Surly Bird Production Update

Here's a little progress update:

I painted the maquette in 3DCoat  for a basic color breakdown that will be a guide for the final material set-up in Messiah. Still playing around/learning Messiah's material system which is quite powerful. It's node-based, has awesome procedurals and, as the Doll Eyes tests show, is really fast and fun to use. I've gotten some interesting results using displacement in Messiah and I will probably rely on that for wrinkles, furrowed brows, etc.

I've also retopologised the mesh so that it can be animated properly. 3DCoat has probably the best retop tools I've ever used and it was relatively quick to rebuild the sculpt. The whole build took about day-and-a-half.

And lastly, I'm beginning to develop rigging strategies for the head using a combination of morphs and bones. Have to say that Messiah really shines in this department. Rigging is relatively easy and non-destructive. You can make a ton of tweaks without having to start completely over. Still, this is a test rig and I will probably have to make some changes to both the mesh and rig before I can really sit down and animate the character. The current upper eyelid mesh set-up does not accommodate extreme positions as well as I would like, but that's the whole point of testing. I'll make some changes and fix the problem.

Anyway, have a great Tuesday, everybody! Cheers!