Ahoy, Polypeople!
I am starting this thread as a means to move forward. I have been a hobbyist for 4-5 years now and well, its do or do not do time for me. I have worked as a professional artist for the last three years in other industries but recently parted ways with my employer and have have now found myself with time and energy to invest in something I LOVE! developing and honing my 3d skills.
I've fallowed this forum for awhile now and i am constantly amazed and inspired by what i see here.
Im asking for help from all of you wonderful people. I love creating art but i seem to get in over my head with 3d, im pretty shy about it and so i figured that was a good sign i should be exposing as many of the mistakes i try to hide as possible. (hope that make at least some sense to someone :poly142:)
my goal is to work on a single project every day that i can and post the progress here. so here goes!
Replies
Don't set an unreasonable schedule. Experienced artists could create a quality model in a day, but that's with years of experience and knowledge of their tools. Until you have enough experience to know how long things take, set your sights on working a fixed number of hours per day, and try to stay away from distractions (TV, web, phone) during your "work" hours.
Plan what you are doing before you start. This might seem an unnecessary step for your first, simple projects, but it will become increasingly important as you progress.
I'll find that if I work on a model a bit in the morning, I'll get a few ideas coming to me throughout the day as to little things I could add that would make the sculpt/mesh/etc better. If you ever have one of these moments, don't hesitate to get something to write on! The sooner, the better!
While most people here would disagree, you want to hone your skills so I suggest finding a style or genre that you're interested in and working on a few models for that, then move onto another genre, etc. This way you get an acute idea as to what styles you're good at, what you like, and what you need to improve on.
Oh, and take breaks. If you can't feel that you're getting anywhere, sitting in front of a screen for hours on end won't work in your favour. Let yourself regenerate!
you guys both have some really cool stuff on here.
im really excited about this shield for Eric the cavalier.
a quick image search of some refs and concepts (not mine)
also some silhouettes i did this morning.
here is a small re-do
id like to make the back a bit more interesting. any comments welcome
not sure about this, got a little messy near the round cut out corners. i want to take this into zbrush but hate getting there and finding out i did something wrong....
i don't have max here so i can't show, so if you have time till tomorrow i can show otherwise i'd ask for another polycounter to show him how doublesooth works
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87I8FpXn3Yc"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87I8FpXn3Yc[/ame]
re modeling this.
If you can't do that, bake the normals and then take them into zBrush, and use zProject Brush to texture it. Here's a tutorial on it, but for future reference, try to bake some UVs on your HP, even if you have to segment!
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_Bj4_91OnU&feature=share&list=UUAzbCWhqt4N49AaneIxw8rA&index=2"]zBrush Tutorial - Making sense of the "zProject" brush - YouTube[/ame]