Newbie modeller question - modelling wings

urbine

Hello fellow polycounters

I hope I'm not posting this in the wrong section, so here goes. I plan on modelling the image below, its taken from an Illidan Stormrage figure I have (apologies for the bad quality picture, lost my camera and had to make do with the terrible 3mp iPhone camera) I was just wondering if anyone could give me some brief advice or pointers before I start modelling this?

I planned on plane modelling it but was not sure if there was a better way to go about this? I wanted to get a decent shape first before I took it into Zbrush but thought the tears/holes in the wings might be a bit troublesome.

Thanks in advance

edit: sorry forgot to mention that I will need to make it game res

DarthNater

Well, you could either model it or just make a plane with that rough shape and use a texture with an opacity mask. Another way would be to model the 'fingers' and just make planes for the flat part of the wings (kind of like a combo of both methods suggested).

Depends on what you are using it for...

If it's for a game, I would do the opacity mask. If you're just modeling it to learn, then model it all :P

urbine

I started modelling this, just wondering if im doing this right or am I miles off?

DarthNater

Nope, looks good so far. I'm looking at it on my droid though so its a little small. I would add some edges where the fingers come off the main branch of the wing, so when you smooth it, it stays sharp.

Anuxinamoon

I probably would have started off with photoshop and drawn in some topology lines first. That way you have an idea of what to work off and how to evenly space your polys.

ralusek

how you're doing it is totally fine. for the planes you're masking (i assume), you can even use floating geometry and just have it pass through the middle of each finger, spare you some polygons