Modeller Noob Needs Help
polycounter lvl 6
Hi everyone,
I've been a long time lurker on this forum -- I have it set as my home page and just appreciate what all of the artists can do here. I initially joined because I'm originally a programmer by 'training' and have an interest in game development -- and was hoping to find some like-minded artists as well. After a few abandoned projects I realized I should probably stop bothering artists to make my assets and try to learn how to do things myself. (I initially tried this but I don't consider myself too artistic so I mostly gave up).
I have the shell of a few games created but I really can't get them to be 'fun' in my opinion until I have some decent assets, animations, etc. So I really want to focus on getting better at creating models, rigging, and animating in blender.
For my first major asset project, I want to create a humanoid esque character, rig it with Rigify in Blender, and animate run/strafe/hammer swing/etc.
My progress for one night is shown below. Since I'm not a sculptor (I have the Z-brush trial but I'm pretty much terrible at sculpting), I'm creating my humanoid by extruding from primitive meshes. I'm relatively happy with what I have so far but I have a few questions:
1) Can anyone point out major flaws in topology/etc that might affect the rigging process later on?
2) I seem to have run into an issue with a lack of faces/verts for the legs. I can't subdivide without making some of the faces into 5-gons so I was wondering what the best way to create new vertices is, or if I should make a separate 'legs' object.
3) Do you have any tips/pointers for a noob like me? This website is what made me develop such a huge respect for artists and animators and I'd love to be able to approach even 1/100th of the skill you all have.
Much appreciated!
N
I've been a long time lurker on this forum -- I have it set as my home page and just appreciate what all of the artists can do here. I initially joined because I'm originally a programmer by 'training' and have an interest in game development -- and was hoping to find some like-minded artists as well. After a few abandoned projects I realized I should probably stop bothering artists to make my assets and try to learn how to do things myself. (I initially tried this but I don't consider myself too artistic so I mostly gave up).
I have the shell of a few games created but I really can't get them to be 'fun' in my opinion until I have some decent assets, animations, etc. So I really want to focus on getting better at creating models, rigging, and animating in blender.
For my first major asset project, I want to create a humanoid esque character, rig it with Rigify in Blender, and animate run/strafe/hammer swing/etc.
My progress for one night is shown below. Since I'm not a sculptor (I have the Z-brush trial but I'm pretty much terrible at sculpting), I'm creating my humanoid by extruding from primitive meshes. I'm relatively happy with what I have so far but I have a few questions:
1) Can anyone point out major flaws in topology/etc that might affect the rigging process later on?
2) I seem to have run into an issue with a lack of faces/verts for the legs. I can't subdivide without making some of the faces into 5-gons so I was wondering what the best way to create new vertices is, or if I should make a separate 'legs' object.
3) Do you have any tips/pointers for a noob like me? This website is what made me develop such a huge respect for artists and animators and I'd love to be able to approach even 1/100th of the skill you all have.
Much appreciated!
N
Replies
2) There is almost an infinite number of ways to accomplish that, but what would be easier than reading a wordy explanation here is to just find several different modeling 101 tutorials -- I would prefer video's but that's just me -- and ideally from different authors. Just follow along and don't worry about getting everything in one go.
If you just want a fast answer, to do the legs I would select the faces on the bottom and extrude them downwards as two separate legs. You'll probably need a loop in between the legs though, so some moving around vertices and adding in an edgeloop may be necessary. If this explanation doesn't make any sense at all, I'd again recommend going through several modeling 101 tutorials even if they are for something totally different. You just need to learn common tools and when to implement them.
I added an edge loop as you said (I've been using blender for 2 years now so don't worry, I understand what you're talking about). I just wanted to keep it as low poly as possible but without that edge loop the legs would have had no definition. This is what I have so far:
I think it looks pretty good! Now I have to approach the head, and I know that's gonna be tough :P.
Thanks again!
I got a free model from the Unity asset store and used it as a reference. In this case, I used the standard asset character, who is cartoony, but the topology is perfect for animation. So you can put that model right next to your own and it is very easy to see the way the topology flows that way, a lot more than looking at pictures.
Actually, for any type of model you are making, always check out and see what you can find for free at turbosquid.com. You won't always find fantastic models for free, but you might be surprised. Being able to dissect somebody else's work is a really valuable tool, I think.