Any Games Character Artists Want To Give A Few Pointers To A Beginner

[Cyborgguineapig]

There are plenty of places to start looking for information here on Cgtalk including 2D figurative anatomy related forums. At the top of this forum there is a sticky titles "post your best modeling tutorials", there would be a good place to start looking for resources. You definetely want to gain a good grasp of human anatomy and even use film, magazines and such for ideas with clothing as eventually you will need to give clothing to your character which fit them and their style. For now, or at least the way I'd do it is just practice by modeling seperate parts of a human body. For instance do 3-4 legs, then 3-4 arms, lots of heads( as they are hardest part) all pretty quick not caring too much about making them perfect. After you get pretty well rounded and familiar with parts then try a full model.

[Goraaz]

Hi Dark_tiger

I'm not a game modeller myself but I've done some lowpoly modelling just to try it out and I learned alot.. The tips that come up to mind right now are that you should model with good topology and do a good texture mapping. These are pretty important for the animators and texturers. I'm not really aware of what the limits for characters are right now but stick to lower counts and lower texture resolutions..
And use the normal softening and hardenning tools to make the model look smoother... (in Maya it's Edit polygons - Normals - Soften/harden)
I use the sculpt poly tool to smoothen out model topology for characters... It's a pretty good tool...

This is all I can think of right now.. There are surely many more people here on the board that can give you more and/or perhaps better tips...
Good luck!

[PlayfulPuppy]

I'm not really aware of what the limits for characters are right now but stick to lower counts and lower texture resolutions..

The numbers I've usually been stuck with have been about 500-1000 polys for secondary characters (NPCs walking around the streets, 'flooding' enemies), about 1000-2000 polys for main enemy characters and about a maximum of 4000 (Although 2500 is probably a better choice) for the main player character.

For textures, you'll want to stick to either one 512x512 texture and an additional 256x256 texture for interchangable elements (If you have the ability to customise the face, get new armor, weild a new weapon, etc). Alternatively you could go for 4 256x256 textures for the main and another additional 256x256 for anything that requires transparencies (Hair, glow effects, see-through cape or what have you).

This is going off a PS2 standard, and will probably become outdated fairly quickly. However, ALWAYS work on these textures at a higher resolution than you intend for the final (I normally work at double), otherwise you'll have a hard time doing details and probably get some blocky artifacts that'll be hard to get rid of. This also means that if you change platforms later (Like moving to the XBox) you'll have a high-res version all ready and waiting.

Good luck!

[benclark]

You should invest in the Gnomon Modeling for games dvds. They are worth every penny, well explained and cover everything you will need to know

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