Lego Minifigure

Our first Project with Simon is to create a Lego Mini-figure of ourselves, it doesn't have to be exactly us it can be a fun and different take but we have to work to Lego specifications on size and material.

Research

First we worked on primary research where we took a Lego man and broke him down into individual parts, so that we could measure him and later use that information to model our characters to Lego Specification. when you take apart a Lego figure and look at all the little features such as the pegs on top of the Lego legs that connect them to the torso or that the legs can be taken off.

Based on these measurements I created an orthographic so that when it comes to model in Maya I didn't make my Lego Minifigure to the wrong specifications. I did a front view and a side view as the top and bottom views weren't important or that detailed as the others.

Modelling

I started modelling the body as I found it to be the easiest to model and it would give me a good base to expand from. To complete the body is very simple it is a cube that expands at the base. The most difficult part was cleaning up the UV's as that was something I hadn't done or thought about before. I also had to bevel and smooth the edges as the body doesn't have sharp edges but smooth curved edges.
After that I began working on the legs and pelvis. I found the pelvis rather easy but the legs were rather difficult because I wasn't too sure how to begin, I tried using a square but the circular tops of the legs were hard to make from that so I ended up using a square to create the bottom of the leg and a circle for the joint, then i merged the two objects. Next I will be trying to create the arms.
When attempting to create the arms I first created a sphere and attempted to extrude but that didn't have the intended affect. I then brought in a cylinder and extruded the vertices and formed a shoulder and upper arm. But Simon showed us a more efficient way of creating the arm using circle curves.
I then created my arm using circle curves and using the loft tool to connect them which creates a mesh.

After I generated a cylinder polygon and extruded the central faces so that the middle of the mesh was larger because the head of a Lego man looks like three cylinders one bigger than the others. so that it forms the neck, the head/face and the crown. I decided to leave this until last because it is the easiest after the body but I needed to create the body first to give myself the base to work from.

Texturing

At first I wasn't sure how to texture a model so I looked at Chris's video on the drive and followed it. I tested texturing on the body of my Lego guy, I took a screenshot of my UV's and imported into Photoshop. I then painted over them and saved the new layer as a targa, I made my body a phong material, to give it a plastic look, and then selected my new colour map. When I first tried I just created a 1024 x 1024 pixel document in Photoshop and coloured it, thinking that would work not realising it would apply to the whole UV square not just my Model.