DustinBrown
05-03-2006, 03:13 PM
I've modeled a few characters, but I've never posed one for a rendered still. I see stills from guys like Pascal Blanche and Steven Stalburgh and, all other great qualities about their work aside, they always have their characters in wonderful, dynamic poses. I'm just wondering if there's a method that most people use to get their characters in a particular pose. I've given it some thought and these are the ways I figure it's possible to do it:
1) Properly rig it with full articulation. While this is probably the most elegant approach, it requires that you know about or learn all about the fine art of rigging. Not all together a bad idea, but if someone just wanted to focus on modeling and texturing then it might be kind of a bother.
2) Give it a really basic rig that you don't spend much time on, just to pose your character in a very general sense. Then you would have to collapse/bake your character in that position and tweak your geometry where things got stretched or pinched or whatever, as well as do some more subtle posing (fingers, facial expression, etc).
3) Model your character in a standard relaxed position, as if it were going to be rigged, but instead of rigging it, you use basic transforms and modifiers to rotate, bend, and otherwise manipulate your characters body into the correct position. This method would also invariably require A LOT of vertex-level finessing to get things looking right.
4) Model the character in the desired position. The problem I see with this method is that it may, at times, be difficult to get proportions and symmetry correct. Also, this pretty much blows away any chance of rigging this character in the future, should you have the desire.
So my question to folks who have had a good deal of experience with this sort of thing is, what do you recommend?
Thanks,
Dustin Brown
1) Properly rig it with full articulation. While this is probably the most elegant approach, it requires that you know about or learn all about the fine art of rigging. Not all together a bad idea, but if someone just wanted to focus on modeling and texturing then it might be kind of a bother.
2) Give it a really basic rig that you don't spend much time on, just to pose your character in a very general sense. Then you would have to collapse/bake your character in that position and tweak your geometry where things got stretched or pinched or whatever, as well as do some more subtle posing (fingers, facial expression, etc).
3) Model your character in a standard relaxed position, as if it were going to be rigged, but instead of rigging it, you use basic transforms and modifiers to rotate, bend, and otherwise manipulate your characters body into the correct position. This method would also invariably require A LOT of vertex-level finessing to get things looking right.
4) Model the character in the desired position. The problem I see with this method is that it may, at times, be difficult to get proportions and symmetry correct. Also, this pretty much blows away any chance of rigging this character in the future, should you have the desire.
So my question to folks who have had a good deal of experience with this sort of thing is, what do you recommend?
Thanks,
Dustin Brown