So, it appears from my previous post, none of the much text that I typed was actually posted, and only the images were...  that's a bit annoying for me and maybe for you guys since I may not remember everything I had said before, but I'll do my best to sum up what you've missed!  It seems like the last 3 posts had the text ommited so I'll try to remember exactly what happened!

The day after the all-employee meeting in the kitchen there was more cake! (Woo!)  This time it was in a pure celebratory fashion.  The cake, chips, veggies and coolers full of beer were in celebration of the April and May birthdays (they forgot about the April birthdays before... suckas!)  So, an employee gave a great speech about failing and succeeding in life (succeeding being eating enough subway sandwiches to get a last one free.  Score!)  We then dug into the food, and, afterwards all gathered around the TV at the front of the studio to watch the result of the recent work which apparently hadn't happened in a month or two!  So, we got to see some awesome commercials that the studio had worked on, some which I had even seen in progress during my time here which was fantastic.

As an update on my work, I've been getting very far as you can see!  The renders 3 or 4 posts back shows the modeling and UV mapping (or unwrapping) of the model.  As I explained before, this is when you unwrap a 3D model onto a 2D space as best you can (some stretching almost always occurs.)  The checker pattern is just showing how the unwrapping is working, and demonstrating any stretching or seams.  Then I posted the 2D unwrap of the model to give you an idea of what this looks like!

My next step was the texture the model.  I got to do it this time in a 3D paint program instead of photoshop (which are often used more often for characters and organic models.)  So, I get the experience of texturing from both perspectives (I've used photoshop plenty to texture, but not 3D paint programs.)  I used Mudbox for this, the other alternative was Cinema 4D's "Bodypaint" program.  Mudbox is primarily a sculpting program (almost like clay on the computer in a way) whereas C4D is a full 3D program.  I was taught the basics of painting in the program and got to work.  What you all see is the texture with hair over it using the same colors.  In other words, the texture is also defining the hair colors in different places.  My next step obviously was hair/fur.  I'm using the hair/fur modifier inside 3DS Max whereas the company actually uses a plugin they bought called HairFarm (which I would have to have installed, and they don't have a ton of licenses so it would be a major hassle.)  But, obviously 3DS Max's hair modifier works wonderfully as well.  I worked on "grooming the hair" in a way, defining it's length, brushing it how I wanted it, etc.  So, as you can see there are long hairs coming out of his cheeks and off the tips of his ears.

I'm now about to rig the character, meaning giving him a skeleton that will affect the mesh of the character, so that the character can move properly and deform properly at his joints (elbow, knees, spine, neck, etc.)  I'll then rig the character which helps this skeleton out a bit, and make controllers making animating much easier, while hiding all the previous rigging.  After that, I should get a chance to animate!

Nance just came in and got a tour.  Embarrassingly enough I was late for the first time... on the day she came in (SORRY NANCE!)  She got a tour though, and a look at my work!

More updates to come, I'm going to get to work now!

Best,

Adam