Build the bones

This week, I will go to finish the last apart, to set bone for the dog which will make the dog alive. Actually, there is some dog bone plug that I can down and use directly, but I think it is necessary to build a bone by myself for improve my skill on the bone part.

Firstly, freeze the model before I start doing the bone, otherwise, it will move the position of the model by accident.

I will begin with the most activity bone in this set of bone, the jaw bone, this bone will control the mouth open and closed.
Go to the systems and choose the bone, start from the underneath of the ear where should be the jaw bone’s beginning and draw 2 bone along the shape of jaw. Edit the size of them.

Create a dummy helper, and align it to the basic jaw bone, and adjust the value like below, and link the first bone to the dummy, which can control all the jaw bone in that way.
move then to the right position on the other views.
Create a circle before the jaw bone, and adjust the value to change it a better shape.

Rotate and Copy 2 same circles along the X and Y axle by 90°

Cover the original one to the Editable Spline, and then attach it with other two new circles. Here I got an object that can be rolled in 3 dimensions

I will use this controller to control the active of dummy. Select the dummy and go to the tool bar to select Constraint- Orientation Constraint, and then link it to the controller.

When you did that you might found the whole jaw bone changed this position, that was not what I want, don’t worry about it, go to the modify panel, and check Keep Initial Offset, and it will be back to the original position, the Rotate the controller and see how it is working.

Next step setting 4 bones from the head to the tail, and adjust the value of each bone, especially I add a front fin for the head bone, add side fin and back fin for the body bones, it will be easier to control more area when I add the skin on the dog model.

Set the bones on the front leg by the same way. copy it to other three legs.

Create 2 big dummies, one move to the top of front legs and other one to the back. And link both of front legs to the front dummy, and both of back legs to the back one. Link both of dummies to the body bone, and link the jaw dummy to the head bone.
We can not link the bone to bone directly, because that will break the original link between the bones. Hence, sometimes the dummy will be the joint between two part bones, and an important thing is we have to link them before we build the IK solver, otherwise all the bone would be broken when you were linking.

Set HI solver between each of the body bones. And then click the foot bone and go to Animation- IK Solvers- HI solver, link it to the first leg bone. Do the same thing on other legs bones.
the head bone will be a main controller in this bone system, but I will create a box as a outside controller,and link the head bone to the box like the jaw controller, because it will be harder to select the head bone when I create the animation.
Select the main controller and move it to see how the whole bones work together.
so far so good,by now I have done the bone, next step I will connect the bones to the dog model, with the tool- skin.

Create a realistic skin

In this blog, I will create a realistic dog skin with a new tool Unwrap UVW. I have learned how to use it in my independent learning module, and as we know there are not all the objects in the world are regular, so this tool may be a very useful tool when we build a irregular model, such as this dog I have made, because it is impossible to find a exactly same size and shape material for the model when we edit the material for the object, with this tool we can peel the dog model to get a same size shape of skin. But to edit the material on this skin we have to use the image edit software to help like Photoshop or illustrator, and it might a little bit harder part.

So carry on the dog model I have created in last blog, select it and go to the modify panel on the right and find the Unwrap UVW tool in the list.

Here I found a big issue after I created all the skin which was the Unwrap UVW had to be put after skin the bones, because if I did the bone first then the material would not success, and I had to repeat every steps thing again. Here I will create the material directly.

When you are choosing the Unwrap UVW, roll down the menu, check the show map seam, and there is some green lines come out on the model, which will be the default borders of the skin, but I won’t use it, because those will divide the whole skin into pieces that is not what I want.

In order to making a whole skin I have to create a border myself, go to choose the face level, and roll down the menu to find the Point and Point Seam. With this tool I can connect the border from point to point, but it is hard to design a border to unfold a good skin. The best one I have done was the border from the paw to the middle line on the bottom of body which was from the mouth to the tail, and then cut the ear out along the border of the ear.

After that select the entire surface, click the Pelt button and check it on the X, Y, and Z axles by clicking the Align X, Y and Z buttons.

Click Edit Pelt Map down the bottom of the menu, there is a new window and a map comes up, they are the skin map and edit panel, as you can see, there are a lot of points around the dog, which are the position all the border will go, but they are not on the right position when they just come up, so I have to roll the to the right position with the second tool on the left corner.

To scale them up with the third tool to make a bigger area which should be big enough to allow the skin unfolded very well.

Click the Simulate Pelt Pulling continually. The skin will be unfolded time by time. Keep on clicking until the entire border is unfolded.

There are too many points on the head part to unfold down, so there is another tool to solve this problem, the Relax Tool, go to the tool bar up the map and click tool-Relax Tool, and I just use the default value, first time choose more intensive part in the middle of the head area, and click the apply button, and then choose the bigger area, go on and on until they are relaxed and no two points covered each other.

This process is not easy to success once, it should be tried time by time until I satisfied with it.
I just delete the ear part, I will not concentrate on the ear part, it will not affect the whole map.
When you make a good skin you can go to the render UV to render it out. And save it as a jpg picture.


Edit this picture with Photoshop, and I will draw a skin on this map inside the border. Before I do that, I have to invert the whole map because the background is black and the map is white will not easier for me to edit this image.
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Right click the layer to unlock it, add other on new layer and cut the head of dog image which I fallowed to create the dog, and copy other half head. To the other side, and then cut a piece of body skin on the dog image. after that change all layers as multiply layers, so I can see the map at same time. Next I will use the clone stamp tool to fill out the entire map, click the Alt key to pick the area you what to copy then release it, and click somewhere to draw a same picture.

After finish fill out the entire map, I will use the Smudge tool to smudge some of the detail parts, like the mouth and eyes part (I took it off).

After finish all the skin, I just need to save the new layer without the map border.

Go back to the 3D studio max and choose a material slot, and input this dog skin material.

Dog modelling

Modelling
I will create this dog by following the image of a real bull dog, but I did not find the front side of this dog, so I use other kind of dog instead, just to position the head part.

Begin with the left part, drag a box on the body, and set the value to make it fix the body, I set 3 segments on the left part for a while, and I have seen some tutorials in which they usually make true the basic size and then create the detail on it. So here I will fix the body first.

Cover it into the Editable poly, and add Symmetry on the front of view, so I only need to create on one half of body.

Then move to the head part, cut a line on the box on front of view, and move it to create the shape of the neck.

Select the face to extrude the head, here I just extrude 3 times to build the basic shape, and then modify all the vertexes on the left view, to move all the vertexes to the border of the image of dog.

Connect a line from the head to the tail, and pull the new vertexes to the right on the front view. Do the same way to divide more segments on the body, so I can get more vertexes to modify the body, and adjust the new vertexes to fix the image.
Specially, the lines around the base area of leg are more important in this process. I will create the leg from this area.
Connect other line along the body, and pull the vertexes to the right on the left of view to build the rest of the body.

By now I have got the basic of body, select one of the face on the leg part to bevel the base of the front leg.

Extrude the bottom face of this base along the image, same as creating the head, after that create the back leg.

Connect a line on the back to create a tail part, and then extrude it.

Build an ear on the head as same way.

Now I need take time to modify all the detail on the body, especially the head part, it is hard to write down anything what I have done during the process, because there is no a particular way to fallow how to do it, and it really depends on the imagination in your mind. But the basic method of creating the detail is cutting an edge on the part which I want to modify and then go to vertex level to adjust the new vertexes. from now on ,I hide the images, otherwise, it is too mess to select the vertexes.

Cutting the areas of nostril and mouth, extrude.
I am not going to create the eye on the head directly, I will create the eye later, I think that it may be easier to control on the process of building the animation.

At last, add MeshSmooth for this model.

Next part, I am going to create a skin for this dog model.