Good learning material for Character Art

TheWalkerGod

Well I've decided to start doing so extensive research on character modeling, sculpting, texturing, etc. Trouble is i'm having trouble finding some good tutorials to begin with. Anyway have any good tutorials they've seen or read that they're willing to share? I looked in the forums already, but i may not have looked hard enough so if you already know of an existing forum thread on this, please direct me to that. Also I've already looked on the polycount wiki, and I use primarily Maya and Mudbox if that helps.

-Thanks in advanced

JordanN

Are you looking to model characters for the first time?
Cgtuts is usually a good site.
http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creating-a-low-poly-ninja-game-character-using-blender-part-1--cg-16132
http://youtu.be/WRYMCyshLQo?list=FLXow_l6k4j8gKKxh_giAwZw
http://www.michaeldashow.com/tips_texturepainting.html

Some of the tuts are in blender or max but it doesn't matter. Just understand how someone creates polygons. So extrude, connect, swift loop etc.

Also, if you're entering character art, I highly recommend you learn human anatomy. Look for books by Andrew Loomis for example and start sculpting/modeling heads, ears, hands etc till you've mastered them.

TheWalkerGod

JordanN wrote: »

Are you looking to model characters for the first time?
Cgtuts is usually a good site.
http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creating-a-low-poly-ninja-game-character-using-blender-part-1--cg-16132
http://youtu.be/WRYMCyshLQo?list=FLXow_l6k4j8gKKxh_giAwZw
http://www.michaeldashow.com/tips_texturepainting.html

Some of the tuts are in blender or max but it doesn't matter. Just understand how someone creates polygons. So extrude, connect, swift loop etc.

Also, if you're entering character art, I highly recommend you learn human anatomy. Look for books by Andrew Loomis for example and start sculpting/modeling heads, ears, hands etc till you've mastered them.

Cool, thanks. Also if you could answer a question about reference images for me. For things like humans it's usually easy to find reference images that align, are of the same person, and work well together. However for things like animals it seems harder because photographers don't usually take pictures of them with 3d modeling purposes in mind. Any tips for what i can do in this situation. Should i just draw my own?

JordanN

TheWalkerGod wrote: »

Cool, thanks. Also if you could answer a question about reference images for me. For things like humans it's usually easy to find reference images that align, are of the same person, and work well together. However for things like animals it seems harder because photographers don't usually take pictures of them with 3d modeling purposes in mind. Any tips for what i can do in this situation. Should i just draw my own?

If you can, google all the reference images of the animal you want to model that are from different angles and save the images. In photoshop, pick out the photos that have a front, side and back view for example and try to line them up. This may require making individual edits till you get the right proportions (including scaling, cropping and rotating an image till it's perpendicular).

In your 3D program, you can load up your references and continue to play with the proportions till it's just right.

I'll admit, I've never tried animal modeling before so I'm just applying the same method I use when I want to model props when there's no easy blueprints available.

One more suggestion is maybe buy an animal book? Especially those kinds that have those animal anatomy pictures. You could probably grab great references from there.

ZippZopp

a lot of times, if not most of the time, you won't get a full set of images that all align properly. a huge part of the job of the character artist or modeler is to research, interpret, and execute. this comes from time and experience. You'll have to model and sculpt a lot of various things to hone your ability to create believable models. start looking at anatomy books . study them and do small sculpts. don't bite off more than you can chew. sculpt a hand, or a foot, or an ear before getting into a full character.