How to hard surface model from reference/ concept that is not orthographic?

e_manual

Hi everyone,

I was was hoping to find out your techniques to model from reference when the prop within the concept/ reference  is at an angle, not orthographic and doesn't have front, side and back images. how would you determine the FOV (field of view) of the picture and configure 3ds max or maya to accommodate the reference.

Thank you for any help you are able to provide.

Sage

I just eyeball it until i think it looks good. You can then position the prop in the angle of the image an see if it's off.  Another way to do this to place a primitive in the viewport and have the reference as a image background image. In Maya it's called an image plane. You rotate the camera view until the perspective of the primitive matches the reference. Once you are done you lock the view and model. When I take this approach I tear off a view that is locked and have that on one monitor, This lets me model normally on my other monitor and I can just look at the locked view to make sure I'm matching the reference.

musashidan

Freestyling it like this is fantastic practice. It forces you to really study the forms and their relationship and scale.

Google some dimensions of the real-world object (even a single measurement) to give you a base scale reference to start from.

I rarely use ortho refs anymore, I just drag a few images from various angles and throw them into PureRef.

sacboi

When precision is required I'll tend to draw an ortho set myself, as accurately as possible to applicable tolerances. Otherwise for all else a combination of freeform and perspective view modeling would typically suffice.

e_manual

Thanks for the info and help, I will try to freestyle it.

When working from concept is it expected of you to replicated it 100% in form and measurements, or to just capture the overall aesthetic and intent of the original concept art?   

pior

It depens on the concept artist,  the art director, the lead modeler, and the actual modeler. In short there is no answer to this question.

The only certain thing is : if you don't have enough material to do your job well, bring it up to your supervisor (or in case of freelancing, your client) and you'll work something out.