only finding good models for my rigmaroles, but also ensuring that their topology is perfect or at least good enough. I have gone out and found a giraffe, a lion, and a crocodile, and I have borrowed a horse model from my colleague Cameron Shulz. I'll do a mesh combine for the mane and make it a zebra. Anyways, as I have said, it's all been about finding models (free ones are not easy... especially ones that are good enough and in OBJ format.) I have found models that were perfect and one's that need a little work. I have only gotten around to the giraffe, lion, and crocodile so far since the "zebra" already has good topology.

The one issue I had with finding these free models is that none of them were in quads, all in tris. I'm sure tris are acceptable, but I'm used to working with quads and quads provide a cleaner look in animation. The giraffe here is from the game Goat Simulator and started with tris. Using the quadralate tool (not sure if I spelled that right or if that is what it is even called) it changed from tris to quads fairly well. Only had to change a few polies.

The crocodile and lion on the other hand, did not convert so neatly, and I've had to go in and do a lot of retopologizing for numerous areas. One issue I ran across is that the models do not recognize topology symetry, so these models were unequal to start off with, which makes using the knife tool a little more tricky when creating edges. I should have these hammered out more next week along with a skeletal beginning for at least one of the four animals.