help me decide my workflow to add characters in my scenes

[musashidan]

If you have the time and are willing to put the effort in then go the whole hog. Why not take it a step at a time: learn to model characters in your 3D app, learn to UV and texture them, learn character setup/rigging. And then learn to use a sculpting app and incorporate everything you've learned. It could take 6 months. It could take a year. But it'll be worth it. Improving your knowledge and skillset is a VERY worthy goal. The way i look at such things is by imagining myself in a year if i do decide to dedicate myself to learning something. And then imagine myself if i didn't bother. Broadening one's knowledge base is always going to be beneficial no matter what.
And my last piece of advice: stay away from Poser. :blush:

[joyceanblue]

If you have the time and are willing to put the effort in then go the whole hog. Why not take it a step at a time: learn to model characters in your 3D app, learn to UV and texture them, learn character setup/rigging. And then learn to use a sculpting app and incorporate everything you've learned. It could take 6 months. It could take a year. But it'll be worth it. Improving your knowledge and skillset is a VERY worthy goal. The way i look at such things is by imagining myself in a year if i do decide to dedicate myself to learning something. And then imagine myself if i didn't bother. Broadening one's knowledge base is always going to be beneficial no matter what.
And my last piece of advice: stay away from Poser. :blush:
thanks a lot for your advice musashidan. so far i have touched these subjects on surface, i can do the modeling and texturing part and i am familiar with rigging as well (not in depth) but i find it hard to find the help on posing part and animating part, all the tutorials out there are about rigging mostly but none of them tell how to animate the character or pose it properly, can you guide me in the right direction?
another question. is sculpting the model in the pose you want is more useful or to rig the model and then pose it? i know you can reuse and animate the rigged model again and again but apart from this which is a better workflow? (i am talking about only for the stills which is my primary goal, not the animations)
thanks again and regard

[musashidan]

Well if you've no intention of animating, transposing in Zbrush is an excellent way to pose for stills. You can take a character to near completion utilising symmetry and then pose it using transpose master -which will also pose all subtools.meaning a characters clothes,accessories,weapons,etc.- and then do a bit of cleanup sculpting to fix areas that may have stretched. And even after posing you can still use poseable symmetry to maintain symmetry on an asymmetrical mesh. This type of posing can be done in 3DMax using FFD's and soft-selection but it's much quicker in Zbrush.

[joyceanblue]

Well if you've no intention of animating, transposing in Zbrush is an excellent way to pose for stills. You can take a character to near completion utilising symmetry and then pose it using transpose master -which will also pose all subtools.meaning a characters clothes,accessories,weapons,etc.- and then do a bit of cleanup sculpting to fix areas that may have stretched. And even after posing you can still use poseable symmetry to maintain symmetry on an asymmetrical mesh. This type of posing can be done in 3DMax using FFD's and soft-selection but it's much quicker in Zbrush.
so i should go ahead with Zbrush? and look no further?

[musashidan]

Well that's entirely up to you as it's your investment. It's a great tool no doubt and as far as i'm concerned every 3D artist should have a sculpting app in their arsenal. What type of stills do you produce? Arch viz, illustration, product design..........?

[joyceanblue]

Well that's entirely up to you as it's your investment. It's a great tool no doubt and as far as i'm concerned every 3D artist should have a sculpting app in their arsenal. What type of stills do you produce? Arch viz, illustration, product design..........?
mostly archviz, from time to time i do educational video or corporate presentations too. but mainly archviz, i want my scenes to look more alive, archviz looks so synthetic, lack the character and emotions. i think if i add characters in dynamic poses or characters in artistic postures, it can bring the images to life.

[musashidan]

Yeah, i'd have to agree with there. I don't do archViz but there's nothing worse than seeing a decent render with those terrible 'people doing things' cutouts plasterered on top of the render. Zbrush can also knock up some pretty cool arch elements pretty quickly. check these vids:
http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/

Scroll down to the one on arch techniques.

[joyceanblue]

Yeah, i'd have to agree with there. I don't do archViz but there's nothing worse than seeing a decent render with those terrible 'people doing things' cutouts plasterered on top of the render. Zbrush can also knock up some pretty cool arch elements pretty quickly. check these vids:
http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/

Scroll down to the one on arch techniques.
hey youve been really helpful with all the info, one last question i want to ask, actually its from my second post. is there helpful material out there on how to animate your rigged model? most of the tutorials handle rigging and modeling part.
p.s. should i go and buy intuos4 pen tablet? i find it hard to work with the mouse in zbrush.

[musashidan]

As for the tablet. Highly recommended. It's like the difference between drawing with a pencil and drawing with a big, fat crayon.
Animation is a whole other world. It takes years to learn to animate and the best reference for that is traditional 2D animation resources such as Richard William's 'animators survival kit' book. Keith Lango also has great subscription videos for 3D animation. As does Jason Ryan. But, it's all based on 2D cartoon type animation. Although even this is grounded in realistic motion mechanics.
If you just want to pose characters then all of the above is still highly relevant as strong key poses are basis of good animation.
there is an online .pdf by a guy called Muybridge. It's very old and the copyrights have expired so it's a free source. It's slow motion frames of real people in various ranges of motion.
Another great method of reading poses is to act them out yourself and photograph or video ref yourself in different poses/actions.

[joyceanblue]

hey thanks for the suggestions, appreciate it.

[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.