Creating a Realistic Teddy Bear in Maya—Part 3

1. Painting Body Poly Mesh

Step 1

Start Maya. Open the teddy bear file which was saved in the last part of the tutorial.

Step 2

Jump into Rendering mode as shown in the following image.

Step 3

In the perspective view, go to Texturing > 3D Paint Tool and click on its option box.

Step 4

After opening 3D Paint Tool attributes, if you try to paint on the body, a crossed brush stroke would appear which won’t let you paint. You can’t paint until you apply a texture map.

Step 5

Scroll down in the 3D Paint Tool attributes and open the File Textures drop down menu. Click on Assign/Edit Texture button to apply the texture map on the selected body mesh. 

Step 6

In the Assign/Edit File Textures window, set the values of Size X and Y to 1024 and then click on Assign/Edit Textures button.

Step 7

After creating the texture map, now you will be able to paint on the body. 

Step 8

In the Color panel, select any desired color and brush and start painting over the surface of the body.

Step 9

Alternatively, you can select the desired color in Flood color field box and then click on the Flood Paint button to apply the selected color on the complete surface in one go.

Step 10

After the body is painted, click on Save Texture button to save the painted texture map.

Step 11

For symmetrical painting, open Stroke drop down menu and turn on Reflection option and X Axis.

Step 12

Select the white shade in Color folder and paint the foot tip as shown in the following image.

Step 13

Open UV Texture Editor window. Go to Polygon > UV Snapshot to save the UVs map.

Step 14

In the UV Snapshot window, set the values of Size X and Y to 1024 and file format to PNG. Click on OK button to save the UV map.

Step 15

Open the saved file in Photoshop for further paint work. 

Step 16

To add more details, paint in Photoshop as shown in the following image.

Step 17

In this way, the texture map painting is done for applying fur in Maya.

2. Creating Mouth Texture Map

Step 1

In Maya, open the unwrapped UV of mouth inside the UV Texture Editor. Follow the previous process for texture painting. 

Step 2

Apply white color in Photoshop to make the mouth texture as white.

Step 3

You can apply the texture map in Maya and see how it looks like.

3. Applying Eye Shader

Step 1

With the eye ball selected, do a right click and select Assign Favorite Material > Blinn shade in fly out menu.

Step 2

In the Blinn Attribute panel, set the shade color to dark gray. Set the values of Diffuse to 0.050, Eccentricity to 0.130, Specular Roll Off to 0.700 and Specular Color to white.  

Step 3

Apply the same blinn shade to the nose tip mesh also.

4. Creating Bald Map for Fur

Step 1

With the teddy bear mesh selected, go to Texturing > 3D Paint Tool and click on its option box.

Step 2

In the 3D Paint Tool settings, select the white color as the Flood Color and then click on Flood Paint button to apply the color on the entire mesh.

Step 3

With a hard brush selected, select the black color shade for painting where you want baldness fur.

Step 4

Go to Show menu in panel menu bar then check on View Selected option.

Step 5

In this way, you can paint those areas where you don’t not want fur to grow.

Step 6

After painting the face area, save texture files by clicking on Save Textures in File Texture panel.

Step 7

Import the file in Photoshop.

Step 8

Give the file a name and then click on Save button.

Step 9

In this way, both color and bald maps have been saved.

4. Apply Fur on Body Mesh

Step 1

With the body mesh selected, go to Fur > Attach Fur Description > New.

Step 2

After applying Attach Fur Description, it should look like this.

Step 3

Rename it as FurDescription_Body in Attribute Editor.

Step 4

In the FurDescription_Body attribute, change the Global Scale value to 0.250 to scale down the fur length.

Step 5

If you render the frame, you will notice the less density of the fur and also the jaggedness of the body mesh.

Step 6

First delete the fur description and then press 3 key for smooth preview.

Step 7

With the body mesh selected, go to Modify > Convert > Smooth Mesh Preview to Polygons command.

Step 8

You will notice that now the body mesh becomes smooth. Following the same way, make rest of the meshes smooth too.

Step 9

After smoothing the mesh, once again go to Fur > Attach Fur Description > FurDescription_Body.

Step 10

Check the rendered frame. Now it looks better and smoother than before. 

Step 11

To increase the density of fur, go to FurDescription_Body attribute and set the value of Density to 50000.

Step 12

Once again, render the frame to check the fur density.

Step 13

With the FurDescription_Body attribute selected, change the Base Color and Tip Color as shown in the following image.

Step 14

After applying the color, render the frame once again.

5. Applying Fur on Mouth Mesh

Step 1

For applying fur on mouth, go to Fur > Attach Fur Description > New.

Step 2

With the Fur Description attribute selected, rename it as FurDescription_Mouth. Change the values of Density to  10000 and Global Scale to 0.250 to increase the density and scale down the fur length.

6. Applying Fur on Left Ear Mesh

Step 1

With left ear mesh selected, go to Fur > Attach Fur Description > New.

Step 2

With the Fur Description attribute selected, rename it as FurDescription_Ear. Change the values of Density to  10000 and Global Scale to 0.140 to increase the density and scale down the fur length.

Step 3

For applying fur to the right ear, go to Fur > Attach Fur Description > FurDescription_Ear.

7. Baking Texture on Fur

Step 1

Go to Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade command.

Step 2

In the Hypershade window, select the File node. You can see the file node inside the work area as well.

Step 3

Browse the location of the body texture map which was saved previously.

Step 4

With FurDescription_Body selected, click and hold with middle mouse button and drag and drop it on Base Color. Follow the same procedure with Tip Color and then click on Bake button.

Step 5

Follow the same procedure with FurDescription_Ear.  

Step 6

Render the frame. You can see that now the texture and fur color match together as a pattern.

8. Applying Bald Map on Body Fur

Step 1

If you see the eyes closely, you will see fur penetrates the eye balls. So, you need to overcome this situation.  

9. Refining Fur Attributes

Step 1

In FurDescription_Body attributes, change the values of Inclination to 0.060 and Scraggle to 0.350.

Step 2

Under Detail setting panel and Length menu, set the values of Map Multiplier, Noise Amplitude and Noise Frequency as shown in the following image. You can play with these value to get different and desired results.

10. Painting Fur Attributes

Step 1

With FurDescription_Mouth selected, go to Fur > Paint Fur Attribute Tool and click on its option box.

Step 2

In the Paint Fur Attributes Tool window, select a hard brush with the value as 0. 

Step 3

According to the settings, drag the brush on mouth tip area to remove the fur.

Step 4

Render the frame. This is your final output.

Conclusion

Play with the fur settings and try different values to get different results. Here I finish the tutorial. Hope you enjoyed the series.