Making of Green Frog by Massimo Righi, Italy


Once happy with the low poly model was the time to make the UV map. For the main (half) body and the leg, I've made 2 cylindrical maps, for the paws I've used 2 planar maps: 1 from top view and one from bottom view. I've used a simple checker applied to a Lambert shader for checking the overall process while tweaking the UV’s.


After that I've duplicated the half frog and combined all ending up with 1.960 polygons, quite good for the low poly model (that can be used as a cage for the rigging/animation process).

I've than duplicated the frog keeping the low model in another layer, and I've made the higher poly version (about 30.000 poly) doing a poly smooth. Finally I've added some details using the Maya sculpting tool always trying to follow the main reference.


Using photos and freehand (I've used a Wacom tablet) I've made the textures in Photoshop each 2048x2048 (enough though).

I've applied the texture to the frog but I've noticed (I was expecting that) that some texture "seams" needed to be adjusted. I've used the built-in maya 3d paint for that, using the clone tool. When the color texture was made I've created the specular, bump and diffuse map from that.


Now was the time to setting up the scene. I've created a simple plane where to place the frog over and I've rotated it about 17° (I've done that for the frog too). For the plane texture I've used a photo made by me, I've cropped it about 1300x900, I've than made also the bump.


I've created a camera and I've enabled the depth of field on that. As you can see from the grab I've made a distance tool placing one locator in the point of focus on the model and the other locator in the camera lens. I've than parented that locator to the camera so that when I was moving the camera also the dimension value was changing.