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Do any of you professionals rate Paul Steed?

Fordy
polycounter lvl 18
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Fordy polycounter lvl 18
Or to be more precise, his modeling techniques?

Im thinking of getting his book:

155622088X.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I already have the first edition, but im sure I read on here a while back that some of you thought his techniques a bit old fasioned?

If you don't rate his techniques, what would you recommend?

Thanks in advance! smile.gif

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  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    I haven't read the 2nd edition, but I really hope he updated it to include Editable Poly workflows and a method of UVW-mapping that isn't totally prehistoric. If he didn't, then it's probably not worth getting. Personally I don't think he's all that...

    http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.asp

    Give that a shot instead, it's free. Hell, there's a lot of video tutorials and HTML tutorials lying around on the internet which can help you just as much as a book, and without any cost (assuming you have broadband)...
    Plus they will give you access to a more diverse range of techniques than just one guy saying "this is the way you do it"...

    MoP
  • malcolm
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    malcolm polycount sponsor
    I defeated this guy in the polycount cute doll contest, we both modeled Pikachu and I got more votes. I did not win the contest however. Like Mop said, you can find this stuff for free on the internet, when I first got into modeling I did some of Steed's free tutorials, I believe they were on penny arcade, the rotoscoping from photo ref is still essential to my workflow today in Maya for modeling a character.
  • Kevin Johnstone
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    Kevin Johnstone polycounter lvl 19
    Mop:Nice Tutorial, I had not seen this one smile.gif
  • flachdrache
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    flachdrache polycounter lvl 18
    Got the first one too - helped me a lot with tweaking and optimizing my models. smile.gif

    Hey, that JoanOfArc tutorial is great too - take a look onto the original page too. He/she also made a higherRes version of Hunter -> http://mr2k.3dvf.net/archives/hunter/images/hunter02.jpg wink.gif
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    Pauls a good friend of mine. He absolutely knows his stuff. Haven't read the second edition, but he was 'da man' back in the day for sure.
  • poopinmymouth
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    poopinmymouth polycounter lvl 19
    While I personally don't like Steeds techniques, I think it a bit... cheeky to be ragging on one of the forerunners of our craft. He was doing this before most of us knew what max was, and if I am not mistaken he has a doom title on his resume, as well as spending the last few years with microsoft in their pie in the sky tech demo studio. I'm not sure many people reading this thread have the credentials, or the folio to be knocking him.

    *edit* If you are after tutorials, I have a fair bit (30 or so) on my site, including a series of video, with audo commentary on modeling a character in max. www.poopinmymouth.com
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Sorry, I didn't mean to be ragging on him... I love the work he did in Quake 2 and Quake 3. I just don't appreciate his "slap big boobs on it and it's great!" approach... Anywhere I can see any of his recent work? I probably shouldn't be judging him on work he did a year or two ago...
  • Fordy
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    Fordy polycounter lvl 18
    Thanks for the replies everyone, I'll take all your suggestions onboard. I'll probably buy the book anyway as the first one was pretty good but i'll still be checking out all the tutorials mentioned.
  • NoSeRider
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    NoSeRider polycounter lvl 18
    I just didn't like those Quake 3 animations.

    I know Paul Steed is talented, so it makes me wonder about the tools at the time.....Uhmmmmm, character studio is the devil.

    You also have to keep in mind editable poly was primitive in Max 2/3 as well. You had to use editable mesh back then.

    Bones sucked big time in Max 2/3....gawd, how did you stand it?
  • FatAssasin
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    FatAssasin polycounter lvl 18
    As far as I know, the Film Noir tech demo is the latest public example of Paul's work. Check it out here:
    http://www.microsoft.com/xna/multimedia.aspx
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Now, why wasn't I surprised that it had large breasts?
    Looks pretty good, I guess. But it's not exactly knocking me out in the way that other 3d artists have done. Oh well.
  • NoSeRider
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    NoSeRider polycounter lvl 18
    If you're expecting Bay Riatt or Meat Meier, well yeah I understand.....but for game art, that seems pretty typical.
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    quake's looks have never been my "thing", too. however, it's so fast-paced that they surely couldn't fit much into those few keyframes.
    i own paul's second book - the one about animation - and for me it was quite worth it.
    however, as stated before, paul teaches "his" way of doing things - and that's not neccessarily the most recent cool-tool way.

    noserider: editable poly was introduced with max 4, some time after quake3. also, they animated with character studio, not fiddled around with max's own bone system. maybe CS is the devil though, who knows. have fun with whatever you prefer to work with.
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    all the technical bits are in there, I had a flick through it once.

    personally I've gone down the route of figuring it out for myself, I can't help thinking that doing it from this book would only really teach you how to model like Paul Steed.

    Unless its programming or something very defined, I don't see how do-art-like-this books help, you could probably learn just as much if not more from getting a book on how max works and ripping apart other peoples models.
  • Steve
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    Steve polycounter lvl 18
    [slightly OT]I'm nowhere near knowledgeable enough to comment on Mr Steeds technical merits or otherwise but I did find these old articles quite entertaining reading.

    http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.1/totb/

    Ancient news to most here I suppose but I'd been out of touch with pcs and pc gaming for 5 years and I kinda liked them.

    [/slightly OT]
  • Josh_Singh
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    Josh_Singh polycounter lvl 18
    I had the first book (Passed it on to another seeking knowledge) And It helped me alot when I was first starting max. His The u.v method he states in the first book was out of control complicated. Just looking at the cover of this second book I can tell he's updated the callisto model, and I would be very curious to see what he does new this time around.
  • Ryno
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    Ryno polycounter lvl 18
    I had to re-train numerous artists who read his first book, as his techniques were absolutely archaic. He's a good artist, but is not known for being the best technician. I won't pass judgement on the new book, but look for the following topics, which most people would consider to be important when doing character work, and if they are not covered, take a pass on the book.

    1. Editable Poly

    2. Unwrap UVW

    3. Material IDs

    4. Edge Loops

    5. Edge Flow

    6. Smoothing Groups

    7. Texporter/Similar UV template exporter

    8. Render to Texture

    Other more specific stuff that would be nice:

    Editable Poly: Edge Extrusion, Preserve UVs, Soft Selection, Edge Rings and Loops, Edge Connect, using Settings buttons, Cut, Quickslice, Type-Ins for Sub Object components, etc.

    Unwrap UVW: Automated Unwrap, Planar Mapping, Stitch UVs, Freeform Gizmo Controls, Detach UV points/edges/faces, Checker map distortion checking, loading/saving UVs, using map channels

    General Stuff: FFDs, Booleans, Pivot Points, Scene Scale, Reset X-Form, STL Check, Reference Images, etc.

    If you don't see the bulk of these points covered in the book, I would be VERY hesitant to buy it.
  • Asthane
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    Asthane polycounter lvl 18
    You have to understand that the first book itself is archaic. I don't know about the lot of you, but I for one remember when we didn't all model in quads or have these nifty ring/loop tools wink.gif Yes, the book has been in dire need of review for a damn long time, but cut it the same slack you would "Inside 3d Studio Max 2.5". It's an obsolete trainwreck of a book, but it wasn't way back when.

    Of course, the fact that Steed is the type who only learns as far as he needs to is true as well, I think I remember him saying as much in an old loonygames article... Heck, I think he needed some reader to tell him about smooth-shading with wireframe on or something of the like wink.gif
  • Mojo2k
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    Mojo2k polycounter lvl 18
    personaly i lost a lot of respect for steed with that "contest" he "judged" for polycount a while back. i looked through his first book a while back and found it so out of date.. even for the time it was released. hopefully this next book is more up to date, i can't really comment on it.. since i have not seen any of his work past Q3 (which i thought looked terrible, thank god for Ken Scott.)
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Mojo: The Bad Girl one? Yeah, I feel the same...
    Actually his Q3 meshes are pretty damn good considering the limitations, however what I want to know is, did he do all the character designs, or was he working from concept art made by other people? Ken Scott certainly "finalised" the whole look of Q3 though.
  • NoSeRider
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    NoSeRider polycounter lvl 18
    The character designs were Paul Steed's designs. If you read his 1st modeling book, you realize he can draw too....so, yeah those Quake 3 models were his designs.

    Kenneth Scott seemed to be hired on as texturer for the models and making some map objects.
  • Irritant
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    Irritant polycounter lvl 18
    Not a professional, but I'm sure as many have stated that techniques in the first book are pretty outdated.

    As far as Mr Steed's work goes, I think it has to be judged by it's time of release, obviously. The Quake 2 models were exceptionally well done for 1997. Quake 3 models vary on quality, IMHO, but this is mostly in the animations. The meshes are solid, mapped good for the time, and the designs were well, cool. My guess is that he was a bit rushed, or did not get to finish his work. Did he not get fired just before the release of the game? Some examples would be Tankjr not having idle frames, or Uriel's weird foot twitch error. That was alot of models to create and animate in a pretty short time frame.

    And then of course, Kenneth Scott, what can I say. I have loved his style and work from day one. I seem to remember some Quake 1 player skins and thinking, yeah, this guy has got something going here. He really brought Paul's models into the Q3 world with beauty.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    FYI Pauls getting fired was nothing to do with his work.
  • NoSeRider
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    NoSeRider polycounter lvl 18
    FYI no one has ever told us 'why' FYI....the conjectures fly!

    OK, I'm gonna assume because Paul Steed was fired because insisted on using Character Studio...which blows....plus he kinda throws his weight around.

    Hey, if nobody is gonna tell us...all I can do is guess.

    Keep in mind this little conspiracy has been gnawing at us for over 3 years now.
  • NoSeRider
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    NoSeRider polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    industry antagonist and artist extraordinaire Paul Steed has been fired from Id Software. What's disturbing about this was apparently Adrian Carmack (no relation) and Kevin Cloud fired Steed in retaliation for losing a power struggle over Id Software's next game.

    As the always photogenic John Carmack put it: "Kevin and Adrian fired Paul Steed in retaliation, over my opposition." He went on to say that "Paul has certainly done things in the past that could be grounds for dismissal, but this was retaliatory for him being among the 'conspirators.'" This conclusively proves a few things: 1) John Carmack isn't as powerful as he probably should be over there. 2) The wrong person was fired.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    http://www.sharkyextreme.com/games/columns/beatdown/8/

    This article kinda states Adrian Carmack (no relation) and Kevin Cloud got a little huffy and decided to do some dirty work.

    http://perso.wanadoo.fr/harry.d/doom3.html#paul%20steed%206/7
    There's alot of stuff there too....albeit over the internet and untrust worthy, but interesting none the less.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    WTF? No it was nothing to do with character studio. It was creative differences.

    Lets get this thread back on track or kill it. It was a question about his work, not the man.
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    get a grip, this happened 4 & 1/2 years ago.

    question is though, what is he working on now! wink.gif
  • John Warner
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    John Warner polycounter lvl 18
    yah i'm not going to come out and judge the guy. i've heard some of the things he's said, and i'm not sure what to think exactly.. but he's obviously at the top of the industry and quite frankly, deserves my respect, if anything based on the fact that i haven't met the man. as an entry level artist, i dont see it as my place to talk shit about someone i dont know...

    back on topic, he obviously must know what he's doing or he woudln't be in the place he is. i'd take his advice haha.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    get a grip, this happened 4 & 1/2 years ago.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    I dont give a toss when it happened. What the fuck has dredging up the guys past got to do with his work?
  • NoSeRider
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    NoSeRider polycounter lvl 18
    It's fun? We're mean spirited? It's human nature? Curiousity?

    It just shocked us at the time that id made this proclaimation....just makes us wonder about office politics.
  • r13
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    r13 founder
    more like pathetic muckrackers. shit, this was over 4 fucking years ago! time to move the fuck on!

    i call thread troll on noserider and am closeing this thread.
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