3D modelling help.

dactylus

Hi all,
Newbie here. I'm a lowly first year Games Art & Design student currenly doing a project on 3D modelling and I was wondering in some kind person out there would be able to give me some information and advice as it would greatly help my project.

Thanks,
Justin

throttlekitty

What kind of advice?

DarthNater

Do you have a modeling program yet? What do you want to model, environments, characters, weapons? We are all here to give you advice, but we need more information from you

dactylus

Thanks guys,
I'm after advice on facial topology, such as what it is defined as, what are it's principles etc. What are the best/most common software packages.

Basically anything you can tell me on topology and facial topology would be great.

Also any advice on Mudbox, I am creating a head to mirror an imported image of a subjects head and finding it tricky. Any tips or pointers would be excellent help.

Thanks again.

Eric Chadwick

Here is some advice & examples of facial topology, added another link this morning.
http://wiki.polycount.net/Face_Topology

dactylus

That's awesome, thanks so much.

Does anyone have any suggestions what I can write about with regards to facial topology? I can write about best practices and key areas but I'm struggling for more topics (need 1000 words)

Also anyone any Mudbox advice for modelling to match an imported image please?

Eric Chadwick

Ah... you should have said so from the start, that you're writing about it. I think we all assumed you wanted to do it.

Look at the links at the top of that page I linked. Also look in the Category:Modeling section for more links. Read, read, read. Then distill the salient points into your 1000 werds. Do the work.

dactylus

Well I have to do both, do it and write about it.

The Robert Chang link doesnt seem to work?

Eric Chadwick

Ah yeah, it's gone now, thanks! The first link there, Topology - Head thread, is a distillation of Chang's thread anyhow, and it's excellent.

dactylus

Thanks for the help. I've wrote sections on the main features for topology and loops and also it's application, which is what I've gleaned from the links. Is there anything else I should mention?

Eric Chadwick

the big question is "why is topology important?"

dactylus

So far I've wrote that it's important for organic animation and accurate physiology ...

Eric Chadwick

But why? What happens if you don't use decent topology? Try to teach someone the reasoning behind all the decisions, that's the meat of it, could easily go beyond 1000 words.

dactylus

I'm struggling It's the first time I've studied topology so I dont really know the ins and outs yet. I'm reading up but the majority I find is examples of good topology, not too much on the reasoning behind it.

Eric Chadwick

It's good to be struggling, that's when the learning happens, in my experience.

This thread has a bunch of reasoning in it: CGTalk - Topology research
You're going to have to suss it out yourself though. Topology is a deep subject, with a lot of opinions. I'd recommend paying attention to Stahlberg and Laa-Yosh, as well as anyone else who seems to know what they're talking about.

This old forum has a ton of useful info, kind of dead now though, but it was started by the lead Gollum facial modeler for the LOTR movies, and this is where some master modelers discussed theory and practice.
Spiraloid - Digital Sculpting Forum

Richard Kain

I've always considered topology important because of the effect it has on deformations when animating. I want to use proper facial topology to insure that I will be able to squish and stretch the character's face into interesting expressions. The face is one of the most important areas for animations, it is where most characters emote most noticeably.

Eric Chadwick

As far as the Mudbox process goes, it sounds like you want to model a particular likeness. I can't give you the Mudbox button-ology, but I would suggest reading Darren Pattenden's tutorial:
http://www.daz-art.com/hi_poly_tut.htm