Gnomon Organic Modeling

[mental]

hello Verbal, i myself don't have an answer for you but Alex Alvarez is a moderator here at cgtalk. try PMing or emailing him directly i'm sure he would be glad to help.

[Chappo]

Ofcourse there are several ways to model something.

Try to let him post a reply on your thread so others can read his reaction too.

i know i would like to know the answer to your question :)

[Tom N.]

I dont think that his process is the "tedious" thing here.. I think its just organic modeling that is tedious and takes long. It won't go fast no matter how you do it. I'm not a student of Alverez's (I wish I was tho) But I've seen maaany of his tutorial videos and if theres one person who knows how to do things fast its him. Other training videos don't go nearly as fast or cover nearly as much. And you're right, I'm sure studios that use Maya or any 3d modeling program take a long time to model a character.

Im sure there are some new things in 4.5 but I dont know if its THAT much of a drastic change that you would need a whole new version of organic modeling movies. Anyhoo just my two cents, if he could post a reply that would be pretty nice.

-Tom N.

[CIM]

It's tedious because of Maya. I suggest you use LW to do modeling (like I do) or at least download and use Wings3d.

Modeling, by far, is Maya's poorest area.

[peanut]

CIM wrote
It's tedious because of Maya. I suggest you use LW to do modeling (like I do) or at least download and use Wings3d.


CIM, wait let me turn the table around ...
Modeling, by far, is Lightwave's poorest area.

I mean HATE Lightwave , but i wont go in the Lightwave forum to say that .... i wont make Lots a friend that way ....

MAYA IS THE BESY MODELING SOFT IN THE WORLD

Learn how to use it

[onlooker]

Originally posted by CIM
It's tedious because of Maya. I suggest you use LW to do modeling (like I do) or at least download and use Wings3d.

Modeling, by far, is Maya's poorest area.

Do not take this persons post too seriously. I don't think he has any idea of what he is talking about.

When it comes to charactor modeling Maya is second to none in the minds of the best realistic character modelers I've ever seen.
Here are just two examples of maya's poorest area at work.

LINK (http://www.androidblues.com/stool.jpg) Another LINK (http://www.cgchannel.com/news/showfeature.jsp?newsid=1077)

If modeling was Maya's poorest area with these results I cant imagine how well it must do in other areas.:thumbsup:

[peanut]

How can someone in his right state of mind could come and say that Lightwave beats maya

its nowhere near it ... lightwave is a software from the 80's

[Tom N.]

Originally posted by onlooker
Here are just two examples of maya's poorest area at work.

LINK (http://www.androidblues.com/stool.jpg) Another LINK (http://www.cgchannel.com/news/showfeature.jsp?newsid=1077)
humbsup: [/B]

seriously, those two links SUCKED ASS. I could do that in Microsoft Paint on windows 3.11

lol juuuust kidding. I can't knock LW, I've never used it. But I can agree that I've seen some amazing modeling done in Maya. This seems to be turning into a Maya vs. LW forum and if that happens it'll be closed so lets all try to get back to the original post and help out Kaiser Sose with our views/tips on organic modeling.

-Tom N.

PS: LW SUCKS MAYA RULES ROCK ON!!! haha just kidding.

[dstripinis]

Just to get back to something the original author was asking about -

Yes, in the movie industry it can take quite a bit of time to get an approved final model, often with multiple modellers ( one doing organics, one doing clothing, etc ) working 10 hour days for 4-6 weeks before a character is "done". and that's for something simple. it is not unheard of for 3 or four months to go into a lead character.

[seb4d]

I'm just wondering why Organic Modeling videos only show nurbs modeling ?
Can't we achieve the same result with polys or subds ?
I personally never use nurbs patches for characters because of the difficulty to model and texture them. So if anyone can tell me a good reason to prefer nurbs rather than polys / subds for organic modeling, I am interested.

[onlooker]

Actually I think Alex did the organic modeling on Maya 3.5 for Mac OS X. Which is as I understand it, Maya 3 + Maya 4's renderer. All the tools at the time of the release of that DVD were the same as the current version of Maya.

There is supposed to be 8 new DVD's released this month. I keep checking that site every day, but they should be ready soon. The month is almost over.

Just to repeate what someone had said earlier. I would email, or PM Alex for any spacifics. He is an incredible modeler, and even though it looks like a long time spent in those DVD's to get the results he did in actuality the process he used reduced time considerably.

I think dstripinis said it best when he noted that working 10 hour days for 4-6 weeks before a character is "done". and that's for something simple. it is not unheard of for 3 or four months to go into a lead character.


Alex whiped the majortiy, of that character out like it was no big deal in the length of 2 DVD's. Using unique techniques that I hadn't expected to see, but did wonders in bringing it out in an almost finalized form. If you keep in mind that modeling professionaly in the film industry is in itself a long and tedius process as dstripinis said. The process shown by Alex in those DVD's are an invaluable resource, and not to skoffed at. Not that you were skoffing mind you just a figure of speech. :)

[Randuin]

oh and about the DVDs.. where can i find the image planes that he uses?

[onlooker]

Originally posted by Randuin
oh and about the DVDs.. where can i find the image planes that he uses?


On the DVD in the images folder.:rolleyes:

[Randuin]

gee that was hard... lol thnx :)

[CIM]

Wow, some of you guys must live in your own world to think Maya could ever be considered to have the best modeler. I'm guessing you're brainwashed by A/w's bogus marketing or are just noobs to any other peice of software. Anyway, if you like it, though, then go ahead and use it.

I know Kaiser_Sose from the LW forum, and was only suggesting that he doesn't have to use Maya's modeling tools. It's his choice, I don't care. :-)

[Tom N.]

yes. we're all just noobs who live in shells.

[Randuin]

i live under a rock =\ does that count

[Kaiser_Sose]

cim just like to push people as far as he can ... dont take it personally and dont get into it with him here because I really want to hear what Alex has to say about this

[onlooker]

This thread has been tainted. :shame:

are just noobs to any other peice of software. Anyway, if you like it, though, then go ahead and use it.



Thanks for your permission I believe I will. :thumbsup:

[Emergence]

I think you will find that Gnomon have a couple of dvd's devoted to poly & sub-d modeling.

The organic dvd's seem pretty much devoted to nurbs, which (opinon here) is always going to be tricky when dealing with complex organic shapes. The payoff (and the reason that vfx studios often use them) is that by using a higher order topology you can make big savings at render time among other things. Of course sub-d's are changing all that these days.

Another thing you might be interested in is that it is quite common to build physical maquettes to establish design descisions. This can make the process of building a complex nurbs model simpler.

-Richard

[dobermunk]

http://www.stickman.de/content/stuff/process/tutorials/model_2_0.htm

May be of interest.

The above is a tutorial I go through at the German Film School for learning how to approach high detail organic modeling. I use Lightwave, but allow students to use whatever they like. The discussion of software specific pipelines and tools is interesting, but it's about learning how to look at the modeling process overall.

I'm happy that 3D modeling is approaching the haptic feedback of working with i.e. clay. Even a year ago none of the packages offered the kind of feedback we all enjoy today.

[roger]

the process he goes through is so laborious and tedious and I am wondering is all that really neccessary to model organinc characters is maya with smooth results being the goal
That's NURBS for you.
There are different ways of building patched NURBS models, but they do/all take time to build them.

It's tedious because of Maya. I suggest you use LW to do modeling (like I do) or at least download and use Wings3d.
Modeling, by far, is Maya's poorest area.
The organic modeling tapes by Alex uses NURBS so LW and Wings3d would not work. Many Studios STILL use Patch NURBS Modeling and Maya's NURBS tools are really good.....and so are Alex's tapes! :)

[AlexAlvarez]

Heya...

So to answer a couple questions...

The techniques in the Organic Modeling DVDs are still current even up to Maya 5.0. NURBS patch-modeling is a labor intensive technique.

If given the choice, yes, I prefer Sub-Ds for modeling as they are much faster... if you are familiar with the Zufuhr character, I modeled that in two days, while if it was a patch-model, it would have taken at least a week. But this is not the point... the point is, that when working for a studio, if you are told to model a NURBS patch-model, you can't turn around and say you prefer sub-Ds.

So then what are the advantages of NURBS?

First of all, as a spline based geometry type, they are far less memory intensive and therefore performance is better.

Secondly, and very importantly, NURBS have implicit UVs. When fininished modeling a NURBS patch-model, you can immediately jump to a 3D paint package and begin texturing. As you should all know, polys and subDs have to have their UVs manually laid out which is laborious.

In regards to 3D paint, most packages have a file texture size limit of 4k per surface. If a character is modeled out of 400 patches, then you clearly can get a massive amount of texture detail, which is necessary for film. (In the film Dinosaur, each character had about 18Gigs of textures). But if the character is polys/subDs, texture size management is more of a problem. (not to mention that 3D paint packages can not paint directly on subD surfaces yet)...

So clearly there is a give-and-take, where the decision is based on the project, character res, and timeline. More studios are beginning to adopt subDs as the UV tools have improved over the past couple years... but studios are sometimes slow to adopt new techniques. It just depends.

For example, Mark Lefitz, our Digital Sets instructor, who is a digital superviser for the Zion digital set work on the Matrix sequels, used to exclusively use NURBS. But now he has switched to polys/subDs. But this is for hard-shell non-organic work. Kevin Hudson, on the other hand, model supervisor at Imageworks and another Gnomon instructor, still relys heavily on NURBS for organic work.

For now, as a modeler, it is best to be flexible... While NURBS may not be as 'enjoyable' as subDs, anyone working will know that production workflow is not always about which technique will be the most 'fun'...

Hope this answered some questions...

A.

[Kaiser_Sose]

Originally posted by A.Alvarez
if you are familiar with the Zufuhr character, I modeled that in two days, while if it was a patch-model, it would have taken at least a week.


A.

Thanks for answering some of the questions

I thought you did do that in nurbs paching, at least thats what it looked like or what you were discussing

[Lyr]

If you are interested in doing characters for film look into paraform that package is a must have for serious film work.

[roger]

Excellent reply Alex! :thumbsup:

[Viekoslav]

In my honest opinion, It is always good to learn as many techniques/approches to solve the same problem.

NURBS organic modeling might be cumbersome at first (specially if you come from a Lightwave Background) but in some situations it is very useful and probably more effective (at least when it comes to accuracy) than other methods.

Just my 2 cents.

[Randuin]

Originally posted by A.Alvarez
if you are familiar with the Zufuhr character, I modeled that in two days

and where would I go about looking for this character?

[onlooker]

Originally posted by Randuin
and where would I go about looking for this character?


__________ HERE_________ (http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/gallery/zufuhr/zufuhr_page1.html):wavey:


Don't over look the linking pages. There are like 5 pages to turn through. :cool:

[Kaiser_Sose]

Originally posted by A.Alvarez
if you are familiar with the Zufuhr character, I modeled that in two days, while if it was a patch-model, it would have taken at least a week.


A..



I thought you did do that in nurbs paching, at least thats what it looked like or what you were discussing

[onlooker]

Originally posted by Kaiser_Sose
I thought you did do that in nurbs paching, at least thats what it looked like or what you were discussing

ZUFUHR - is not the character modeled in the Organic DVD's.
I may be mistaken, but it seems you are thinking it is the same character.
Nevertheless it isn't. :)

[Kaiser_Sose]

the heads look identical without the tentacals

[dmeyer]

I'm wondering how the new SubD's -> Nurbs conversion in Maya since 4.5 changes things....theoretically one could model nice and quickly with subD's and then convert to nurbs, although some manual cleanup would likely be required.

Anyone try this? It was a thought i had when the new conversion tools in 4.5 were announced, but I've never been able to test it. Pipeline here requires nurbs.

[madmanmagic]

Originally posted by A.Alvarez
Heya...

So to answer a couple questions...

The techniques in the Organic Modeling DVDs are still current even up to Maya 5.0. NURBS patch-modeling is a labor intensive technique.

If given the choice, yes, I prefer Sub-Ds for modeling as they are much faster... if you are familiar with the Zufuhr character, I modeled that in two days, while if it was a patch-model, it would have taken at least a week.

A.

So, Alex, can you give us the choice and produce a DVD, exclusively using Sub-Ds to model a character from head to toe, as complex/detailed as Zufuhr?

I would be the first to place a order!!

When can we expect it?
Pleeze!!!

Dan

[RichSuchy]

Originally posted by CIM
It's tedious because of Maya. I suggest you use LW to do modeling (like I do) or at least download and use Wings3d.

Modeling, by far, is Maya's poorest area.


And as someone who used Lightwave for years I can tell you that Maya is a wonderful modeler, once you take the time to learn it.

I have access to both programs and I stick with Maya now a-days because nothing that Lightwave has that makes poly modeling easier is compelling enough to make me switch back and forth between packages when I concidder all that Maya gives me. Amd no... I model about the same speed in both programs... fast.

Also NURBS are another thing entirely, and yes they are still useful.

[PixelVampire]

Just bringing it back up

[RichSuchy]

Originally posted by dmeyer
I'm wondering how the new SubD's -> Nurbs conversion in Maya since 4.5 changes things....theoretically one could model nice and quickly with subD's and then convert to nurbs, although some manual cleanup would likely be required.

Anyone try this? It was a thought i had when the new conversion tools in 4.5 were announced, but I've never been able to test it. Pipeline here requires nurbs.

I.ve used it for simple things but in my opinion, its not worth doing on a really complex character unless you already built it and now need to change it. you will need to rebuild, cut, rebuild, and restitch in diferent places than the choices the program makes for you unless you take great pains to cut up your sub-ds first and then you still need to rebuild and restitch carefully.

NURBS isn't really so bad, but you can go mad trying to reorder the Sub-D to Nurbs conversion.

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