How long should my models take?
Good evening, everyone.
I've recently decided to focus on developing my character modelling techniques, but I'm feeling a little slow - not on skill, but on completing my models.
Should I worry about hastening my work to develop a full character quickly, or should I worry on making a great job, even if it takes me 60 days?
When do I know that I've spent way too much time in a single model?
Should I sacrifice quality over quantity, even if I've just started to create my very first model?
They're newbie questions, certainly - but they've been plaguing my mind for some time.
Thank you for your attention to this thread - I'm sure you can contribute to it in some way. Peace!
I've recently decided to focus on developing my character modelling techniques, but I'm feeling a little slow - not on skill, but on completing my models.
Should I worry about hastening my work to develop a full character quickly, or should I worry on making a great job, even if it takes me 60 days?
When do I know that I've spent way too much time in a single model?
Should I sacrifice quality over quantity, even if I've just started to create my very first model?
They're newbie questions, certainly - but they've been plaguing my mind for some time.
Thank you for your attention to this thread - I'm sure you can contribute to it in some way. Peace!
Replies
spend as much time as it takes to get the model as good as you can make it. but also over time try to become faster and more efficient.
a few tips.
1) try to keep a schedule 'roughly' how much time it takes to finish a model.
push yourself to shorten your schedule on the next model.
2) start with well defined concept.
if you start with good concept and reference then you can push through a model quickly. if on the other hand you start with a rough idea then you will get bogged down with 'design'.
3) if one task seems to take to long try a different technique.
always try out different software and tinker with different techniques to find better ways to do thing. you will often find shortcuts that way.
and more or less and you aren't a pro.
seriously, make cool shit, speed comes from making enough cool shit. Also you don't usually get tested for speed, a lot of the time you will learn to do it fast on the job.
Another thing that is helpful is to try to keep scope down. Creating simpler models and characters allows you to learn faster than you might if you launch into making a super complicated character that will take tons of time to complete.
Once you have a good grasp of the fundamentals, gained thru making items small in scope, then you can focus more on doing things larger in scope.
Getting faster at the tasks usually takes care of itself, simply thru repetition. Once you have done a lot of modeling, texturing, re-topologizing, UVing etc, you will find you are much faster at it, even if you aren't really trying to get faster.
When you hate it, because you've been working on it too long, and it's not nearly finished.
If you are still enjoying working on it, it's not much of a big deal (unless you are being payed to finish things in a certain amount of time).
I believe 15 working days is the number of days given for a character to be completed at Blur. But rarely in production do you start from scratch. Almost always you have a base mesh ready for edits to create a character.
When you're first starting out focus on the fundamentals first like others have said. Don't worry about how long it takes. When I first started it took me days to get the eyes positioned in a spot that I didn't think looked terrible. Now I can sculpt a basic head in about an hour. Whats important is that you see your progress.
Also realize that when starting out, sometimes it may not be best to try to design your own characters. If you are really into this then go for it but realize that design is one of the most difficult parts of art and it can also be the most time consuming. Don't hesitate to model characters other people have already made concepts of. Eliminating the design part of the process can really speed things up if you want to focus purely on the execution.
The last thing to remember is, Shape first, topology second!(I'm talking about order of operations, not the final product.) If your mesh is riddled with triangles at the start but has a great silhouette then you are doing just fine. Worrying about getting the perfect topology and the form of your model at once can be overwhelming. Don't try it. Vitally Bulgarov says he still doesn't care about the topology of his mesh until the cleanup phase. This workflow will really increase your speed!
Good luck!
No wonder a single character always takes me forever to model. I am going to stop caring how the wire frame looks at the begging and fix everything once I get a desire silhouette from now on.