I've run into a few hurdles this week due to some modeling problems and overall process development. I discovered some non-manifold geometry on D'artagnan's foot, which probably resulted from the continuous duplication, mirroring, and merging process while modeling. This week I also worked towards finishing his hair mesh, which proved difficult due to the way I had originally modeled it. The grooves designed are intended to create more randomness in his hair, though at the same time this makes it tricky to extrude across these grooves. Combining some vertices helped fix some problems, though now I must be aware of non-quad based geometry during the smoothing and texturing phases.
Speaking of texturing, this process will be becoming the focal point of the coming weeks. At first I contemplated sending the basic mesh to Mudbox to begin creating more detail, but going back to the character designs in the Persona series, the models are less complex than that. It appears that the designers mostly relied on texture mapping to create the details of clothing and other features, which leads me to believe that the models for this project should follow the same course, at least for now. Figuring out the process (creating the best base model, laying out UVs, and creating texture maps) is probably the most important breakthough of the week, and will definitely make things easier. Sean has also pointed me towards the Bonus Tool in Maya, along with Lynda videos available to help with the UV process. The Auto Unwrap UVs Tool alone is a godsend, making cutting up different parts of the mesh into UV patches much more intuitive and simple. The new tools combined witha greater understanding of how to unwrap UVs with undoubedly speed up the texturing phase.
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