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[headwax]

 

A long long time ago, in a land far far away someone started a thread where  modellers shared their tips. The idea  was to give upto three tips per post that you thought would help other modellers.

Is any one   interested in sharing their methods?

For me:

I suppose one which I have found handy recently is to use a sphere primitive  as an eyeball  when modelling eyelids. It means that you can still use the arrow buttons to fine tune your eyelid shape, and you wont distort the sphere that represents your eyeball - because you can't select any verticies on it.

Of course if you have   an eyeball mesh, you can group it so that the normal move tool won't change it's mesh - but you can't use the arrow buttons to fine tune the eyelid mesh unless you are very careful not to select the   eyeball mesh verticies..

Over to the next 'tipper"

Hopefully there will be plenty of tip.s Don't be shy.

[Dreadkb]

If you have more than one mesh/subdivision an object but you only need to manipulate one of them, group (g) the ones you don't want to modify. You can't use the point select (P) tools on a grouped object, so the grouped objects are protected this way. I prefer to do this than to hide (h) since I can still see and refer to all of the object.

[onespirit5777]

Don't be afraid to try different material settings - try using negetive numbers. The more you play around the more you will understand what can be achieved. Use a sphere when doing it because it is quick to render.

Every sphere has the same colors I just put negatives in different places to show you.

[headwax]

Heh great tips! Thanks dread and onespirit

 Surely there is a few more out there ...     people are so  shy

eg

Not in the manual yet?

... to paint select verticies or faces   etc, with the point select tool selected, hold down the ctrl key and pass the cursor over the faces, points, edges you need to select while holding down the left mouse button

great time saver

[benzjie]

instead of edgelooping eyes and mouth and attaching them later ..model the face...merge the faces where you want the eyes and mouth, flatten and use the inset tool to add loops. Works for me.

[siragin]

I don't know if anyone has tried this but you can use a sphere to make a basic head. Just delete the point on the bottom of the sphere, select the  bottom vertices and extrude them to make the neck.

[Arik_the_Red]

I don't know if anyone has tried this but you can use a sphere to make a basic head. Just delete the point on the bottom of the sphere, select the  bottom vertices and extrude them to make the neck.

I've done that... it's a way to make a basic head and face, using the cutting tool to make eye holes, mouth hole, etc. and build from there when experimenting with "head making".

[Arik_the_Red]

Making Eyes (at the girlies )

headwax's comments on making eyes reminded me of what I am currently working on... so I thought I'd share here, plus create a thread showing the development of a character I'm making.

I've only created a few heads from scratch so far, but when I have, I've found I like most to make the eyes first... starting with the eye socket, eyelids and eyeball - working on one side, and then mirroring when I have the entire side of the head created, and joining the two halves into one complete head.

Starting with the eye socket.... I make the eyesocket made from a sphere that I convert to mesh and rotate the sphere forward, so that the "poles of the sphere" are facing front to back. I cut out the shape of  the eye into the socket as if the eye is "wide open". 

I then create the eyelids from a sphere that has been rotated sideways and cut in half. I flare outward the front edge of the eyelid.

The eyeball is a sphere slightly smaller than the eyelid sphere size. Like the socket, the eyeball is rotated forward.  I then do whatever seems right to make it "eyeball-ish". You can simply color the eye or add a texture of the iris and pupil.  But I am a nut for anatomical appearances with eyes.  I don't like the simpler look of an eye with the iris and pupil simply plopped on the sphere. I go to the extra bit and flatten the iris area and the color/texture it, plus the pupil. Then I add a high-gloss, transparent dome to cover the iris circle... thus you have a more realistic eyeball appearance, which gives more character and pizzazz even if you make the character cartoonish.

Building off of the eyesockets is fine for the upper face and head, but likewise I form the lower part of the face by building from the lips and outward, with the hopes of bringing the upper and lower portions together.  Teeth, gums and inner mouth structure are another area formed separately.

I made the below goblin head with the above techniques in mind...

In fact, the goblin's irises are not flat, but actually concave into the eyeball like a dish.  Also, the pupil is an actual hole with a black surface set behind it... I did that as an experiment to see about maximizing the realistic look of of the eyes.

This below face, too, was made following the idea I've tried to explain.

I also like to make pictorial  "tutorials in progress" for myself when trying to standardize my techniques that work for me... in case someone else wants to try it my way...

So, I'm going over this stuff with screenshots, etc., in a "Work in Progress" thread... because I want to develop a character here in the forum and get some feedback, criticism, etc.  I think it could also serve to give others pointers as I share and learn from the "experts" better ways to make the character.

If you like, you can follow that in the thread Making Sarge: http://www.anim8or.com/smf/index.php?topic=2094.0

[headwax]

Thanks for all the tips so far

Here's one from mp3d ... on joints (no, not that kind...)

when you are making jour joints (knees etc) cut in the joints like you see in fig 'a'. If this were a knee the kneecap would be on the left. Doing this stops your joint creasing so much when it bends. Fig b is the same mesh seen from the back so you can see how the cuts all end in one verticie.

Fig C is the worst w ay as it willcause all sorts of creasing on the right hand side,,,,

[headwax]

hah tip a' day....

Sometimes if you use the UV tool to UV texture a mesh with one texture, then decide you want to texture a single  face of that mesh with another texture you will have problems aligning this second texture because the UV co-ordinates of the whole mesh have already been set

If your mesh is one you  won't be using as a subdivison mesh, the easist way to fix this is use "detach faces" command on the face you want to add the new texture to. This seems to reset the UV co0ordinates and will make life a lot easier in lineing up the texture....

is anyone else finding these hints of interest?

[Arik_the_Red]

I'm finding them useful, even though I am supposed to already know these things... I have found it handy to be refreshed, as well as to learn a few things for the first time.

[$imon]

Can we do rendering tips?

To get your renders more realistic, in quite some cases the shadows have to be very dark. To achieve this use a material with a setting of

Ambient: 0 (or a bit higher, 0,1 or 0,2)
Diffuse: 1

And setting the light's shadow to 100 % darkness.

[captaindrewi]

very much so headwax, a marvellous thread.

[Water Music]

Great topic, I love discussing techniques.  My tip is for scenes where you are going for a very dramatic or stylistic lighting.  Try modeling a second, larger mesh for your objects as though you were going to toon shade.  Again like toon shading, set the material for it to two-sided with the front side being totally transparent.  Now instead of setting the backside to be completely black, try toying with the colour and other settings.  The result can create some really neat backlighting effects.  The preview versions are having some difficulty with two-sided materials, though.

[floyd86]

Ok, a very basic one, but not common to everyone: Never use use 'subdivide faces'. And with never i mean it's highly recommened not too.

When you want to smooth you object use 'Convert to subdivided' instead. This gives you way more options:

• When converting to subdivided you can still access the original points of your mesh, which makes it easier to modify.
• You can adjust the smoothing without raising the polycount (it will ask more of your computer), by double clicking the subdivision and changing the working divisions: 0 no smoothing;the original mesh, 4 is very very smooth.
• You can convert the subdivision but to a mesh and the other way around. Just set the working divisions to 0 and go build> convert to mesh. After that you can just as easy change it back to a subdivision again.
• Last but not least: I give a nice result! Using subdivides will give a clean and smooth result. Will normal boxmodeling most of the time will give jagged edges.