scman182
03-25-2008, 06:01 AM
Hey all, I recently started modeling a character. Its been about three years since I last modeled anything, and the last character I modeled was... well... less than impressive. (See archives... eeeeek!) :P But after purchasing a new copy of max, falling in love and purchasing a little maxscript called polyboost, and watching some gnomon dvds, I felt I was ready to start up again.
I've attached a few images below to give you an idea where I am right now in the modeling process; please take a look and feel free to offer any advice/guidance/critique/suggestions that come to mind.
And here's an animated gif of the rotation:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v75/scman182/modelrotate01.gif
A few things to note:
- The model is split into multiple parts: head bust, top (sweater/shirt), hands, pants, feet, eyes, and hair.
- The hair is temporary. I plan on doing alpha hair based on varga's excellent tutorial. It'll be my first time trying out alpha hair, but it's not going to be too crazy for this model so I'm not too worried.
- The eyes are also temporary.. and right now are sitting at 1000 polys together. Ridiculous. I'll be re-doing those around the same time I do hair.
- Discounting the hair/eyes, which are both temporary, the model is sitting at around 5000 polys at the moment. There's quite a few places which I can optimize after I finish adding details to the normal maps.
- This is my first time using normal maps. Ever. I'm using xnormal to generate the normal maps, and right now they're all 2048x2048 resolution (which is overkill, I know).
- I will be modeling shoes in place of the very plain feet.
- The sweater isn't supposed to be skin tight, but neither is it supposed to be very loose and baggy. I think more wrinkles are needed just below the breasts and ribs, but I don't want to go overkill.
- The pants also need more attention to wrinkles along the lengths of both legs.
- If the legs look too short, it's probably because of the camera angle.
- My ultimate goal for this model is to finish the modeling, paint textures using a combination of photo refs and hand painting, and then apply a rig or whatever is necessary to import the model into Unreal Engine 3 (which I have no experience with whatsoever.. but I might as well start).
And here's my basic workflow:
- Poly-by-poly modeling in 3ds max to create the basic form, and I ended up going into a bit more detail than necessary on the face.
- Clothes were created using polyboost to model along the surface of the base mesh.
- Base mesh was deleted where it would be covered by clothing.
- Once I have the basic form modeled in max, I then exported each piece individually for sculpting and then used xnormal to create the normal maps and then imported the low poly obj file back from zbrush and applied the normal maps.
- I then continued to adjust the pieces in max/zbrush, using StoreMT in zbrush so that my changes in max would reflect on the subdivided version of the model in zbrush.
I have a couple questions though...
1:
Right now if I try to open my head bust ztool in zbrush and go to the lowest subdivision, use StoreMT, and import in my most recent head bust obj file so that my high poly model and normal maps accurately reflect the changes made in max, I'm running into a problem. Everything appears to be fine at Subdivision 1, but slide it any higher and the mesh seems to impode on itself... pieces of the base will jut out into other parts.
If anyone has any ideas for how to resolve this I'd greatly appreciate it.
2:
Should I have a) capped off all the holes in the mesh and kept them as seperate objects, b) left them open and waited until they were unwrapped and the normal maps were finished to attach/weld them, or c) attached/welded them immediately?
I couldn't decide and ended up doing both... I capped off the holes underneath the head bust, the hands, and the sleeves, but left the sweater/pants and pant legs open. Suggestions on where to go from here?
Sorry for such a long first post. Thank you in advance for your help! :)
I've attached a few images below to give you an idea where I am right now in the modeling process; please take a look and feel free to offer any advice/guidance/critique/suggestions that come to mind.
And here's an animated gif of the rotation:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v75/scman182/modelrotate01.gif
A few things to note:
- The model is split into multiple parts: head bust, top (sweater/shirt), hands, pants, feet, eyes, and hair.
- The hair is temporary. I plan on doing alpha hair based on varga's excellent tutorial. It'll be my first time trying out alpha hair, but it's not going to be too crazy for this model so I'm not too worried.
- The eyes are also temporary.. and right now are sitting at 1000 polys together. Ridiculous. I'll be re-doing those around the same time I do hair.
- Discounting the hair/eyes, which are both temporary, the model is sitting at around 5000 polys at the moment. There's quite a few places which I can optimize after I finish adding details to the normal maps.
- This is my first time using normal maps. Ever. I'm using xnormal to generate the normal maps, and right now they're all 2048x2048 resolution (which is overkill, I know).
- I will be modeling shoes in place of the very plain feet.
- The sweater isn't supposed to be skin tight, but neither is it supposed to be very loose and baggy. I think more wrinkles are needed just below the breasts and ribs, but I don't want to go overkill.
- The pants also need more attention to wrinkles along the lengths of both legs.
- If the legs look too short, it's probably because of the camera angle.
- My ultimate goal for this model is to finish the modeling, paint textures using a combination of photo refs and hand painting, and then apply a rig or whatever is necessary to import the model into Unreal Engine 3 (which I have no experience with whatsoever.. but I might as well start).
And here's my basic workflow:
- Poly-by-poly modeling in 3ds max to create the basic form, and I ended up going into a bit more detail than necessary on the face.
- Clothes were created using polyboost to model along the surface of the base mesh.
- Base mesh was deleted where it would be covered by clothing.
- Once I have the basic form modeled in max, I then exported each piece individually for sculpting and then used xnormal to create the normal maps and then imported the low poly obj file back from zbrush and applied the normal maps.
- I then continued to adjust the pieces in max/zbrush, using StoreMT in zbrush so that my changes in max would reflect on the subdivided version of the model in zbrush.
I have a couple questions though...
1:
Right now if I try to open my head bust ztool in zbrush and go to the lowest subdivision, use StoreMT, and import in my most recent head bust obj file so that my high poly model and normal maps accurately reflect the changes made in max, I'm running into a problem. Everything appears to be fine at Subdivision 1, but slide it any higher and the mesh seems to impode on itself... pieces of the base will jut out into other parts.
If anyone has any ideas for how to resolve this I'd greatly appreciate it.
2:
Should I have a) capped off all the holes in the mesh and kept them as seperate objects, b) left them open and waited until they were unwrapped and the normal maps were finished to attach/weld them, or c) attached/welded them immediately?
I couldn't decide and ended up doing both... I capped off the holes underneath the head bust, the hands, and the sleeves, but left the sweater/pants and pant legs open. Suggestions on where to go from here?
Sorry for such a long first post. Thank you in advance for your help! :)