He mad. Why? Building UVs for 3D models sucks.

This model is a WiP that I've been working on for some time. Usually, progress is detailed in my scraps, but since I took this test all the way to a final render, I decided post the results to my main gallery.

In addition to practicing building UVs, testing my custom shader network, and another test of the model skeletal rigging and wire-deformer facial expressions, I tested independent lip deformers. Formerly, the lips were wired with the rest of the face NURBS curves as a single wire. I broke them out into two new sets of deformers and painted weights for each of them. These weights allow them to move the lips independent of one another when the two wire deformers are close together. Previously, I could only adjust the lips separately if they were far apart (with the mouth open) or as a single unit when they were close (like creating a smile.) Now, I can do things like bare teeth with a clenched jaw!

I'm also ecstatic about how the whisker's shaders are interacting with Mental Ray's caustics, global illumination, and the like. It's just as I wanted; like a kind of crystal or glass whose properties and colors alter depending how you view them, hopefully adding to a sort of surreal feeling to the look that is supposed to be indicative of the character depicted. Kind of over-brightens the area when exposed to the right angle of lights and camera, though...