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ctbram 02-05-2009 05:33 AM

dt_dinosaur
 
1 Attachment(s)
Okay,

I was bored and so I started this polygon / subd tutorial from DT. Just starting on the head.

1 / 2

ctbram 02-05-2009 05:34 AM

1 Attachment(s)
2 / 2 another angle....

honestdom 02-05-2009 10:22 AM

looks nice, i was just wondering why you do tutorials tho? your modeling looks good enough to go about doing your own thing.

Jay 02-05-2009 03:41 PM

Yeah I agree with hammer. 'Bout time to start doing your own designs and models.

J

ctbram 02-05-2009 04:28 PM

Yeah I know and lately some of my stuff has started to rival the work in the tutorials (but I have the advantage of nearly infinite amounts of time to put into my work).

My technical skills are there but I don't have very good drawing skill and I guess I am not talented enough to come up with my own reference art. Given art work I am a pretty good technical modeler. I do the tutorials for the reference art. Also, I go long periods where I don't do anything with Maya and need a refresher.

I don't need much in the way of tutorial information on this one as I have done enough organic modeling stuff that I don't learn many new things from the tutorial it self. Once and a while I will pick up a new tid-bit or get reminded of one I had forgotten. The work above took just a little over 30 minutes.

Lately, I have been interested in hard surface modeling and there are not a lot of good tutorials out there on hard surface stuff, Jay's land speeder was the last good one I did, but I am stuck on the texturing. So I took this side track because it has a fairly detailed texture mapping section in it. The hard surface tutorials don't really go into the depth of the details I am interested in like complicated surface detailing, panel details, surface damage, as a lot of this type of stuff is done in bump and normal mapping techniques. Which are more of an artistic thing which brings us back full circle to I am good at technical modeling but not so good at artistic skill.

If I had the artistic and creative talent this would not be so much a hobby but something I would love to pursue as a career.

Mayaniac 02-05-2009 08:11 PM

Looks good. I remember this tut.

Plus I don't know why, but when people hit a certain skill level they seem to think they're too good for tutorials. Or modeling demos.... Personally, no matter how good I ever get (if it gets to that) I will ALWAYS try and watch modeling videos, tutorials, demos, what ever i can get my hands on. I love watching and learning from other modelers techniques.
I can't get enough. When I buy a new DVD like Hellboy II, Van Helsing..... It's for the special features... I love that stuff. I always will.

Anyway, enough noise.

Nice work on the model.

Hope the texturing turns out well for you.

stwert 02-05-2009 08:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by ctbram
(but I have the advantage of nearly infinite amounts of time to put into my work).

I wish I had that... btw is nearly infinite still infinite?

Nice modelling though, I'm planning on buying that tutorial from DT. I, unlike you, do need plenty of tutorials at this stage.

ctbram 03-05-2009 01:55 AM

1 Attachment(s)
Here is the start of the head.

If you are familiar with Kurt B's tutorials where he does initial massing using nurbs then converts to polys and subd's the author of this tutorial uses a different method.

For the body, the author starts with ep curves, then lofts to form nurb surfaces, then goes to polys. For the head he draws ep curve along the facial landmarks then extrudes edges from the body and the face along the curves, creating strips of polygons forming the borders of the head and then finally fills in the middle sections ( have seen this method used a ot in modeling apps like lightwave and modo.

Both methods have advantages and disadvantages. Nurb massing is fast, ep curves and lofting + extruding along curves gives more control of the topology but takes a bit more time and tweaking.

ctbram 03-05-2009 08:06 PM

1 Attachment(s)
Outside of the head pretty much done.

Just need to finish off the inside of the mouth to complete the basic poly modeling.

Jay 03-05-2009 08:18 PM

Just a quick note to a comment you made earlier:

you can do this as a career, if you want it bad enough you'll succeed. I never did college or uni, I dont have a degree in computer sciences or art either, and I work as a modeller in VFX, I do stuff for this site and I also freelance doing other small gigs, so Im busy doing what I love most.

If you can translate a piece of concept or photograph to becoming a good 3d model then you stand as good a chance as anyone in doing this as a career, you just gotta get on with it and show how hard you can work!

Jay

Chirone 03-05-2009 10:58 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mayaniac
I can't get enough. When I buy a new DVD like Hellboy II, Van Helsing..... It's for the special features... I love that stuff. I always will.
whoa, you do still exist mayaniac!

apart from the trailers that's about the best part of a dvd is the second one for special features :p

ctbram, that's looking really cool
if you can't draw then you could grab pictures from other places or take a few photos?

ColdWave 04-05-2009 12:05 AM

@ctbram

Well i can't draw too... but i practise a little and i get some pictures which represent my idea this is the basic point of drawing. Model skills are understanding not drawing ... Zbrush is more "drawing" lets say... I'm not workin` too like 3D artist but i get down with some friends and begin a game project... :beer:


KUTGW

ctbram 04-05-2009 06:49 AM

1 Attachment(s)
Basic Poly modeling is done. Will add a few subd embelishments.

I am only doing the subd because it is part of the tutorial. My personal preference is to avoid maya's subd tool set as it is quite limited and can be frustrating.

For instance lets say to spend hours adding lots of really great subd detail, then god forbid you realize you need to convert back to poly to make an adjustment. Well there go ALL your subd mods! You get to start all over as all the subd mods get wiped when you switch back to polygon.

The teeth on this part are interesting. There are 60 on top and 60 on the bottom. The author converts the gums to a nurbs object, duplicates a surface curve. Next he creates a tooth and for each of the top and bottom curves he creates 60 duplicates and uses "modify > snap align objects > position along curve" to distribute them along the path.

Then he goes around randomly rotating them. 120 teeth was to much trouble for me to adjust individually so I wrote a mel script that randomly rotated each tooth +/- 6 degrees in all axes and then I when around and randomly scaled them and made minor adjustments.

// rotate all the teeth randomly +/- 6 degrees
// scale all the teeth randomly +/- 25 percent

$n = "*|nurbsCone";
$rm = 6.0;
$sm = 25.0;
for ($i = 2; $i < 122; $i++) {
// select each tooth
select ($n + $i);

// rotate and scale
// x
rotate (randVal($rm)) 1 1;
scale (randPC($sm)) 1 1;
// y
rotate 1 (randVal($rm)) 1;
scale 1 (randPC($sm)) 1;
// z
rotate 1 1 (randVal($rm));
scale 1 1 (randPC($sm));
};

////////////////////////////////////////////////

// return a random -1 or +1
global proc float posNeg() {
return ((rand(10) > 5) ? 1.0 : -1.0);
};

////////////////////////////////////////////////

// return a float between -val and val
global proc float randVal(float $val) {
return ( posNeg() * rand($val) );
};

////////////////////////////////////////////////

// return a percentage change -val% to +val%
global proc float randPC(float $val) {
return ( 1 + ( posNeg() * rand($val) / 100.0 ) );
};

stwert 04-05-2009 04:07 PM

I'm a little confused as to why it would be necessary to randomly change all the teeth. At this distance, it's hard to tell, but more importantly, I don't think dinosaurs had random teeth. This isn't a criticism of your model in any way, I think it looks awesome, just don't really understand the author's method here.

I would think it would be more accurate to model maybe three or four different teeth, for the different types from the back to the front, then maybe just scale individual ones slightly. I'm not a paleontologist or even a dentist, just a thought.

On second thought, no one has perfect teeth, and +- 6 degrees isn't much, so maybe that works... :)

ctbram 04-05-2009 07:09 PM

Yeah I agree that a couple different kind of teeth would make sense and I will have to look at some reference material and go back and fix that.

For now it looks okay with just varying sizes of the same basic tooth.

They did need some randomization though as they looked unnatural when they were all perfectly aligned. I started with +/- 10 degree variation (which was to extreme) and worked down to 6 degrees. Up close 6 is probably still to much but looks better than all perfectly spaced teeth.

Anyway it was just part of the tutorial method that I thought was interesting as I had never used "modify > snap align objects > position along curve" before. I usually use some form of animation snap shot.

Plus it was fun to tinker with mel. (smile).


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