This week, we took the 3D models created from last week's scanning and cleaned out the model. I followed the video tutorials on the class website and first scaled the size of the model downloaded from ItSeez3D in Maya.

Then I opened the wrap3 code from Matt and loaded up my scaled model and base model. The first rescaling of the base model step was completely fine, but I the detailed selection of points to actually wrap my 3D model caused some problems. The first time I ran the wrap, the mouth bag popped out. I thought that I must have done something to disselect the mouth bag from isolating polygons step, but the second time I ran it (after I made sure that the mouth bag was selected in the isolation step), it still caused the mouth bag to pop out. So I added more points around the mouth, which prevented my mouth bag from popping out, although it distorted the mouth a little bit.

Then I let the texture to be mapped, which, when it loaded, I was scared, confused and surprised. It seems that the texture, especially inside of my eyes got very stretched & distorted.

I took the wrapped model from Wrap3 and loaded it on Mixamo to rig the model. As the gifs of the animations show, the texture underneath the right armpit seems to be connected, so it creates a weird but funny flapping of the arm when the animation requires swinging movement of the arm.

The readings this week were interesting but also quite shocking. It seems to show the general trend of people identifying with 3D avatars of themselves and others more intensely than I thought. The claim about the VR / 3D avatar space being yet another one of the places where women will try to avoid made me sad, but also realized it might be true. Are we objectifying the human body by creating them as 3D renderings? Is this objectification more intense when it becomes in three dimensions? Perhaps so, as 3D renderings make the body more of an object, subject to manipulation, rather than a two dimensional image which has physical / technical limitations to manipulation.