dog tut : 4-sided faces
 

Hello. I'm attempting the free cartoon dog tutorial located on this site. I'm at the point where after converting the head and neck to polygons he manually changes any 3-sided face to a 4-sided face.

Needless to say, the tutorial model and mine differ slightly in their composition. I'm having trouble making all nice 4-sided faces on my model. For example:

http://www.imagebucket.net/images/Cretin/edgepaint.jpg


The face marked with a green x is actually 5-sided. There is a vertex in the red circle that splits 2 edges. Things get complicated because the neck also shares the vertex.

How important is it to get all 4-sided faces? I'm hesitant to get too hung up on this, as it's a beginner's tut and my very first "model".

Heres 2 ways you can split it.
And yes, its very important to keep all polys 5-sided.
Also, dont be hard on yourself, we all have to start somewhere.
Also, you continue going on with the edge until you can end it and it all ending up as quads (4 sided).

Super! I'll give those a try.

I've made some progress with the dog. Here's a shot of the jaw after being fixed up a bit:

http://www.imagebucket.net/images/Cretin/dogfixed.jpg



Now, my next question if you will:


In the video the instructor is manipulating the lower jaw and matching the edges up to the skull in order to combine some vertices and create continuous edges. At this point he decides to chop the dog and jaw pieces in half to allow for easier manipulation. Then, "poof!" half the dog and jaw are gone and he's combining vertices! The problem is, he didn't TELL us how to do that particular step. I tried fooling around with the mirror cut command, but it seems he used a different method. When I mirror cut, I gain one-half a dog super-imposed on top of the original. Whatever he uses, he appears to cut one-half the dog away.


For a look-see; it takes place on dog tutorial part 3 around the 24 minute mark.


If anyone knows which tool he uses, or has any links to resources regarding said process, I would be much obliged.


I'm afraid I won't be able to make much progress through this "beginner" tutorial otherwise.

Thx,

Inuzori

cut faces tool probabl..

no no, he just right click mouse button select faces then go into front view and all u do is just select all the faces on one side of your dog and delete them.
in front view this is easy as u just u the sect rectangle box all the way to the middle. later on he will bring back the other half by duplicating the existing half.
most face modeling and stuff with matching sides are always best to work on one half cause u will just duplcate the other when ure done.;)

Ok I will try the second method. It might seem an obvious approach to some, but the resolution of the tutorial doesn't allow you to see any boxes on the screen because the lines are too thin. That, and I'm new! Thx for your help both! :beer:

I was just thinking though, deleting faces would only work in a situation where an edge is drawn exactly along the length of the dog on the YZ axis. But, as the polys were converted from Nurbs originally, this won't always be the case, or will it? I guess I'll fiddle with cut faces in that case...

Do with cutfaces to create a line where you want to delete everything... then select those faces and press delete :beer:

I've split my dog in half and things are going great!

Now, part 3 of the tutorial ends with the instructor saying "Do the same with your nose and ear."

So I'm trying to boolean->union my 1/2 dog body and nose. But, it's not working - instead they both vanish. Is this a result of having my dog's body chopped in half? You see, in the video all of the boolean->union processes were with a full-bodied dog and whole parts. Should I be using half a nose or a whole nose? Should I some how mirror my dog's other half before combining? I can't seem to get it to work otherwise.


Thanks tons!

Hmm no response yet. Perhaps my question wasn't clear enough. I'll try to explain again:

I've cut my dog in half as per instruction from cartoon dog tutorial. Now, I've been instructed to boolean>union two pieces together but this was NOT demonstrated in the video with the half-dog model - the only boolean operations were done BEFORE splitting the dog. After splitting, I could NOT get the two to combine.


Therefore, I was thinking it might be impossible to perform any boolean action unless one of the two pieces is bisected by an unbroken plane, which would be impossible with a half-dog and a full nose, assuming the nose is centered on the dog's face.


Sooo I put the other half of the dog back on my model. I STILL can't get the two pieces to "union". Are there any methods to determine what faults in my model, if any, are causing the inability to perform boolean operations?


Maybe I should post my file somewhere and someone could take a peek at it for me?

Also I have these two floating vertexes:

http://www.imagebucket.net/images/Cr...wovertices.jpg


I can't delete them and when I move them nothing seems to happen. Are these a result of mirroring geometry from left to right?

Thanks for any help,


Inuzori