Creating a model with a custom-built rig purely in Maya was a failure in my eyes due to the numerous technical issues, so I decided to scrap everything and take the risk of sculpting the model in Pixologic ZBrush. This required me to take online video tutorials of ZBrush in order to fully understand the interface and features of the program. Recreating the model in ZBrush gave me much more freedom and flexibility, as it resembled actual clay sculpting rather than the more-tedious shape and vertices manipulation in Maya that could cause potential problems.
Once completed, I flattened out the UVs of the model with Headus UVLayout for ease in texture painting. Speaking of which, creating the texture colours was the next step undertaken. This was done with Allegorithmic Substance Painter by using flat colours to get the desired results of my visual style. No complex details or materials were necessary for this.
With Troy all modelled and textured, it was time to rig it up to perform the movements. Previously, I attempted to build a custom rig from scratch to gain a full understanding of the process. However, this did not come out well as several technical issues prevented me from progressing. For this model, however, I decided to utilize the automatic rigging plugin RapidRig. Using this proved to be a lot less stressful as it both saved a lot of time from building my own rig and also resulting in a lot less technical issues.
Rapid Rig created all the joints and control rings that were required for Troy, along with featuring several useful control features such as eye movement, FK/IK handles, and squash-and-stretch to suit the cartoony style I'm aiming for. It did take some time to get across some technical hurdles, but eventually, I was able to successfully get the rig running the way I want, aside from weight painting which I'll get into later.
Another aspect I added was facial movements. Four different blend shapes of the character model were created with adjusted vertices on the mouth. When applied to the model, I can change the shape of the mouth to the desired emotion. I also added additional controls to the automatic rig to adjust these values easily. These would then be applied to the movements of the eyelids for blinking, and the eyebrows for more expressive emotions.
For the second furry character, I used a modified duplicate of Troy with adjusted geometry and different texture colours in order to save production time. I then applied the same UV-mapping, texturing, and rigging techniques to the character. Colours are not final as I may need to adjust them later.