I know i’ve got to UV this sucker at some point, and I know it’s going to make me cry drops of water onto my crumpets, so I’ve been doing a little bit here, a little bit there, so I don’t have to tackle it all at once in some mighty horrible mission. I don’t want loads of texture on him, just a dash, but i’m anal enough to spend forever making sure when I get round to painting, it’s all sorted. Heres how much i’ve done so far on the jaw.

Uvs, in case you don’t know, turn the 3D space of the model into 2D, U and V, coordinates, so artists who can weld the pencil, can draw all over it as if it were a latrine wall. Its abit like flattening out a big box. In 2D space, the above looks like this.

A clever chap could cut all this out, fold it up, and make a real life version of the character! Amazing! Please do. The downside is that they are so irritating to make. And boring. Dull as a board and crap like a poo.

Material action today! I`ve classed all the different parts of the robot together and set up a script so I can change the materials from a colour coded set, to a diffusive set, and finally to a specular/reflection set. These are the basic render layers i`m planning to use on the character. I`m getting a bit ahead of myself though as I need to work out exactly how the light rigs are going to work before I can set up the materials properly! Heres a funny colour-coded picture of the task so far! Don`t he look pretty!