Continue: Refined toy w/ texture & shaders ...

To improve my wind-up toy animation, I continue to work hard on mapping texture, refining the model, adding the background to the maya project.

Some other detailed texture was not being covered in the last week, so I will talk about it here.

As you can see, most of the parts of the toy were just being shaded with simple texture or boring colours. But from now on, things are being changed and become more interesting.

Making the toy more realistic

Since this should be a woody trolley from the original design, I tried to map a wood texture on it.

At first, I tried the one on the left hand side. It seemed too heavy for a chidren toy. And it didn't look good at all. So I tried another wood texture(on the right side).

It looks good with light brown. And it also looks light and should be more suitable for a child, and also the outlook of the toy.

So I chose this one.

At this time, the overall texture and rigging of the toy are basically settled.

I am going to adjust the environment first, in order to see an overall outlook of the whole animation.

I added the ground to the environment, mapping the texture of a paper cardboard on it.

In addition, I created some food on the wok to make the whole scene more complete.

Also, a directional light is added and shadows are adjusted on the ground. So the toy can stand on the ground.

Here I adjusted the lighting attributes so that the environment looks more warm and comfortable.

I worked on the colour, the intensity and the direction of light to achieve this goal.

More on the environment, the wall at the back should not be missed(surely with texture).

I tried to create bump map to make the flat wall to become heavier and more realistic on its outlook.

I adjusted the bump value to make it a bit folded and rough, but not too much.

Texture is being added to the food. I realise that the food should not only appear in one or two colours selected from the swatches, as this really ruin the mood of the whole scene(I have tried in the previous trials...)!

Try to aware of the red colour on the food. It is not from the texture or any other colour balance adjustment.

It was actually from a spot light created under the wok.

I suppose to make the red light to flash during the movement of the trolley. So that it looks like switching on the stove and cooking the food. 

(I have actually done it with the flashing 'fire'. Maybe I can upload the playblast here tomorrow so you can watch it. =] ) 

Leaving the trolley alone with just the woody-look image is not doing well with the originally plan.

So I bump mapped the same wood pattern image to the trolley. (I put the image in Photoshop to make it a black and white picture with high contrast before I used it here) 

Getting close to finalize the animation, most of the things are being confirmed.

The remaining parts should be fine tuning the texture, the movement of the toy(this should be the most important part in this project!) and the environment around the toy.

More additional, tiny things can be added to the animation to give it a soul of a wind-up toy.

I am considering to include sound in the animation, like childhood music or some noise of a traditional wind-up toy. But all these would be considered later if everything is going well in these days.

One of the points I have discovered to be improved is that, the paper cardboard texture maybe not very suitable for this toy. Since most of the parts of the trolley is made of wood with similar colour to the ground, the toy may seem to be hidden in the scene, so that everybody cannot easily see it.

This can be improved later. Maybe I will try to find another texture which is more suitable for the scene, making every part in the whole scene not being odd.

Refined toy w/ texture & shaders

This week, I worked on adding shaders and mapping textures to my wind-up toy.

To make my toy more likely to appear in the passing years, I chose some colours that always being used on old plastic toys.

It was quite common that the colours didn't match to each other perfectly. Sometimes we may think that was ugly at all.  

Let's see some of the pictures showing my shading texturing process...

Here are pictures when I was going to make a metallic shader. I adjusted things like specular colour in phong E to make it more likely to become a metallic rod.

I was choosing the colour for the wheels...

I applied the skin colour, the white cloth with a blue coat in the outside to the toy body.

Here shows the process of choosing the shoes's colour. Also the colour of the centre of the wheels are applied. It made the wheel more familiar with the old toys.

I drew the face of the toy by myself, haha!

So, here is the playblast for my animation.

Draft version of my wind-up toy

After brainstorming for a brunch of ideas for my wind-up toy, I have decided the design finally on this stage.

Here is my wind-up toy model of a snake hawker.

This is the basic form of it. The video below shows the mechanism of the toy.

This is only the rough draft of my 3D model and a test of the mechanism to see whether the model works or not.

By watching this video, there are still some problems in the overall mechanism. Such as the men's legs sink into the ground frequently in the process.

So problems should be solved in the next step, better being sovled before making any details and texture of the model.

Um... so this is what I have done on theis stage.

Look for the upcoming model here, haha. =]

Draft version of my wind-up toy

After brainstorming for a brunch of ideas for my wind-up toy, I have decided the final design on this stage.

Research: Another example for wind-up toys

Here is the dinosaur from the previous research.

Close-up of the toy

Whole body of it. You can see that it has four movable legs(able to walk) with a movable head(able to swing sideway).

Here you can see the handle which drives the whole mechanism. It's either the legs drive the hands or in the opposite way with the same frequency. The head swings with its own frequency.

Below is a video showing the movement of this toy: 

I would prefer a longer duration for a wind-up toy rather than this one...

Two more ideas...

Today, I thought of another 2 ideas about the wind-up toys.

In fact, I don't wanna make a very common one or a toy without any special or attractive features.

I don't know the two here are good or not, but just new ideas inspired.

Design 6

I was thinking about the orientation which I should put a wind-up toy at that time. This one can be positioned in many different ways and still works.

A tin toy appearance with the metal handle which makes me feel classic. Probably, tin toys maybe a good choice for me just because I prefer (okay, I like) the outlook and the mood of them. (As well as the brown wooden toys with the oldie smell! Hum...!!!)

Design 7

This would be the most complicated one among the 7 designs since it consist of many moving parts.

As you can see in the draft, the man's legs can move, the wheels can move, and his left hand can move.

It would be nice if some of the peas (or pop corn) in the pan can jump too!

Besides the designs, I have also explored in the types of handles.

New types to be recorded in the future.  

Still looking for more designs...

P.S. Not forgetting to remind everyone (including myself), some of the wind-up toys are designed to have sound and sometimes light or flash. Please be reminded and I will try to show every detail on the toys. Thanks.

Research: More videos on the new toys

Yesterday, I took some videos showing how the toys work for each of them.

This would be a very important part of knowing the mechanism of the wind-up toys and understanding the structure of them.

Here is the skull. You can see that it simply opens and closes its mouth. That's all for its design. A very simple one and not much mechanism included.

This one does not work very exactly to what I prefer... I suppose it would ride fast so it goes towards the front very quickly.

But in fact, as you can see in the video, the running cycle does not run fast. And the left leg doesn't provide a very strong power to the bike, as a result the toy rides slowly.

Here I discover a problem. It is the turning effect created due to the non-balancing movement of the toy.

You can see that the toy turns to its right hand side when moving, which is not preferred by the users.

It should moves exactly towards the front.

I love this chick the most. One of the reasons is the movement of it. It digs to the front with its whole body to 'behave' like a real chick. It is lovely that it looks qute always with it's appearance too.

With the 'tak tak tak' sound produced, I would say this is absolutely an attractive toy to children and also me!!!!!

In addition to this video, here is a draft showing the mechanism of the chick. This is what I observed inside the chick's body. The gears works in a group to lift up and put down the legs.

This video shows a play of the Domo wind-up toy. It is so called Domo because of the cartoon character.

This toy uses a very common mechanism to drive the legs to 'walk'. The design of the legs are being considered with its movement so that they are made to have a 'U' shape open towards each other to avoid crashes.

My designs at the early stage...

Here are my designs:

Design 1

Design 2

Design 3

Design 4

Design 5

To be improved later in the next stage...
Some of them are really too simple with no specific features, some of them really sucks with the idea...

Research: Other wind-up toys from a market

Today, I went to Shum Shui Po to look for some wind-up toys.


Luckily, I found some toys with different moving parts in the toy shops.

 

This is a skull with a moving mandible

The structure inside is very simple

This one is a little girl riding on a bike with a ... horrible face i would say

The only moving part beside the handle is just her left leg

...and her head can turn around for 360 degrees too ... LOL

A little chic

You can see the gears inside and therefore understand the mechanism

And the last one is a Domo wind-up toy

It walks by legs but sometimes being too hurry and then slips down =\

Toys in my research have different mechanism for each one.


Maybe I would try to fix them all out in the next stage.






Now it's time for my own design!

Research: Keropy Wind-up Fan

Today, I found a little wind-up fan at home. And I had played around with it.

Several photos are being shown as below.

The whole body

See the fan inside and the wind-up handle at the back

Different appearance of fans in the same series

Here is more information about the fan:

After I played and tested the fan, I found it was really inefficient actually.

The wind-up handle replaced quickly when I was just trying to replace my fingers in every turn.

But I would think it could work for quite a long time in each play.

It maintained more than enough satisfication in having fun for the users.

I would say it is quite a good design for children to play with, together with the lovely and colourful appearance.

But it doesn't suit any user who wants to cool down itself.

This would be quite an opposite to the fan's function.

In addition to this research, I have recorded a video determinating a whole play of the fan. Enjoy it! (Listen to the sound of the fan and also aware of the moving arms inside the fan)

P.S. Since I failed to open the case containing the inner part of the machine, maybe I can study the mechanism next time in another toy.