First Attempt At Modelling Bipedal Character
 

I finally got me an Epson CX5400 All In One printer/copier/scanner and now I can start to work on my first character. Here's the thing. What do you all suggest I do to make this overwhelming task go a lot smoother and more quickly? Any tricks of the trade to modelling characters? I'm open to any and all ideas. Thanks all!

Russell

Practice! :)

Yes. The trick is to model in polys. 'Nuff said.
...
...
...
...ok, I guess I could give you a little more information than that. lol. For faces, I would try to mimic www.thehobbitguy.com's method. That is how I learned how to model faces. The technique for his poly face can be easily applied to all portions of a character. You basically just need to model everything in very, very low poly first, keeping all faces quads, then smooth when you're done. Sometimes, it is a good idea to set up refference images as well so you can model better. You must have a side and front image of your character to do this.

If this is your first time modeling a character, you'll probably have to redo it several times. You learn very well by failing so dive in head first. Ask all the questions you want here at SimplyMaya (withen reason of course) and we'll try our best to help you along.

Thanks guys! :) I tried to create my reference pix but I discovered when I tried to align the front and side views, the meeting points didn't match up so I may have to redo my sketches. It's okay tho. I need to read up on here and get an idea on how to do this whole thing. You guys are great! :D

Russell

Hey all,

Just a quick note before I get my Red Baron pizza and kick back before I have to get up early for work tomorrow. I've been working on my little "man" for a few hours today and I have to say, I'm disappointed and very discouraged that I won't be able to figure all this stuff out. I don't have any resources and I'm running out of patience. I used polys for the legs and I used lofting for the torso but I can see lines where the circles are I used to loft with. I don't have any time any more to learn this stuff and it upsets me like crazy.

I may have to just put all this off until I can find the time to put into it again and the focus to carry on. Anybody got any ideas? for me?

Russell

Russell,

Just keep at it man. I'm in the same boat, it's really overwhelming at first and I feel like I'll never learn...but if I look back at just even the last few weeks, I feel like I've learned so much. Practice makes perfect...best tip I think is you learn from your mistakes, so you gotta go ahead and make those mistakes. Challenge yourself and get stuck..then just ask on these forums and you learn how to do stuff and new techniques. Just don't give up ;)

Dude, it doesn't come overnight...the people that are REALLY good at 3D have been doing it for years. and not just here and there, they go full on at it.

You can't expect your first attempt at a character to be an indication of what you personally could achieve with this software.

As Darkware said, do the hobbitguy's poly head tutorial...I did this as my first real tutorial and I learnt an unbelievable amount from it, and I made a model I was proud of. Be warned though, it takes a long time get through it the first time.

What you should do first is do the polygon hammer toturial in Maya's help files. Then find some other simply poly modelling tutorials if you still feel you need more general practice.

After that, look for some online character modelling tutorials, and follow them *to the letter*. You've already had the best one I've ever found suggested to you.

If you don't have any patience, your unlikely to get much done. So just relax, take it at a reasonable pace, enjoy yourself...

Good luck.