Blocking out the rough primatives to refine later, relying on boolean cuts to form the eye holes. I later remade the jaw piece based off a cylinder for what seemed like better topology at the time. Both of these choices created a miriad of issues.

Working with the duplicate special function, I first cut the head in half before using a boolean for the eye holes, the high cylinder subdivision created many more n-gons than necessary.  The mohawk was shaped using a simple deformer after extrusion.

I found this especially method of creating the jaw especially challenging despite Mo's example video. I worked entirely off front and side orthographics which could visually fit the shape, but other views would tell a different story. After much time I realised part of the issue came from forgetting to flatten the front faces of the head.

With the jaw finally complete I attempted to merge the head where I found several n-gons and detatched/duplicate edges causing pinching. After which I created a simple neck where Mo demonstrated the exturding faces on normals rather than an set axis. I had previously done this, but could not explain the difference between the two modes until researching normals and a demonstration.

To me the shape depited in the reference really made no sense but, was literally said in the video of this section, discerning particular lines and shapes and following them can often create a shape very close to what was desired. While I forgot to document the previous components of creating the body, it largely falls under the same ethos and talking point, and where I came to differentiate between poly and primative base modelling workflows. Additionally, I came to accept just creating the basic shape rather than becoming overwhelmed with achieving instant perfection.

To gain the general shape of the abdomen I utilised a cylinder, and manipulated a simple cube to boolean cut the front opening out before connecting it to the torso. This was suggested by Mo and demonstrated how lateral thinking can simplify the creation of obscure shapes.

After creating the general shape, I used Maya's target weld tool to snap the top vertices of the abdominal cylinder to where it should meet the torso. I merged redundant vertices where possible but occasionally had to create additional edge loops in the cylinder to support the unorthodox shape of the torso. Unfortunately, during this process my target weld tool broke on my both my home workstation and the university computers, I attempted to troubleshoot for a long time to no avail, eventually just reverting to an older save and redoing my work. This would unfortunately be the first of many technical issues I grappled with.

While attempting to create the horizontal struts on the Iron Giant's shoulder, I found that the rear and front reference images are not symmetrical/perfect. Despite both images being centered properly the geometry depicted as inconsistent, rather than being caught up in their differences, I simply chose a single reference to focus on, and trusted my own technique to clean up any issues afterwards.

In adding these horizontal struts next to the neck I learnt how to terminate multiple edges into a single edgeloop comfortably. While this can create tris or poles, it is generally preferred to adding a large amount of additional topology.

In following Mo's demonstration rather linearly, I came across a few issues due to slight differences in mistakes either made by Mo or myself which required seperate instinctual knowledge to correct. This clicked for me after struggling to create a consistently straightened collar. I applied what I learned about extruding faces on normals to edges to create the rough shape, the tidied up by hand mostly by scaling a few faces inwards to straighten their lines.

As our models diverged in slight differences and creative choices (as we were encouraged to make) I began trusting myself to develop from the reference images myself, creating the raised shoulder and on the torso and its extending circular components.

After completing a lot of my own work I felt a lot more capable of making my own choices and spent some time going around the model and tidying up visual issues I wasn't happy with, above is a small example how I moved the geometry around for a more flush apearance.

Knowing vaguely what was required but understanding the power of a good reference from the modelling process, I researched some ways to auto-generate an approximation of what proper edge flow can look like.

A little stumped on how to even begin converting what I had into the image on the left, I asked my tutor for assistance. He demonstrated how to reduce the edge count of an object while still retaining the general shape with the slide movement tool, allowing the n-gon contributing edges to be moved and merged.

While I acknowledge this is not the best example of topology, I was happy with the outcome given my main issue the previous project was managing n-gons and topology. To create this I was show to use bevels and manual adjustments to add an additional ring around circular holes as a rudimentary solution. At the time I thought I would be subdividing or smoothing the entire model and deal with these issues later, but as some external factors affected my time and ability to attend workshops I never quite accomplished the level of detail I would have liked in my mesh.

While I made these changes much later in the pipeline (after UV unwrapping, rigging, and posing), it seems more appropriate to discuss my later iterations here. I found some forums suggesting the connect component tool and its modify/preserve topology modifier was the most effective solution to add enough detail for more circular eyes. This did end up creating exactly what I tried to improve upon during my previous effort (creating many edge loops which extended around the entirety of the head), but worked for my purposes and intent to export my model unsmoothed to substance painter.

After generating some extra topology and connecting any remaining n-gons, I had created several poles in close proximity which created visible lines/creasing even while unsmoothed.

Sliding edge loops just as I had previously, I reorganised the newly created mess in an attempt to evenly disperse edges and poles as much as possible. This solved the issue and much to my surprise created a passable edge flow.

After completing all the general shapes/components for the Iron Giant model, I deleted one half of all the faces and cleaned up some pesky duplicate vertices along the center to prepare for UV unwrapping. During this process I had particular trouble creating the supporting beams along the spine and the divet between each shoulder blade, unfortunately I never quite came to a solution I was happy with.

Before unwrapping I created new materials and applied them to grouped regions of the body to be exported as seperate UV sets.

I was rather shocked at how quickly I was able to unwrap the Iron Giants head once it was cut in half, this was my main struggle last project and the time I spent understanding unwrapping concepts has been a benefit in this area (edit: I did forget to unwrap the eye properly which became an issue later)

After unwrapping one half, I mirrored the head (practically seamless thanks to my earlier cleanups) and sewed together edges where possible for a seamless UV shell.

To save some space when packing every shell together later, a lot of the extraneous geometry (mostly stuff hidden/clipped through other area). I look through the underside of the model and deleted any faces not viewable from the exterior (creating new edgeloops to achieve this if needed).

Previously my conception of UV unwrapping was choosing the single best projection method for a shell and dealing with the inevitable issues. Mo's demonstration however, broke down this conception by simply selecting any problematic faces, such as these stretches ones above, rotating the camera and creating another projection exclusive to the required faces.

I found this procedure from Mo particularly interesting and enjoyed the near perfection of the final product.

After seeing what was possible I became slightly carried away and quickly unwrapped much of the model without thinking to document the process. The takeaway is that it was enjoyable, and once again the video examples taught me to break down faces into groups of material into the possible pieces of material used to create each section, such as breaking down pieces from the breastplate or the underarm into their own segments (as a visual to help me I imagined how a single piece could have flown on and wrapped around the model, sort of like how Iron Man's suit can fly onto him in pieces I guess). In my haste I did create a bit of a mess, which made stitching back together the smaller pieces which required their own projection angle quite tedious.

After connecting any estranged shells together, I passed over the model once more and checked for any deforming pieces, fixing the issues with either another camera projection or by cutting the shell differently like shown below.

The next two points are combined, and are an example of how I resolved stretching. While both solutions technically worked, the method on the left made a bit more sense to me given the shape of the object.

As suggested in the video tutorial (but also something I was concerned with given the upcoming mismatch of detail across objects), I seperated some somewhat similar shells into another material along with the abdomen to be packed into a seperate UDIM for more resolution (I am aware seperate UDIM's are not required but it made the most sense to me)

I created some very basic legs to allow Maya to detect the giants humanoid shape, generating an approximate skeleton.

Somehow I never screenshot the process of adjusting the guides, despite repeating it many times during troubleshooting. The process was straightforward enough and particularly so on the Iron Giant, who's joints are typically symmetrical sphears or cylinders, overall this process was fairly similar to moving pivot positions.

The next two steps, as well as the unpictured spin weight painting. Ensures aspects of the geometry do not deform when manipulating the heads influence/control point, the head itself should stay entirely rigid and thus was simply flooded 100% on only the head controller to move in unison.

Going into the process of rigging,  I knew the pose I wanted to position my model in. Because of this, and because I was concerned the Iron Giant's rigidity would prevent extreme positioning, I experimented with the extent I was able to move the head and found this issue.

Back into painting mode I noticed very slight weighting on the head influence point at the base of the neck, quickly rectified by painting it to 0% as it should be.

After fixing a lot of the weighting on the torso to prevent any contorsion at all (given that the giants body should be a single solid structure), I tested the spines flexibility and found I likely cut the rib-like center part far too short during the UV unwrapping prep

I'm sure this was covered in a workshop I was unable to attend (I had to move away temporarily near the end of semester), but the arms provided on canvas were as a single component which was unlike the ones shown in the tutorial videos. This resulted in the above weight painting, necessary to restrict the arm/shoulder ball joint from deforming, not being possible. I attempted to paint the region myself but due to the majority of the joint being hidden, I separated the arm component entirely. This caused not only the entire skeleton to unbind from the skin, but also the following issue once I though I fixed the skin binding.

i'm still not sure what causes this issue that prevents any weight painting from occuring but two most common issues which occured to me were accidentally mis-selecting HIK modes to be anything other than full body, or by transoforms/histories being changed after skeleton/skin creation. The latter is what caused this particular instance.

Getting the hands work move properly was the main friction point for me, given the undescriptive and numberous object names revealed once un-combined. I am sure there is a more efficient method than the manual renaming and regrouping I eventuated on, but I was unable to find any help online or via the tutorials which seemed to have entirely separately set up hands and arms.

After creating some new bones for the fingers, I matched each joint on the bone, to the giants control rig.

This is the point at which the hands confusing and hidden object names and positions came into fruition in terms of creating issues. Neverthe less I eventually reorganised the hands many sub-objects neatly which enable me to pair my new bones to the finger meshes.

While pairing some objects in the hand a few of them would move very far away from the base model. This was caused by forgetting to freeze transofmrations, center pivot points, and delete the histories of the hand on the few times I repeated the processes (or I simply missed one of the knuckle joints)

Despite testing this mobility earlier (and repeating the painting many times), the neck clipped slightly through its base indicating some influence weighting issues.

Rather than painting and then posing, for this specific movement I found moving the head and then repainting weights best represent that singuler pose worked best for me. I am aware this would not be very helpful when properly animating characters but since I knew this is a rigid body only I was comfortable making this choice. In order to prevent any clipping entirely however, I did have to make some concessions with how far back the giants neck bends.

It turned out that, due to the large shoulder pads, it wasn't possible to move the arms up enough to perfectly depict the reference pose. I instead attempted to capture the general tone of the pose with slightly less exaggerate positioning.

I found posing to be a very enjoyable process. Being able to manipulate a model I created with such ease and control really felt like everything came together. Despite being able to rotate and adjust the position of every point I wanted something just felt a little off with his pose I couldn't identify for some time.

The noticeable change was moving from one to two fingers which balanced the giants 4 fingered hands to better conform to the reference. What I found incredibly important in the hands pose however, was rotating the middle knuckle for added detail. This took me some time to realise as this particular joint was the first I interacted with which did not have a controller.

The left arm was much the same as the right and I unfortunately again couldn't quite get the arm into the position I wanted but I think its a decent rendition of the pose. I also added a small display base, complete with UV unwrap (with a bottom with no texture to save UDIM space) and its own material (to account for its large surface area).

Immediately after exporting my model into Substance 3D Painter, I knew I wasn't a fan of the way my decision to separate each material into a separate UDIM was displayed in the texture set list. Unsure how to rectify this issue in Substance, I returned to Maya and combined all UDIMs together and let Substance separate them into different texture sets.

This was suggested by Mo but I don't think I would ever repeat this workflow. I had to make a slight tweak to an object spanning multiple materials (also an improvement to make in the future), and found it very cumbersome as I had long since moved passed any close by save or CTRL-Z point to the desired adjustments easier.

Attempting to export my new UDIM/UV layout into Substance threw some errors I was not expecting.

Im assuming since the first time I placed it, the UV shell for the giants head was a few pixels off its UDIM, causing the previously mentioned error.

One of the first things I attempted to paint were the rims around the eyes to test out the emissive eyes in the tutorial videos, I was unable to due to improperly unwrapped eyes. In this case I don't think I did unwrap them at all.

I had to go back a few times to correct small mistakes I had made while unwrapping. The eyes and the unnoticed abdominal I mentioned earlier being the main two.

To best understand the types of colours I wanted to limit myself to (to form a cohesive model and make the texturing process easier), I created all my textures against the large flat segment under the giants arm. This allowed me to see each texture in different lighting while still large enough to discern changes I made. As an example, the main base texture I chose was based off dirty scratched plastic. Wanting to create the impression of a weapon well used but well cared for, I increased the size and quantity of the scratches while removing any dirt. I reduced it's smoothness and increased the metallic quality for a very smooth polished look, while adding a coarse and dull alluminium base texture for the edge wears to catch slight edges, which I think really benefit from the slight bevelling I added.

While this screenshot was taken post texturing, and some things were slightly adjusted along the way, I created my base palette at the beginning and copy/paste it onto all texture sets.

Following Mo's example I created formed my emissive eyes first but kept them mostly clear, I dded very slight cracking for an indication of depth. I didn't worry about the slight overspray onto the eye rims as it was still a WIP.

I ended up keeping the head fairly basic, utilising the full black plastic created, a some chrome rims (already outside of the palette), and emissive black eyes.

To give the giant a little more life in its backstory, created a small white barcode to the back of the head. This vaguely indicates its belonging to a larger organisation, with the implication that there is a vast quantity of machines like it.

I didn't quite konw where to go from here, so eventually deciding to start on the iconic red shoulder pads seen in the reference troopers.

I initially only wanted the top of the shoulder pad to be red, with a black underside. Due to the armpit being one single large cylinder however I was unable to simply face select these components. I probably could have painted it on manually or gone back and altered the mesh somewhat, but I was ok with altering the intent.

To remedy the large amount of red forced onto me, I decided to paint just the rim and the little top extra detail in the global scratched black, I think this looked better than what I would have come up with so it was a pleasant pivot.

The glowing red slats being the third texturing reference image inspired me to also make the inside of the collar emissive as the eyes were, this also indicates a strong source of power from within the giant. I also added some slight hints of the tertiary chromed grey, which at the time was far too bright. Again as a little bit of flavour, I imported the imperial insignia as an alpha to indicate its origin.

As they are really the only parts of the model that can bend (I did allow a slight amount of influence throughout the body to help with posing naturally), the neck and rib cage components were given the dark rubber similar to the reference purge troopers cloaks. To further this style some of the underside edges around the model were made the red plastic, while the inner rim of the ribcage/body it emissive (furthering the concept of some sort of powerful beating core within).

I was a little unsure what to do about the rear of the Iron Giant. I figured another insignia was too symmetrical , but I also didn't want to highlight the spinal struts as it was the part of my model I liked the least (also deformed since rigging). I think the slight hint of my tertiary colour served decently, as I presumed the red hands and shoulders visible from the rear could break up the all black tone.

Similar to the eye rims, I set the rotator balls to a small polished chrome so they stood out slightly as more an object of function.

I wrestled with the movable chrome texture somewhat trying to get it right. One change I stuck with was adding scratches to it due to the frequent from use as the arm swivelled around to move, in general I made it darker and less reflective.

I knew from experience with colour pickers from games I had played that often times it is best to leave the most customisable parts to last to ensure a single components colouring balance isn't askew with the rest. Thanks to this knowledge, I found that adding only a small around of red (effectively at the equivalent of shoulder pads) before the fingers was an even balance.

At this stage I knew the general angle of my frontal shot and placed the main (key) light at the cameras position. I raised it somewhat to allow for the upper edges and scrapes of the model to catch as much light as possible, with the underside being fairly simply to fill light.

After settling onthe camera position I wanted, I added a high posed fill light to the left of the giant to try and catch some of the under arm edges, this caused too many reflections so I adjused the camera somewhat to avoid further issues.

The result of my lighting efforts

A fairly textbook way to make something seem threatening is to shoot from below, making the subject seem larger. Doing so had the added effect of accentuating the areas I chose to make emissive during texturing. I amped up the red point lighting inside the giant and on both eyes to bath his base shape in red. While also adding another just behind the left shoulder to highlight the upraised arm in frame.

Here you can see the camera position, 4 red point lights simulating increasing the effectiveness of the emissive textures, as well as two weak fill lights in front of and to the left/behind the giant. Another fill light of the same type was placed effectively at the cameras position again to highlight upper edges and make the silhouette pop and a bit more.