COTA 753: Animation Production
Sp 2003, Instructor: Maria Palazzi
Heather Caprette - Week Six Report

Progress: Based on Matt Derksen's rigging lecture, there must be 5 edges around each joint that bends. So I added edges around the ankle and at different lengths in the tail. I'd like to add more edges around the base of the toes for some bending there.


I created an upper and lower tooth out of polygons, converted to SubD, did creasing around ridge in enamel, duplicated these to create all the teeth. Pulled on vertices inside mouth to create a gum ridge.

Last week I added six edges all the way around the middle of the Triceratops in order to create 4 sided skin ridges around the middle horns on the shield. These created an ugly visible ridge in the face, belly, neck, and back. I tried softening those edges under Edit Polygons > Normals > Soften/Harden Edges but this didn't get rid of it or reduce it enough. So I spent several hours removing all of these edges plus their extra vertices, except for the edges around the middle horns in the shield and inside the mouth where I used them to create a gum ridge for the teeth. Now, when I convert the Polygon to SubD, I get extraordinary vertices where these edges were left.

Below the middle edges are visible before being removed.


Below: The result of those six extra edges around the middle edge.


Below: The nasty seam showing up in the face.



Below: After I removed these extra edges around the middle.

Below: after extra edges around middle removed.

Below: The now existing problem of extraordinary vertices at the ends of the edges I did not remove around middle horns. SubD display level 3.

View renders of the current SubD model and Smoothed Polygon Model.