DWIV - 3D - apprenticeeverything
ok, Im so pumped for this contest! even though its a challenge that far outclasses my abilities, thats basically why im doing it! to learn! for the learn! oh baby! FEEL THAT LEARN!!!
anyway, right now, im thinking a human/elf female invoker high preistess of light type deal. i figure thats the kind of thing you need when fighting demonic creatures from the dark spaces inbetween dimentions.
that, or like, the master/origionator of darkness. maybe a demon bitch who metaphorically or maybe even physically gives birth to the absence of light.
i dunno. ill do some sketches and see what i like the best.
anyway, right now, im thinking a human/elf female invoker high preistess of light type deal. i figure thats the kind of thing you need when fighting demonic creatures from the dark spaces inbetween dimentions.
that, or like, the master/origionator of darkness. maybe a demon bitch who metaphorically or maybe even physically gives birth to the absence of light.
i dunno. ill do some sketches and see what i like the best.
Replies
anyway, the idea is that shes some sort of high preistess of light deal. powers were largley useless and marginalized until demons showed up and then it turned out they were great for kicking undead ass. shes supposed to have a little donkey that carries all her stuff as a mount/sidekick.
anyway, let me know what you think, I want to make sure im not way out in left feild here. any ideas that could help improve the design are of course totally welcome!
specifically, Id like a few crits on the anatomy (too fat of a bottom? chest not... 'chesty' enough? feet too small? ect...) and the way I built her (will I have problems deforming the legs? do I have enough verticies in key areas for a good sculpt? ect...)
also, any tips on how to make her sexier are totally welcome!
ps: I ought to mention this is my first time doing this from start to finish the 'right' way, so feel free to point out totally obvious stuff! thanks!
Maybe parts of this Tutorial will help you in getting that sexy look you're looking for:
http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/maya/swimsuitbabe/index.html
The main points I want to highlight are the proportions. I can't tell if you're doing cartoony or realistic, but either way, don't be afraid to exaggerate key sexy points: long legs, skinny waist, firm breasts.
Anyways, thanks again for the comments. I'll be looking forward to see your progress.
I looked over that article and im kind of excited about doing better on this now.
I worked on her a little but then blender crashed and I lost the progress. Ill try agian tomorrow.
anyway, this is basically the direction im going in:
I'll do a final version in the right proportions/pose with colors and such
You don't have to calculate the Pedestal into your 10k Tri budget.
"Your Presentation Pedestal's Budget:
ALL 3d entries must include a pedestal in their Presentation Image. You have unrestricted polygons and textures to create a pedestal ..."
And if you're looking for a High Priestess look, maybe add some elegant jewelry. A headdress of some sort?
trying to get anatomy right without good reference takes years of practice and even pro's use ref all the time so why shouldn't you do it.
I'm saying this because the proportions on your drawings are way off tbh
i'm not saying this to insult you but just to help you
keep it up
good lookin out about the pedestal dill. also, that tutorial you linked seems to have come in handy as well as the cgtalk thread on body topology that it links. I think im making progress.
still working.. my goal for tonight is to tighten up the anatomy on the legs and butt. Ill do the arms and head...tomorrowish?
the feet.... well... its a first pass. first time doing toes so Im happy, but not satisfied. I think I worked out her butt well enough, and the overall shape is better... im tired. going to bed.
Ill take a look at her boobs agian tomorrowish...
nowhere near perfect. theyre verging on 'good' but not even there yet. although theyre still the best ive done.
I also sagged those boobs a little. made a noticable difference. thanks dill! crotch is forthcomming...
wasnt sure about her hair and gloves.
she looks preistly enough, but i think i could push it more... maybe a crown of leaves? shes supposed to have a floating lace doily above her head... i dunno. any ideas?
As you can see, ive been having some issues with weird geometry. Ive got lots of stars and triangles that are messing up my edgeloops. I suppose once i get better at this ill be able to avoid that, but for the time being is having them going to mess me up down the road?
another problem ive been finding is this one:
when i try to put an edge in, it doesnt cut the quad into two tris, and im left with an edge floating on a face. to fix it i have to delete the quad, then make an edge, and THEN make two new tris. I guess this is a pretty noobish question, but what gives? is there something i can do to avoid creating these things in the first place? is there an easier way to fix them when they do occur? do i even need to worry about them?
one final noob question: workflow. exactly how does it work? in my mind it goes like this:
basemesh --> sculpt --> normal map --> diffuse/spec/ect --> done.
but i hear a lot about retopo-ing and other intermediary steps that i dont seem aware of. is there a thread or tutorial that lays it out? or does someone want to just be a prince and breifly explain it to me?
sorry for being a noob. :whyme: I really appreciate the help though, and i sure am feelin that learn!!
As far as work flow goes -- everyone has their own method. the way you described works great, but be careful not to sculpt too heavily on your basemesh or you will yield funky maps due to depth discrepencies.
My work flow is basemesh-->sculpt-->remesh-->uv-->texture maps
this work flow allows you to create a re-enforced evenly spaced mesh that works in ZBrush or Mudbox, then worry about poly counts later. You also do not have to worry about stretching UVs if you sculpt too much on your basemesh.
And finally, remeshing: You can do this many ways. If you want a cheap fast and dirty way to do it, give meshlab (free) a whirl. Load your highres mesh and then go to filters-->quadratic edge decimate without texture. You can specify how many tris you want to remesh to and it does a fantastic job of capturing silhouette. It makesa completely random mesh, however (not suitable for animation). The way I usually do it is to decimate my meshes in mesh lab then load them in maya and "make live" (the big red magnet shape at the top center of the screen while your mesh is selected). You can then freely draw points and append polygon all over your mesh. If you have the money to spare, the NEX plugin is a fantastic little app that speeds this process up significantly.
Hope this helped even a little. Remember, google is your friend. You can find tutorials for almost anything under videos.
To be honest - but don't just take my word on this one - I'm not too sure if you want to worry about sculpting and making high poly versions at this point. It's a complicated process with tons of subtleties, tricks and skills involved... there's a whole new layer of complexity added and I think you've still got plenty to learn in the area of lowpoly modeling and diffuse texturing. I know I spent a good part of last year's DomWar figuring out how to get them working and it very nearly kept me from finishing - and still I had a ton of troubles. Maybe it's just my learning process, but I think that if you can't make a convincing lowpoly and diffuse, normal maps are only going to make it worse... I'd be interested in what the Polycount veterans think about this, though. As I said, don't take my word for this, but it might be something to consider.
On to the model - you're indeed learning a lot; the body has gotten better over the course of this thread. That said, I'd still recommend you to use orthographics, mostly on the face. Like This. There are some basic proportional 'rules', such as eyes at half height or mouth at two-thirds from chin to nose, that you don't know yet or aren't applying fluently, and guides would help.
Don't be discouraged! As you said, you're learning a lot and that's the most important thing.
Avoid to many stars points (like you have in your actual topo...)
good exercise is taking your topo the way it is now, and draw over a cleaner topo in photoshop on top of it...then edit it as a mesh. it can become tricky to just try to solve you rproblems straight onto the mesh without having a clear idea...
if you need triangles (for animation reasons or else) i'd suggest to keep wait till you are done with your character, and your final model is done...then you can pretty much do whatever you want with it
hope that helps?
good luck
On the model, your torso and your legs don't feel like they're the same scale. You can test this by covering up the upper half the model with your hand, then the lower, and seeing how your eyes percieve the other half of the model. Might try lowering the crotch first, then increasing scale on the upper torso. The hip position isn't high enough, I think. Also, your hands, from an anatomic point of view, are very wrong. Look at your hands, in a relaxed position, and try to model the lengths of fingers/meat of the hand like that.
Zwebbie is right about the face, orthographics will help you a lot
Tris are really bad news in zbrush fo sho, but people've covered that already, so no essay from me on that =P
You're doing great for yourself by posting your stuff, and opening up to critique. I personally can't describe the horrors I've committed in the pursuit of learning 3d, but hopefully future generations will forgive me. Keep at it man, and good luck this year
Dont worry about make mistakes, you can fix em, so long as you save often and diffrent versions.
Zwebbie: I can see what youre saying. and i think that you might be right. If im going to finish this on time I probably cant learn a whole new modeling method, though learning to make normal maps was one of my personal goals for this project... maybe ill just do it on the clothes/accessories.
r4ptur3: thanks for the info about retopoing. I looked up a few tutorials on youtube, and none were very good, but i think i got the idea of what it is and how its done. Ill check meshlab, if i ever get around to sculpting. also, thanks for the info on the no edge quads but i still dont think i understand. is there a link you could reccomend?
suicide: 3d.sk looks awesome, though it seems to cost a little bit of money... and i have less than that. im sure i can find shots like those somewhere less repuitable....
drywall: thanks for the specific crits. Im going to try to beat those out tonight and block out her clothes and accessories.
see you all in a few hours...
I want to move on from this. Ive spent like 2-3 weeks on it, and ive learned a lot but I need to start the clothes and texturing if in gonig to finish. I put the tri and face count because i cant remember if the 10,000 limit is in tris or polys....
[edit]: it would seem that the limit is 10,000 TRIS which means... i am way over budget on the basemesh.... maybe she wont have that donkey shes always wanted...thats ok though... i dont really have time to mess with all that anyway...
Though this brings me to another question thats been bugging me: 10,000 seems like a lot, how many tris/polys can the current consoles display at once? is there a way to calculate it from the raw specs?
here's another go at the issue: every polygon has a "normal" -- this is the direction the polygon is facing (in a simplified nutshell). It is used to show which side of the polygon is rendered, among other things. if you turn off backface rendering you will see what i mean. When a polygon's normal is facing towards the camera you will see it. When a polygon's face is turned away from the camera it will not be rendered.
The problem with the funny bow-tie polygons is that one edge of the polygon is telling it to be faced towards the camera, and one side is telling the polygon to be rendered away from the camera. If you render the polygon it will will show up looking like a bow tie since the engine does not know what to do with the conflicting normals.
The main way to avoid this problem is to block out your main shapes first -- start with a cube. Make every vertex count -- if you only had a cube to describe an entire head, what would the cube look like? Once the cube is as close to the head's form as possible allow yourself a single edge loop. Again ask yourself -- if I had a single cube and one edge loop, how would I describe this head? If you keep going in this methodical fashion you will not have to use the create polygon or append polygon tool and completely avoid the bow tie polygons all together.
If you end up creating a bow tie polygon you should delete it and try to figure out what's wrong -- they will wreak havoc on your model when it comes time to sculpt or create UV's/texture maps.
Good luck dood -- keep going! You'll get the hang of this stuff in no time
Big improvement on the face from last time, but i'd think about moving the eyes a bit--right now, they're looking rather slanted and that's giving her a bit of a dopey look. It also looks like you're got her eyes supposed to be looking in the direction of the line, but that's not how they're reading. This'll probably be worked on more in texturing, but i think she's getting a bit of the "one eye looking at you, one eye looking for you" kind of look :P Want to avoid that, for sure!
Also, about the ears that you said you were avoiding working on--perhaps not the best idea. Areas that you neglect and avoid have a cruel way of being what people notice first. (Unfotunately, the way it works is: no matter how good you are, if there's something wrong in your art, it's all people will notice) Therefore, I say take that ear on! http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.asp Check out the tutorial from this link for the ear. It's pretty simple to follow but gives you a nice ear. I used this tutorial for the head myself, because I was worried about screwing up the head geometry a lot. If you find another tutorial you prefer, than all the power to you
I also agree with Zwebbie--for this project, i think it would be wisest to focus on just the low poly and not worry about a sculpt. There's a lot to learn, and the high poly really does add a lot more complications. The first character I made had no high poly elements, and the second character I did had only a very basic normal map. Eventually, yeah, it's great to have a bake down from a high poly, but you can still make something awesome with just the lowpoly. Getting comfortable in one area will aid you more in moving on to the next.
On a similar note, don't feel too rushed to move on to the next stage. Yes there's a deadline, but what's key is that you learn what you gotta learn. Rushing through each process just to get it done won't be as helpful as really working out some problems and areas that need to be improved on along the way. Worst case scenario, you don't make it in time for the deadline, but that doesn't mean you can't still finish it to a place where you'll be satisfied and happy with all the work you did.
Phew, sorry, I'm in a rambling mood. Didn't mean to write too much, but I hope you find some of it helpful! Good luck with the competition!
in the mean time though, i could use some help on a few things:
this is the latest update, I thought about switching up her sword and putting it on her shoulder so that i could use it in the final pose to move the eye over the image. like a big arrow! see how it kind of lines up with the book? but im not sure i like how it actually LOOKS. and Im stumped for the hair. its about time to do it, but for the life of me i dont know where to start or even how it should look! if anyone has any good hair tutorials, please send them my way.
as always: thanks for all the help!