Mid poly man WIP - beginner needs some advice.

JaelWise

Hi everyone,

I've just joined this site and was hoping to get some help! I've been working on a mid-poly generic man and would like some feeback and advice. This is my first go at modelling a realistic character and I fear it may be anatomically incorrect right now but can't figure out what it is?



Low quality screen-grabs, since at the moment it's mostly anatomy advice I need. And uh, he has no hands yet! They will arrive soon though. At the moment he weighs in at about 2000 triangles.

Thanks a lot! This site is awesome and I'm a little shy about being here amongst so many competent artists. I hope someone has some time to help out a beginner

AtlusZMH

Post some wireframes! A lot of critique and improvement will come from refining your topology!

But we can't see any of it yet..

Killaball

As or right now with out the wire frames, like AtlusZMH said it is hard to give proper crits. But just from looking at your model, the head is way to think from the side view. Widen that out a bit and shrink the chest on the side view as well it seems to thick in comparison to the rest of the body.

JaelWise

Thanks for the advice! I'll get to it right away. Here are the wireframes (no changes yet though):



And a close up of the head. Thanks again for the advice!

AtlusZMH

I'm seeing a lot of weird geometry around your nose, mouth, and eyes. With all those tris around those spots, deformation would have a LOT of artifacting. What i usually do is find some examples of edgeflow (especially around faces) to reference and use to get my own poly flow solid.

It looks like you know what you're doing, you just need to refine your topology and eliminate a lot (if not all) of those tris.

Also, your elbow area could use another loop to help make bending easier.

Another option you could do is to look at pictures of facial anatomy. Or any anatomy for that matter. It may seem weird, but if you can make your edgeflow follow major muscles and bones in some cases, the better your model will look and the better it will deform. Anatomy is important!

Good Luck!

kanga

The stance looks pretty good.
If you put a model of a skeleton under your model you will see the back of the skull shoot through the head of the one you have made.

In the beginning it is really helpful yo use reference planes.
Also something that might help is sculpting in one of the apps that is available. Make alot of studies you can always draw your polys over a good base

Cheers

JaelWise

Thanks a lot for all the help everyone. I did some reading into facial topology and used a reference for this guy but my figure drawing clearly isn't up to scratch yet! Maybe it's a better idea to use a photographic reference to start with? I'll use a picture of a skeleton under my model too, that sounds like a really good idea.

I'll keep studying! Thanks again guys

Mimp

The Joan of Arc tutorial.

http://www.3dtotal.com//ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.php

One of the great tutorials. Always worth having a go if you're a beginner, and still not sure of the processes of creating the correct edge loops and topology.

JaelWise

Thanks a lot for that tutorial! I had a quick peek and the face modelling stuff is mega useful, I might re-do the man's face using this technique since I don't think I can fix my topology without some major reworking anyway.

Xaltar

Not bad at all for a first try at realistic character modeling. There is a lot wrong with it but I'm not going to give any crits based on what you have now. Instead I will point you HERE and recomend you look through the rest of PC's awesome wiki. You will find tutorials on almost anything you will need.

Welcome to PC.

JaelWise

Oh thankyou thankyou thankyou! These guidelines are wonderful, I have a lot to learn but it looks mighty fun I see how topology generally seems to follow the body's natural shape so a lot of anatomy study is on the menu for me.

Thanks again, everybody for being so encouraging.

JaelWise

Updates: re-did the face (he looks a lot more like the reference now!), added some detail to the body and refined the shape of things.

I've still kept the body quite low detail, I'm going for Raiden in MGS2 level of detail. Not sure if the way I joined things up around the neck was the best way to do it or not. I think it was a bad idea to use a drawing instead of a photo for reference...but at least I learned a lesson! Crits and advice most welcome.