rabbit facepainting

Things I have learned about 3D Paint Tool: it is MAGICAL, as long as you're UVs are pretty. I ended up having to redo the UVs along the spine, they were all stretched out and as a result his back was striped. Looked cool, but not quite what this project calls for, I think...

Here's a preview of how the paint looked at the end of today. And it's actually RENDERED, not just a screencap!! Mmm, mental ray... so shiny and smooth.

rabbit skin coats

Weeeeeell, while painting the texture file for the unwrapped UVs in Photoshop over the weekend, I remembered something: it's MISERABLE! Especially when I didn't have the model with me to stick in back onto to check progress and that edges match up.

So today, instead of wrestling with that, I decided to try out the 3D Paint Tool. So far it seems alright. I'm not sure if I'm going to give him actual "fur", might just put a teeny bump map with some hatching. Fur would increase render time and might just be a can of worms I don't want to open.

There's a little bit of stretching over his back, I might need to make that a separate piece, I just really don't want to have another UV seam in such a visible place. Might be unavoidable, though, if the texture doesn't turn out perfectly. I should know by the end of the day.

Day off & UVs

I took a little break yesterday and didn't come in to the lab. My eyes and brain were fried from solving Monday's problems and I just couldn't bring myself to sit down and deal with unwrapping UVs. Instead, I stayed at home, read some of the research materials for the written component of this project, and saw a movie. Let's call it researching camera moves and angles...

Anyway, this morning I unwrapped and messed around with the rabbit UVs. Think they're all right, I'll throw some color on it this weekend. The checkerboard doesn't seem too stretched out. We'll see.

Did some fine-tuning with the skin weights. Getting there...

Painting weights:

Testing some checkerboard:

UVs: