3d Modelling from photographs?

[pnoland]

Heya, those aren't silly questions...every has gotta start somewhere right? I'm sure there are more qualified (much more...) people here to answer but I figured I throw in my two cents since I'm pretty much only a few steps ahead of ya'. :) The way I started was by just reading forums like this trying to pick up some of the lingo and such so I would understand what does what in 3d more. After that I checked out all the major 3d applications. (Maya, 3dsmax, Softimage|XSI, Lightwave..) but after seeing the price tags on those puppies I opted for the freeware route. I found that Blender and Wings3d were great packages to start with. Hell, Blender has come a long way and people tend to over look it since it's free. Check out www.elysiun.com for some work and discussion about Blender. www.blender3d.org and www.blender.org are the official sites. www.wings3d.com for wings which is only a modeler but an amazing one at that.

Photographs (or Reference Images as you'll hear them refered to as) are definatly useable in 3d. You'll want a front, side, and top view of what you want to model. But really a front and side will do. What happens a reference image is simple...In your 3d app of choise you have a grid in your work area. You load the image in the background of that work area and then you work around the image.

Since you're just starting out I recomend checking out Blender, Wings, the Maya PLE (Free home use version), Lightwave (little over a grand but a good program!), Amorphium3 (not well known but it now has an excelent subD modeler!* under 200 bucks too!) *SubD stands for Subdivision modeling which is becoming a popular form of 3d modeling.

www.3dlinks.com has tutorials and gallerys for all the major 3d applications but don't judge the application by the work in the gallery...that really shows the talent of the artist, not the capabilities of the software. I hope some of the forum regulars chime in here 'cause I feel like I might have confused you more then helped ya! :) Hope I helped some what. :P

[jud]

There are alot of magazines out there that deal mainly in 3d and the cd that comes with them usually has at least one demo of a 3d program on it,the mags I know of are "3d world" and "computer arts".
just have a look in any good book store or magazine store and you should be able to find some magazine that deals in 3D.

jud

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