Sketchbook: Loki1991
i am really having trouble getting anywhere. i'm not even sure how to post a pic of the topology. that and i have no idea how to make decent textures. hopefully this can give people an idea of my current level of skill in maya and can point me to some good tutorials on making models (doesn't have to be human) as well as creating textures for them.
Replies
If this is your first attempt at modeling in 3D, I'd say its not half bad, but that being said, starting off with characters is going to be reaaally challenging..
Usually when people are trying to pick up 3D the first assignment that they receive is to model a room of some kind. it could be anything you want, real or concept (although real may be better for some obvious reasons, i.e. real world reference for the models and textures).
I don't know if you have modeled any other scenes, but by doing that exercise it will help you become familiar with the tools and how to move verts around, so when you get to the more complicated task of modeling a character, it will be much easier.
Also I think 99% of everyone on this site will point you towards Z Brush or Mudbox to sculpt a character, then maya will come in towards the end if you want to retopologize your mesh to be an animateable asset.
There are some pretty cool explanations of the industry fields and professions right here on polycount under the wiki section: http://wiki.polycount.com/
Maybe that will be a good way to start off.
As for your pic of the topology, in maya you could just be in wireframe on shaded mode (there is a button at the top of each of the viewports of a blue cube with an outline) and take a screen shot (Prt Scr) and paste onto MS Paint, PS, etc.. or use the snipping tool if you are in Win 7. It looks like you are using maya software to render, and that doesn't really seem necessary when you are at this point of the modeling phase, unless you are really trying to nail down some lighting of some kind.
Sorry if that all seems stupid or doesn't make sense, I am pretty tired right now, but at the very least I hope that helps in some small way.
Good luck man!
this is the first scene i completed before i started on this. it was for a final animation assignment and animated the fox to do the gangnam style dance. the assignment was to create a humanoid character and have the character doing a human action like running, dancing or playing sport. i received a 38/55 mark for it and my lecturer said "The animation itself is not quite smooth and convincing enough. Need a more intensive movements and motions that give it more personality and physical property. However the environment setting is colourful and cartoonish. if you could come up with some sort of story would be much better." about the animation and he said "The character is well constructed with enough details and cartoon like feeling. The rigging is mostly completed with proper weight map with the surface. The binding seems to be problem free. However you seem to ditch the FK for arms and totally rely on IK to control the arm. This might be difficult for creating swinging arm. The head controls are not working at the moment. You might add them on later when finishing the facial rigging. The tail control curve seems to be constrained in reverse order. Now it only follows the ik handler movement not controlling it. You still need a global control so that later you can make move around the character. Overall very good, achieved most the functionality and the character seems interesting. Looking forward to see the animation." for the character model.
also yes i did a course in character modeling (2 actually) that was 1 year however the only thing i learnt from this was rigging and that was right at the end.
also i would prefer a character i could rig because i want to play with animations.