My first simply maya project
 

Hello everyone I am new to Simply Maya community and a novice Maya hobbyist.

I have been working on the SM Dragon tutorial and wanted to post my current WIP.

I started the model yesterday after watching the SM tutorial a couple times (went most of last night as I was so focused I forgot to go to sleep :) ).

Lighting is simple 3 point setup as per Mike's lighting tutorial.

Completed the nurbs rough mass in about 2 hours and have about 20 hours invested in the poly mesh so far. Most of the time is because folds and creases are a struggle for me. I always seem to be one edge to short (LOL).

I also struggle to keep the details to just where they need to be and as a result I honestly agonise for like 30 minutes for each new edge I think about adding.

I focused on trying to make the image as close to the image planes as I possible can using this as a training aid on using the contour lines provided on the original image. At this point I focused on the jaw line, the browe ridge, the startings of the lip details (have some tweaking to do here - lips are a challenge for me!) and the overall radial flow around the eyes and mouth.

This is really my first attempt at a real organic model. Please let me know what you think of my work so far. I would welcome any suggestions.

I also have a question. In the course of working on this I pulled some vertices off the axis of symetric and I appear to have gotten myself in some odd local coordinate system mode where I cannot seem to get the boarder edge back to alignment with the axis of symetry that is why I don't have a combine image to post. :(

Anyway great tutorial Kurt!

Looking good :) Keep it up!

Day 1:

What I learned -

(1) Mental ray - Subd renders - Base mesh must be 100% quads

Try as I might I just could not avoid a couple triangles without adding rows of narrow polygons that would have created creases.

Solutions: Either manually build the mesh to be all quad, or take the model into poly mode and do a level 1 smooth on it. Save the original model as a low poly mesh for binding later.

(2) Use of scale to align rows of vertices.

(3) The basic use Polygon Edit / Polygon tools

(4) Ran into a short panic attack after inadvertantly switching from global to local coordinate system then not knowing how to get back. Caused me to struggle to get the edge along the axis of symetry figured out for half a day! Ah the joys of newbdumb!

(5) Use of basic 3 point lighting

(6) Simple Maya community is a really cool and helpful lot. Thanks!

Two thumbs up for the tutorial! Good job Kurt!

Next I will start the teeth. I am planing to do a seperate jaw with teeth in it rather then extrude them from the main head mesh.

Then I plan on doing the ear flap things (since they really make the creature look cool!) and then I will finish up with the horns and add so asymetry.

If anyone sees any glaring problems with the anatomy (or anything else) please feel free to add a comment.

I am a newb with Maya and I don't consider myself an artist. I have read a couple books on modelling and I am really enjoying diddling with Maya.

Cheers!

Looks great so far, keep up the good work!

Excellent progress...keep it up!

Day 2:

- Added Teeth and Tongue.

- Improved skull details (jaw line, browe line, skull crest

- added some muscle detail

- learned new tool - nonlinear deformer>bend

To do:

- ear flaps
- nostril
- horns

Really nice progression especially for your first organic model... Im very happy to hear that your learning so much from the tut.

Keep it up and i'll check back when you have new sections.

Day 3:

Added the ear flaps.

The tendrals are extruded from the head and the skin/membrane is a nurbs plane.

OMG! There has to be a better way to align the nurbs plane to the tendrals! What a pain in the butt! I would rather have my tonsels removed through my anus then have to align that nurbs plane again! It took me like 8 hours!

To do:

- nostrils
- horns
- refine beak
- refine skeletal and muscle structures
- add asymetry

Day 3 (cont.)

- Added Nostrils
- Refined the ear flap tendrals

I strayed from the reference image a bit in that I added the flare to the nostral.

The nostril flare just felt right to me.

The size and placement of the actual opening matches the reference image though.

To do:

- horns
- refine break
- refine skeletal details and musculature
- add asymetry

Day 3 (cont.)

Added:

- nose tusk
- tweaked the beak
- tweaked the nostril


To Do:

- head horn
- refine skeleton and musculature
- add asymetry

very good job!

Day 3 (cont.)

Complete!

Added:

- head horn
- addtional folds and musculature
- improved the skeletal / muscle contours
- went around the entire model and cleaned the topology

The model is complete for the most part. Just minor tweaks and possibly some changes to accomadate better musculature / anatomy.

To do:

- tweaks

Fun Facts:

- The Base Polymesh has 2200 polys (not sure if thats bad)
- The Polysmooth (level 1) head has 8700 polys
- There must be a hidden triangle in the base mesh because mental ray complains about non-manifold geometry when I try to render the subd version.
- I would post a wireframe on shadeded view to get feedback but I don't know how to to do it.

Looks really good for your first model.. much better then my very first organic attempted.

Thanks Kurt!

Aside from aligning the evil ear flaps from hell! The model came along swimmingly!

Thanks for a great tutorial I learned a great deal. I think I like polygons better then nurbs now! I tried several models using nurbs but always gave up as I could never seem to get the tangency between patches right. I also had trouble avoiding to much geometry.

I still struggle with trying to keep the model light. I need to spend some time learing how to build lower density models. I am not sure if the 2100 poly's I ended up with for this head is good or bad.

I did learn a great deal about handling 3 sided poly's in the tutorial I went back through the model and I think there may be 2 or 3 little ones hiding someplace. But I cleaned most of them out so the model is 99.9% quads and no n-polys.

hmmmm. What to do next?

I don`t have tim to read all what you have write, I would like to ask you one qestion, do you have complet wersion of that tutorial???

Yes

Oh thx Mike but too mutch points for my wery small founds, I am in upgradeing my computer at the moment and I dont have any founds too spend on points but when i finish my comp I will buy some og them, how mutch is 12 points?? btw files are too big for my home internet and I need too go to net cafe to download!!! Fu..ing 56k modems :)

Well I am learing one thing about maya. You could spend your entire life on one model and it will never really be done (haha).

- refined the lips
- refined the cheek bone and cheek
- reduced polys from the base mesh from 2200 to 1500

Really learned a ton from this model. Not only does it look cool but I think my next model will go 10 times faster and have even crisper detailing.

I finally understand creasing I think!

OK you have wery nice model there, for how long you are in 3d, or for how long you model in maya???

It´s looking petty good, keep the good work ;)

Thank you ankalagon. Haha this is my second organic model in Maya. I worked for SGI for 5 years and can get the unlmited version for free. I had it sitting around for months and decided I would install it and see what 3d modelling was like.

I worked around real 3d modellers enough though to learn some of the work flow by osmosis - you know where things go from high density to LOW (hehe).

My first attempt at a 3d model was the nurbs human model of my nephew, I posted in this section as well.

I did not complete that model because I got bogged down in the nurbs patch network. By that time I had spent about 3 weeks using Maya. I stopped for a couple months then decided to try again but this time I decided to start from the ground up.

I bought the points for the monster head and complete dragon tutorials and this model is the result.

I really want to get into character modelling but I have never done any art training so I am an old fogy starting to self teach myself character art.

I bought a great book "Human Anatomy made Amazingly Easy" by Christopher Hart. I tried to apply what I have been learning from that to this model.

I absolutely love Maya and I am hopelessy hooked. I may never have a career in Character Modelling but I will be a closet modeller forever! I just wish I had more artistic talent to take better advantage of it. I have been looking at some of the work in the Jan/Feb challenge and I am quite envious.

I feel a bit like Saliari envying a bunch of Motzarts.

Was playing with lambert and blinn shaders and this popped out. I thought it looked interesting enough to share.

Mean It looks too plastik, make some not so shine textur, looking god BTW kip it up

I understend what you are talking abouth, I am wery bad with pencile (I don`t know to draw wery nice), my father is greate Drawer, my brother went into Dessing school, and I am Photografer, I am cretiv soul and i have some kind of need to expres my self, 3ds was the first program i begin to learning in, tah my frend introduced me with MAYA and like you say " may never have a career in Character Modelling but I will be a closet modeller forever". BTW i have few frends who draw wery nice nad thay can help me with references. BTW anyone can draw, model yust what you need is patienc and time :)

Oh I forget, a have this greate book, nema is Anatomy for the artist by Jeno Barcsay, the drowings in taht book are so greate that i think ewery character modeler should have it on his desk

It never ends!

- Learning to use Polygon Edit>Selection I cleaned the model to 19 triangles. With the exception of the 4 that are at the corner of the mouth all the remaining ones are tucked in hard to see areas and all are very tiny.

- Added more bone structure to the top of the head
- Redid the nostril loops
- tweaked the lower lip a bit
- tweaked the cheek and jaw line
- added musculature flow to the neck in preparation for going to the body tutorial.

At this point I think I am gonna call this head done and will be starting on the body model next.

PS - I agree the blue plastic shinny shader does not look all that good. I mainly was just tinkering and thought it looked interesting at the time.

Very nicely done :) :)

grrrr! The cheek just was not right. It was to sunk in at the very front so I had to do one last tweak. LOL

That looks great!

Very very nice! great progress...

Is that tutorial from beginning of model to the end, that`s a poly model?

Ankalagon -

Not sure I understand your question but,

The tutorial is a polygon modeling tutorial from start to finish of the dragon head.

During the course of the video the author starts by massing out the basic shapes using nurbs. Then converts the nurbs to polygons and continues to add details - switching to subdivision surfaces from time to time to make futher refinements.

The tutorial can be found here:

http://www.simplymaya.com/movie_page...html?tut_id=65

There is also a follow on tutorial to model the dragons body. I plan on doing that next.

The body tutorial can be found here:

http://www.simplymaya.com/movie_page...html?tut_id=70

The author is Kurt Boutilier and he does a fine job.

In the head tutorial he covers basic massing of the model using nurbs. Basic polygon modelling including the most often used polygon editing commands. Using modify>convert>poly to subd and visa versa to quickly view the smoothed model and refining detail.

The body tutorial which I starting watching today has some really super tips on socking joints, creating toes and nuckle details. The body tutorial also has a nice quick and simple 3 point lighting section at the very end.

Kurt demonstrates the basic principles in each of the video sections. Between sections he sometimes adds some details and refinements but always does a good job of describing what he has done between segments.

What the video does not contain is details on anatomy (muscles, bones and such) although by analizing the refinements Kurt makes during the modeling process and in between sections you can sus out the details. However, reviewing some basic anatomy for artist books at your local bookstore will help alot.

I am most deinately not an artist and Iam very much a Newbie using maya (or any 3d modeling software) but these videos were easy for me to follow and I am quite pleased with my results on this head model.

Rich M

Thats just greate, a was thinking he is modeling in polys all of taht head, I am pleased on your head model to, all tutorial cost 22 points witch is abouth 33 euros, litle to mutch for me but i try tu by head for begining, and if I whant too make my cd doo i pay extra 10 pounds for post service???? THX budy

I am going to start the body of the dragon.

I will keep the posts under this thread and hopefully if I complete it this can be a complete record of my progress on this project.

Day 1:

- massed out the neck, body, tail, leg and middle toe using nurbs

Possible problem:

I do a fair job of modeling given a decent reference drawing unfortunately the reference drawing for this dragon body looks more like a chicken body.

Even Kurt in the tutorial had to make some fairly significant changes in proportion to get it to look better.

As you can see from the attached screenshot of my initial massing of the creature using nurbs the proportions just are not right.

I will have to do my best to try to re-work the references before I continue and convert these nurbs to poly's.

SUGGESTION TO THE AUTHOR:

I would rather work on building my skills at building a model and matching a good reference drawing then spending much time refining my artistic skills redrawing the references.

This is a skill I wish to learn but for a modeling tutorial it detracts from the learning process to have to stop and redraw the references. If I continue using the body reference (as I did fathfully on the head model) I will end up with a DracoChicken.

For those of us not as gifted in the art department you might want to consider posting the referance drawings for the version of the dragon as you completed it to make it easier for those of us that would prefer to model and not break the flow of the tutorial to have to learn to draw a better reference. :(

Here is the initial ROUGH nurbs masses:

removed by author...

Body Day 1 (cont):

- added nurbs rough shape for the upper arm/wing

The rough shapes are matchig the references but the proportions look all wrong. Will need to do some work reproportioning things before moving on to the poly conversion phase.

I have named this roughed out version with the wacky proportions "DracoChicken".

You going wey nice on here budy, but I think that body is not so good too, but you dont need too make it exacly as in tutorial!!!

you could attach one image with begining of dragon`s body, first nurbs that you draw!!! I just dono how it looks when you start with nurbs :(

Comming along nice......