The BRAWL² Tournament Challenge has been announced!
It starts May 12, and ends Sept 12. Let's see what you got!
https://polycount.com/discussion/237047/the-brawl²-tournament
It starts May 12, and ends Sept 12. Let's see what you got!
https://polycount.com/discussion/237047/the-brawl²-tournament
Best Of
Re: How The F*#% Do I Model This? - Reply for help with specific shapes - (Post attempt before asking)
@5rettski There's a few different ways to approach organic subdivision modeling but it's generally a good idea to start by establishing the proportions with a block out of the facial planes to create a base mesh. Part of this block out process usually involves creating basic loop paths around key facial features (eyes, mouth, nose, ears, etc.) using either C or X topology patterns.
Some good examples of the different topology layouts can be found in the polycount wiki:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/FaceTopology
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Subdivision_Surface_Modeling#Organic_Surfaces
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/FaceTopology
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Subdivision_Surface_Modeling#Organic_Surfaces
There's also videos from the period (around 2004-2007) that cover the hows and whys of different facial topology layouts:
https://youtu.be/im9XZf2C1s0(C topology was often used for
more stylized characters and X topology was generally associated with
more complex character models that had a lot of skin folds or other fine
details but that's just an observation and is more descriptive than
prescriptive. Often the decision to use one topology layout over the other was made before even starting the block out but it's still possible to re-route loops and change the topology while modeling.)
The basic shapes and topology flow around key facial features can be created by extruding edge strips and connecting the space between them.
Some artists prefer to start by outlining orifices like the eyes, nostrils, mouth, etc. then move on to defining hard landmarks like the brow ridge, nose bridge, chin, cheeks, etc. This is supposed to make it easier to connect the adjacent edge strips since the segment count can be adjusted to match before any of the actual modeling work is done.
Other artists might develop the facial features in isolation, creating an entire nose, mouth, eye socket, ear, etc. then connect everything together and adjust the topology as needed to create facial lines and folds. It's also possible to strip model the muscle groups and face planes then connect them to resolve the topology flow but that seems like a lot of unnecessary work.
Modeling the nose in isolation could be done by starting with the bridge and modeling outwards, as shown below, but it's probably easier to start by defining the Alar cartilage and nostril then expanding out to the tip and up into the bridge. (There's an example of that approach in the wiki.)
The modeling process itself is fairly straightforward: load up a front and side view image then insert and extrude edge strips to define the major planes and loops that make up the shapes. Focus on creating good topology first then work on pushing and pulling everything into shape. Having good topology that flows nicely helps avoid the pitfall of spending a bunch of time making something that looks great but is difficult to connect to adjacent topology.
Organic subdivision modeling is all about establishing the loop paths then pushing and pulling everything into shape. Try to really nail down the larger forms in the first pass then add the loops to support smaller details later, once everything looks proportional and accurate. Otherwise it's just too easy to get lost in the details and it's often difficult to attach overly dense meshes to each other without chasing poles and triangles around the entire face.
The example below is by no means accurate, it's more of an approximation based on the older version of the character and it's been close to two decades since I've modeled a character using pure subdivision, so definitely study the topology references in the wiki.
If you're using Blender there's a somewhat obscure approach to refining
the shapes in subdivision models that was used occasionally in the late 2000's.
This workflow involved strip modeling a character's base mesh to
establish the loop flow then instead of manually pushing and pulling the
verts and edges in edit mode, just switch to sculpt mode and use those
tools to push the geometry around with the subdivision preview enabled.
To be clear, the purpose of this workflow isn't high poly sculpting, it's to enable a cleaner visual preview of the shadows and highlights on the surface and make it easier to push and pull the geometry of the base mesh into shape so the final subdivision model has a more refined feel. It's also way easier than tweaking individual verts with the move tool and tabbing in and out of edit mode to hide the wire frame.
Another thing that really helps with character modeling is to have other references up and regularly orbit around the model while switching the camera from ortho to perspective mode to get a better sense of the volumes. Looking up art anatomy references and learning the basic muscle groups can also be really helpful.
There's a few artists that still post here who specialize in characters or otherwise have more expert knowledge of anatomy so hopefully they can chime in and share their experience or memories of subdivision modeling from this era.
FrankPolygon
3 ·
Re: How The F*#% Do I Model This? - Reply for help with specific shapes - (Post attempt before asking)
5rettski said:I don't even know where to start on his nose. I'm just tired already, I feel like I'm running in circles. I don't know where to extrude from to make the shape etc. I need help.
You just started, go on, finish a nose... see how it looks smoothed, shades, behaves from various angles. learn from your mistakes, do another one.
learn and repeat. getting gridlocked at like 8 polygons in isnt gonna solve your issue. dont expect the solutions to be instant. make mistakes, learn, build experience.
Neox
4 ·
Re: Idea for Feedback on Tracking 3D Content Creation Pipelines
FWIW: both accounts above joined on August 15 2025.
kostadina said:The idea is a web app that focuses on clarity and ease of use, with features tailored for artists and teams:
I’d love to hear your thoughts: would a tool like this help simplify your workflow, or are there other pain points in your process that should be addressed first?
uegh a wEb ApP. Negative bonus points if its electron and chrome only X/
please Address this one first, without an answer to that, it makes imo 0 sense to give feedback:
Is it going to be opensource or will there be at least a perpetual license offered?
Is it going to be opensource or will there be at least a perpetual license offered?
subscriptions to your own data and having it locked away is borderline stupid, dangerous and should be boycotted.
myclay
3 ·
Re: BRAWL2 [Character] Sodom, Fabi_G
Hello, still alive though time has been running through my fingers.
Managed to do some pushes in some different aspects:
Web build on itch: https://fabian-golz.itch.io/sodom-polycountbrawl2025
Managed to do some pushes in some different aspects:
- Experimented some with a shader in Unity to get a black and white look
- Adjusted the model some, though very roughly, mostly mapping to parts of the existing textures. Of course, added skulls and spikes :P
- Built out the Unity scene with some limited functionality as well. I used this orbit camera script.
(Capture of the web player - if this gif-file is too large, feel free to remove it.)
Edit: Took a few potato screenshots, but hopefully those show - yay looks like they do!
Fabi_G
3 ·
Re: Early-Late 2000s CGI/Game Models
Thats the one I (and Hanno Hagedorn) learned the basics of organic modelling from.FrankPolygon said:
https://youtu.be/eYAWAK1_6GwWay back when our English was so rudimentary, we didnt know that timelapse means speed up.
So we tried to hit Irfans speed doing the same thing over and over and over again hot seating on Hannos PC, we got close, tho never this fast.
Took me a while to realize why we couldn't hit it, hehe
Good old times
Neox
5 ·
Re: BRAWL2 [Vehicle] Rust Rhino, Hang Li
Here’s a quick update on the 2D concept; the 3D modeling is in progress~
HangLi
4 ·
Re: Early-Late 2000s CGI/Game Models
Johnathan Williams still has some public videos of his edge modeling and facial topology series from the late 2000's and early 2010's. This is fairly representative of how things were typically done prior to digital sculpting. At least for those using open source tools from the period. Tool sets do vary but a lot of the fundamentals are similar.
https://youtu.be/pHYKLFBNeaM
https://youtu.be/9dT6mL_rKp0
https://youtu.be/7aM4z0dV3Qg
https://youtu.be/4gw3wliQVTY
https://youtu.be/kmBqDursfgQThe site is long since defunct but back in the mid to late 2000's there was a forum dedicated to subdivision modeling where artists shared tutorials and offered critiques on work in progress. Unfortunately it seems like a lot of stuff wasn't archived and threads like "Super basic workflows" are now completely lost to time. https://web.archive.org/web/20070712091532/http://www.subdivisionmodeling.com/forums/
There were also a whole bunch of other sites, like CG society, that had similar discussion boards and those were a primary source for a lot of us who either couldn't afford or couldn't access professional level training but still wanted to learn subdivision modeling. Prior to video hosting platforms a lot of online learning content was either posted on forums, which have long since been shut down, or hosted somewhere as web pages and downloadable text documents.
Stuff like this was really all that was available for free and like
others have said, the actual modeling process is pretty rudimentary and
easy enough to replicate today using basic poly modeling operations. A lot of
stuff we either had to figure out on our own through trial and error or
find someone who knew what they were doing and was willing to share
their knowledge. Often with nothing more than a couple of paint overs or a scanned page from a book
and a few lines of text.
It is possible that someone has fragments of these popular workflow discussions or at least the media from them saved somewhere. Though, to be honest, if you want to see these older workflows in action then it's probably easier to try and find modeling time-lapses from 2006-2010 on YouTube. Back in the day it was a somewhat popular thing for organic and character artists to share modeling time-lapses. This trend continued for a while as more and more people shifted over to 3D sculpting applications like Mudbox and zBrush then slowly faded away.
When searching for videos on YouTube, try keyword phrases like: "edge modeling topology time-lapse before:2010" and the search results will be filtered to only included videos from before the selected date. This makes it a lot easier to find content from working professionals who were sharing their workflows back in the day.
Even stuff like basic box modeling time-lapses and other tutorials from over a decade ago are still out there.
https://youtu.be/J1mExXURsWk
When it comes to the question:"How did people do it?" Often the answer is: artists worked with whatever was available and iterated a lot until things looked correct. Especially when working from concept art or replicating obscure subjects.
Although it's not ideal, it wasn't all that uncommon for people (especially when learning) to create models based on a very limited pool of references that were nothing more than a front or side view and a handful of turnaround images. For characters it might even be as basic as a single concept sheet with just a three quarters view and some basic proportions from a front and side view.
As unsatisfying as that sort of answer may be, if there wasn't direct access to the subject or a lot of reference material that you or someone else gathered then it was often up to the individual artist to fill in the blanks as they were modeling. Usually with some input or guidance from an art director or concept artist.
In the how do you model this thread, Per used to have a few really
good posts with examples that demonstrated what older concept block-out
processes looked like for props and other stuff that was still being
done with subdivision modeling but that content is also lost to time.
Here's a link to the original JOA tutorial that was hosted on 3Dtotal: https://web.archive.org/web/20080621094924/http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.asp It takes some doing but it is possible to occasionally find this stuff. Whether or not it gets archived is kind of hit or miss. Knowing where it was hosted also helps and those lost connections sometimes make it difficult to find things people talk about seeing or learning from in the past.
FrankPolygon
5 ·
Re: Early-Late 2000s CGI/Game Models
Well, that's precisely why I was mentionning earlier that some of the confusion in this thread might be coming from where you are in your learning of polygon modeling in general. This (and the weird question about the ears) 100% confirms it. And again none of this relates to "old" or "new" models (beyond the fact that observing "old" models made you indirectly realize that there is a gap in your toolset).
Things like "edge modeling" or "box modeling" (or "strip modeling", or anything else really) are just casual terms that artists make up on the spot to summarize a given approach they like. You won't find books on these things. Perhaps some video recordings done by artists to document this or that trick, but nothing of substance - because it would be pointless. What you need first is to master the polygon modeling toolset of your software, in and out.
If you don't know where to start (for instance if the software you are using doesn't have any official Getting Started content - like this is unfortunately the case with Blender, as the official Blender help link basically states "we have no time for this, go look for stuff on youtube lol") then look up *quality* educational content from older sources. I mean specifically older in this case in order to avoid sculpting-centric material. You could basically sort through Gnomon DVDs and look for anything related to character modeling from 2010 or earlier. They had top-notch content.
https://vitalybulgarov.com/dvds/
https://www.ebay.com/shop/gnomon-dvd?_nkw=gnomon+dvd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8AxXG_6jyA
Or, look up any version of the "Johan of Arc" tutorial PDF even if it isn't ported to your own software. You'll see all the steps people go through when building polygon models from scratch, you'll learn the generic names of the various tools and actions (extrude, merge, divide, delete ...), and you'll then be able to research how to perform these action in any software easily. Heck, you could even download help files from various software and research the tools that way.
https://fr.scribd.com/document/51416931/Joan-of-Arc-3dmax-tutorial
https://store.3dtotal.com/products/joan-of-arc-cinema-4d-download-only
At the end of the day you should be able to build any mesh topology that you can think of (or draw on paper). If you can't, then you're not familiar enough with your software. People learned all these things back then by studying the aforementionned ressources as well as studying casual video recordings of artists at work, shared in places like ... Polycount A lot of this naturally gets lost with time. In my experience there is also a lot of knowledge that gets exchanged in the workplace. And 15ish years ago was the peak of monthly CG magazines too.
Some gifs from cool artists in action :
https://imgur.com/a/csZuw#pn5lrBu
Also the Vertex books by Ryan Hawkins are still as awesome as ever, and should be easy to find a DL for since they were a community project released for free. These are not just about polygon modeling though of course, they cover anything that the contributing artsts wanted to share.
https://gamefromscratch.com/free-art-e-book-vertex-released-by-ryan-hawkins/
More recently, I've seen people pick up polygon modeling from complete scratch as a direct consequence of their interest in modding games or contributing to a Steam Workshop. In such cases the information is mostly in the corresponding Discord servers.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to studying good models and being able to create any topology. Videos are cool and all and they can reveal neat tricks, but at the end of the day a polygon is a polygon.
Things like "edge modeling" or "box modeling" (or "strip modeling", or anything else really) are just casual terms that artists make up on the spot to summarize a given approach they like. You won't find books on these things. Perhaps some video recordings done by artists to document this or that trick, but nothing of substance - because it would be pointless. What you need first is to master the polygon modeling toolset of your software, in and out.
If you don't know where to start (for instance if the software you are using doesn't have any official Getting Started content - like this is unfortunately the case with Blender, as the official Blender help link basically states "we have no time for this, go look for stuff on youtube lol") then look up *quality* educational content from older sources. I mean specifically older in this case in order to avoid sculpting-centric material. You could basically sort through Gnomon DVDs and look for anything related to character modeling from 2010 or earlier. They had top-notch content.
https://vitalybulgarov.com/dvds/
https://www.ebay.com/shop/gnomon-dvd?_nkw=gnomon+dvd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8AxXG_6jyAOr, look up any version of the "Johan of Arc" tutorial PDF even if it isn't ported to your own software. You'll see all the steps people go through when building polygon models from scratch, you'll learn the generic names of the various tools and actions (extrude, merge, divide, delete ...), and you'll then be able to research how to perform these action in any software easily. Heck, you could even download help files from various software and research the tools that way.
https://fr.scribd.com/document/51416931/Joan-of-Arc-3dmax-tutorial
https://store.3dtotal.com/products/joan-of-arc-cinema-4d-download-only
At the end of the day you should be able to build any mesh topology that you can think of (or draw on paper). If you can't, then you're not familiar enough with your software. People learned all these things back then by studying the aforementionned ressources as well as studying casual video recordings of artists at work, shared in places like ... Polycount
A lot of this naturally gets lost with time. In my experience there is also a lot of knowledge that gets exchanged in the workplace. And 15ish years ago was the peak of monthly CG magazines too.Some gifs from cool artists in action :
https://imgur.com/a/csZuw#pn5lrBu
Also the Vertex books by Ryan Hawkins are still as awesome as ever, and should be easy to find a DL for since they were a community project released for free. These are not just about polygon modeling though of course, they cover anything that the contributing artsts wanted to share.
https://gamefromscratch.com/free-art-e-book-vertex-released-by-ryan-hawkins/
More recently, I've seen people pick up polygon modeling from complete scratch as a direct consequence of their interest in modding games or contributing to a Steam Workshop. In such cases the information is mostly in the corresponding Discord servers.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to studying good models and being able to create any topology. Videos are cool and all and they can reveal neat tricks, but at the end of the day a polygon is a polygon.
pior
3 ·
Re: Early-Late 2000s CGI/Game textures
Well, it wasn't PBR back then, but it was all photoshop. Those environment textures are photo sourced, edited to be tileable.
In the case of iron man, its probably just raytraced reflections.
In the case of iron man, its probably just raytraced reflections.
Benjammin
3 ·