Hi folks, i started this model of Mr Beaver from the first Narnia film, it’s mainly going to be a fur experiment so any advice on the way from those who know the ins and outs of the hair system would be great. Anywho i’ll post some wires when the model is complete.
Face looks pretty good so far. He’s a fatty 
That’s good
nice!
Looks like some pretty clean topology; what method of modeling did you use?
Sammaron Thanks, he’s gonna look even plumper when the fur is added 8)
RH2. I use a combination of edge by edge ( mainly for the head) and box modeling useing cylinders as a starting point. I try to get the volume fleshed out as quickly as i can before i start on details. My goal at this stage is getting edgeloops defined whilst keeping an even spread of polys throughout the mesh.
he’s a plump lil cutey… the mesh looks pretty good too. Sorry, I don’t know a thing about the hair system
Very good modeling handlebar, and like others have said very clean mesh. Meshes like that are great for 3d sculpturing, and this one is really making my fingers twitch 
DivineRAin Glad you like the plump little fella’
Romeo Thanks, i always try to produce as clean a mesh as possible as it saves many a heartache further down the line, i know what you mean about the sculpting twitch lol.
When doing fur, you probably want to do main particles, and then children particles. That way when you edit them with the ‘particle edit’ settings, you just adjust a main ‘hair’ and then there’s like a couple children of it, it’s a ton faster, now if you have a really fast computer or don’t do too many. You don’t have to to do that. But for the texture, you want a really nice soft hair. That you can do by having a blend texture applied, with ‘alpha’ enabled in the ‘map to’ so the ends fade out, then set the ‘map input’ as ‘strand’. You might want to adjust the strand, end and beginning sizes in the material settings in the ‘render pipeline area’ God Bless.
Keith M. Thanks for the tips, i’ll be going for a more realistic type fur so lots of experimenting to do.
Here’s an update with the uv mapping complete, i did the main unwrap in blender then run it through headus uv layout to reduce the stretching.
Attachments
The UV unwrap is fantastic. How exactly did you do the modelling? was it with curves or all meshes?
Thanks Keith M, i use mainly box modeling from cylinders and stitch things together, the head was done point by point
not sure if you noticed it but recently I saw that the blender manual had new entries for hair…
could be old news
-a5’
Thanks a59303 will check it out. Here’s a little pose to pose walk cycle, it’s the first time i’ve ever rigged and animated a character, so be gentle, i would like to make his belly wobble while he walks any suggestions on the best way to rig this would be great as well as crits on the walk in general, Thanks.
http://www.vimeo.com/4292981
To make his belly wobble, I think you could use IPO/armature driven shape keys. That would seem to be the best, btw, GOOD job on the walk cycle. I think he needs some more bounce. I think his head needs some sort of movement. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Animation/Advanced/Driven_Shape_Keys/Example That should be helpful
I have an idea! You want to sculpt it right? :evilgrin:
Keep unwrapping it and maintain your nice topology, then make two versions of the beaver, and bake the tangent normal maps from the sculpted beaver to the clean low poly model.
nice progress
how long have you been working on it so far?
Thanks folks, no plans for sculpting on this character, to get to the stage i am now only took a few days but since them i’ve been side-tracked into learning rigging, it’s funny how you start out with one thing in mind and heads off in a completely new direction.
I’ve ordered the rigging dvd from blender foundation, but until it arrives i’m working on some different characters, if i’m going to spend months getting something to move i’d rather it be my own character other than one baced on a movie character.
Thanks for all the comments, when i’m ready i’ll probably start another thread with animation in mind.
cool, good luck