Tutorial Suggestion....

[sasquatch]

I've promised loads of people already that I would write a tutorial about this very subject. And to everyone who I said that to; it is on it's way; I just have a lot of real-world work to finish at the moment (which is why I haven't updated the Kevin Spacey thread either).

Tommy; if you can't wait (and I don't blame you - ask the others how long they've been waiting) there's plenty of good tuts out there. I recommend this one (http://www.thehobbitguy.com/tutorials/polymodeling/index.html). It's not a realistic head, but the advice and methodology offered in that tut is gold. Dave K is awesome with polys. It'll set you up not only for heads, but for modelling economically and intelligently in general.

Hope this helps

sas

[Kaiser_Sose]

I know the Inside Lightwave 7 book has a step by step guide

Also, look at the sticky in the maya forum, you will find a few in there, especially at highend3d.com

[tomjinx1]

sasquatch - thanks bud. I look forward to your tutorial. I have looked at the one from hobbitguy many times and have read through the whole tutorial about 4 times. My biggest hangup is at the very first of the tutorial on setting up planes. I'm not sure if it's polygonal planes or an image plane that he is talking about. And then there is the situation with the texturing of these planes. I've been using Max since the 2.5 version so I'm really used to the material editor for it but Maya's material setup is alot different (more like Lightwave I think).

Anyhow, I'm going to work on this a bit and will post if I have any problems.


Update - I have now created 2 polygonal planes and placed the appropriate textures on them. I am now starting to create my poly points. Here is where the problem starts. How can I make my object (this being the flat polygon outline of the side view) have a 50% opacity or 50% transparent like in his example images? I can't see to move my points around.

Can anyone help on this right quick?

Tommy

[LFShade]

with one of the planes selected, right-click and choose properties. check the box to make it see-through, and uncheck the box for "show frozen in gray".

[-wT-]

I think he needs instructions for Maya ;)


So, if you want your model to be 50% transparent, do this:
Select your model, press CTRL+A, scroll to the very end of the list of nodes, there should be a lambert1 node there. Just turn up the transparency of it, et voilà! :)

You could also go to the menu at your viewport, Panel -> Shade Options -> X-Ray to show everything as X-ray.
Stunning! :bounce:

Oh and one more tip... as you only should need the textured planes when working in the orthographic views, you can move the planes out of your way. Like, the plane showing frontal image, move that "back". It doesn't matter how far it is, because of the way orthographical cameras work, and the planes aren't anymore in the way of your model.
Brilliant! :cool:

Oh wait, yet one tip...
Make a new layer, and assign the textured planes to that layer. Now, press the middle box of the layer 'till there's a big R in it. Now you can't accidentaly select the planes anymore. And you can control the visibility with the first box of the layer!
Absolutely Marvelous! :thumbsup:

[LFShade]

I get it now...thought he'd mentioned he was using Max. My mistake.

Don't listen to me:D

[-wT-]

Heheh, that's ok, I had to make sure before I wrote my reply too ;)

[Apostle]

Just wanted to let you know that sometimes creating the poly planes for image reference might distort the image you apply to it. Most of the time you can eyeball it correctly but if you find your having problems, you can go in the the different cameras attribute editor and put you reference image in the cameras image plane. There will be no distortion.

also... this site has some head modeling tutorials.
http://www.fineart.sk

[Dragon]

HeHe... Thanx for the plug sasquatch :)
Just wanted to add one more thing to this thread about the images... If you make the images square in photoshop (i.e. 400x400), even if this means having extra white space a pic that is normally rectangular, you wil get no stretching on the plane when you apply it.

Take care,

[-wT-]

I correct the stretching by looking at the resolution of the image from i.e. Photoshop, then if it's something like 640*480, I scale the plane to 48 Y and 64 X, and then uniformly scale it down to a good size.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.