TDW's WIP-Thread
 

Hi guys, I just began learning Maya, so I guess I won't be able to post some Maya only artworks in here, except you want to watch me making cubes and other primitives. :(

Well here's some overview of what I've done sofar with Blender. That's the app I currently work with until I'm good enough to show my Maya creations. I've modeled mainly lowpoly characters/ creatures/ miscs for an old PC game called Eldersrolls III, since I started learning 3D modeling 2 years ago. It's a fun thing to do, but I feel like it always limits my learning progress, cause I can only go as far as the game let's me. I want to change that now and try to better my skills a bit. Hope you guys can point me down the right way. ;)

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/8688/adler1.th.jpghttp://img843.imageshack.us/img843/5...mplete3.th.jpghttp://img836.imageshack.us/img836/1...plete01.th.jpghttp://img220.imageshack.us/img220/6...plete02.th.jpg

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/80/badass01.th.jpghttp://img52.imageshack.us/img52/7946/mino03.th.jpghttp://img804.imageshack.us/img804/2420/dragon01.th.jpghttp://img163.imageshack.us/img163/5...nmask02.th.jpghttp://img714.imageshack.us/img714/8...tilus01.th.jpghttp://img580.imageshack.us/img580/8...dmatt02.th.jpghttp://img185.imageshack.us/img185/8...bunny01.th.jpghttp://img200.imageshack.us/img200/9...troll02.th.jpghttp://img59.imageshack.us/img59/2746/new01t.th.jpg


TDW;)

Some nice models and texturing TDW, maya is not the easyest to learn but I think it will be worth it...............dave

Nice Stuff TDW, from the looks of your work, it wouldn't surprise me if you made the transition to Maya fairly easily. I've never used Blender before but you clearly have some skill so it's basically just learning the Maya tools...I think.

Thx guys, I think it will just take me some time to figure where all the functions are that I was used to from Blender. Working in Maya feels very slow to me at the moment. I'm used to work with almost shortcuts only and haven't learned most of Maya's yet.


TDW;)

Just began with a new WIP. I will model a siberian tiger and texture it. Maybe I will take it into ZBrush later for adding some more details.

I had to use an anatomical image of a domestic cat, best I could find on the internet. If someone knows of a better one, plz let me know.

I modeled the body from a box, all quads sofar. The head will be made seperate from the body, cause I hate boxmodeling, when it comes to more detailed objects. So I'll model it poly by poly and connect it with the body lateron.

http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/8727/tiger1s.th.jpg

EDIT: This is how the head looks at the current stage. I kept it very simple, so that it will be asier to connect it with the body lateron. I will just model a socket for the inner mouth and later make a quick rig for the head to pose it wide open to be able to work on all the interiors.

As I don't have a suitable shot of this tiger from sideview, I will tweak the proportions lateron with help from other ref pics. I don't like working with image planes so much, cause I think freehand modeling is better training.

http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/2...rhead01.th.jpg

PS: I have a few triangles now, may fix it later, but does no harm sofar.

EDIT: Body is almost complete now, but I got to get rid of some unnecessary edge loops. I want to keep the option to use the tiger as a game creature, so I don't want to add further edgeloops now to get an even spread of polygons across the whole model.

How would you guys improve this base model?

http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/7509/tigerx1.th.jpg
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/3650/tigerx2.th.jpg
http://img573.imageshack.us/img573/1916/tigerx3.th.jpg


Feel free to give crits, that's what I'm here for!!!


TDW;)

SOme quick ones:
-end with a quad @ the corner of the mouth and the inside of the ear
-extrude an edge inward for the mouth at the very least
- the eyes are to close to the center
- nose is to pointy

My advice is download as much refernce photos of a tiger you can find even better is to have some bookmarks to some video's since a photo is only one moment and you could be working of some odd expression I prefer footage with headturns those are the best

Have you got a smoothed option in blender as I cannot tale were this is without smoothing, to me it looks good.............dave

Done

Done

Changed

Changed


This is how close i can come, else I will have to remodel the whole thing. Topology is not eyecandy, not proud of it! :( Here is the smooth version. I always model solid, so I can see the failures netter than when smoothed out.

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/39/tig2.th.jpg

Just projected the picture onto the model to see how it looks.

http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/6414/tig1.th.jpg


TDW;)

looks good mate...Im no expert but I think the jowls are too heavy....cats are mostly fur...even the big ones...but its again how Maya will put the fur on..I have never used it so Im not sure. Good start though mate!

cheers bullet

Ok mate I got this...read the print and you should be able to locate a book maybe?? still looking...I know this is a lion but I saw a Tiger as well...bear with me.

cheers bullet

I also found Eliot Goldfinger has a book called 'Animal Anatomy for Artists' try that and I found this..no Tigers but it may get you going in the right direction?

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/Sci...ImgsAbout.html

Its looking good TDW so far. Would love to see your completed model.
All your previous work with blender are great. Keep it up

Hers a link i found. Hope it can be of help to you.
http://akeli.deviantart.com/art/Anim...rt-1-143442279

Mahesh

@bullet1968: Man, thx for posting that anatomical picture. At the moment I saw it I remembered I have the complete anatomical atlas, where that comes from as regular print. I was searching my ass off on the internet and I have all I need in the shelf right behind me, lol! Kind of a proof that staying too long on the internet does damage the brain. :P

The problem with the fur is, I cannot use particle systems to fake it in that PC game. I will have to mesh it and add some alphaed fur planes at the edges. I might experiment with some of those techniques on the highpoly version, which I will make in ZBrush lateron though.

@maheshsubbiah: Thx, I will finish this and try to find a decent animator, who brings this beast to life for the PC game.

PS: The problem with this head is that I didn't get the topology right. The edge flow doesn't really support the shapes it needs to bring out. I tried to have all quads, but each additional edge loop on the head means another additional loop on the body aswell, which is an awful thing. Maybe I should have redirected the loops away from the heads lenght axis.

I will post a pic of the head in the topology section and see what the cracks have to say... :)


TDW;)

Here's a small update. Had to sample texture together in photoshop. Teeth comming soon...

http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/5971/tigerx01.th.jpg


TDW;)

Well, I decided to pause my game modding activities for a while and try to improve my modeling skills a bit for the future. I still work with Blender, but I'm making good progress in learning Maya aswell. As I already began with modeling that tiger for the game series, I thought I might aswell turn it into a biped character. I will make the base model in Blender and try to capture as much detail as I can on a rather lowpoly stage and afterwards take all into ZBrush for further definition.

I just began yesterday and body needs still a lot of tweaking concerning shapes and anatomy. I also have had some problems with working with subdivision. For example if I try to cut holes or cavities in the cuirass, I always get ugly lowpoly structures in that area. I tried to add further loops around those holes to relax the mesh, but didn't work that good. Any tips?

Here some pics:

http://img541.imageshack.us/img541/45/cat5.th.jpg

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/4238/cat10d.th.jpg

http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/6860/cat7f.th.jpg

http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/9075/cat8l.th.jpg

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/1488/cat9j.th.jpg


Greets, TDW!!!;)

I'm done with the base model and prepairing it for export to ZBrush now. Oh, wait, I forgot the UVs... :P

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/2065/cat2gp.th.jpg
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/7659/cat3m.th.jpg
http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/646/cat1o.th.jpg


TDW ;)

Looking good TDW, you can use zbrushes UV master then tweek in maya..........dave

So if I want to import that model into ZBrush, how would I best do it? It would be really cool, if there was a way to import the whole model at once and have it being seperated into several subtools in ZBrush. Is that possible or will I have to export/ import every single piece of the model, which might be a pain, the more complex a model gets.

Also, I always hear about those Maya to ZBrush pipelines. Is there something like that for ZBrush 4 and where could I get it?

EDIT: Problem solved!!! Just found out about that GoZ thingy and its plain awesome!!!:happy:


TDW;)

I'm going to take my model into ZBrush now. But before I will have to make the UVs. I'm not sure though wether I should better make those beforehand in Blender or Maya or do it in ZBrush. I don't want to have per face UVs, cause I might want to do some post production in photoshop lateron.

Anyway, I got some further questions, before I start:

1. I always see that most artists have just one texture for a full model. Doesn't this mean the resolution of the character will rather be very poor in the end. As I want my character to be used for a render only, I'd prefer to have it more detailed and high res. So should I rather make a single UV map for every piece of the character?

2. My character is a tiger, which means it will have fur and I was asking myself what would be the best way to do this. Tetxure, fibre brush, particles or polygonal fur. Never done this before, so I could use some advice.

3. How to handle small objects like rivets and such. Better have them as a model or just use alphas in ZBrush to drag them out of the given geometry?


TDW;)

Well, I decided to dump that stupid armor and work on the body of the tiger first, cause it looked like crap. I will lateron extract some armor from the body and add some further clutter to it.

I just began adding some loose clay brush strokes. Doing this from mind without any reference, cause I thought it didn't need to be hyperrealistic when it is covered with fur lateron anyway. So I'm mainly concentrating on getting the proportions right now. Haven't worked with ZBrush in a long time, kinda relearning now while character is in progress! :p

Current polycount is about 330.000

http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/7616/zbrush001.jpg

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/5104/zbrush002.jpg


TDW ;)

Looks kinda mean even without armour!

Yeah, it's supposed to be a badass, looking kinda stupid without any teeth at the monet though. How would you guys go about the teeth, rather make a single model or sculpt it all in at a higher subdivision level?

Update, still 330.00 polies, going to next subdivision level now...

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/4646/tiger0001.jpg
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/9171/tiger002.jpg
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/2059/tiger003.jpg
http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/9729/tiger004.jpg


TDW ;)

I dont think it matters does it?? do the teeth in Maya or Z...LOL you probably looked funny without teeth too mate...I did...LOL. Still looks good mate

cheers bullet

You can make the teeth either way. It really just depends on what you're planning on using the model for? Just practice? Or are you hoping to animate this piece?

Obviously you can just retopo and sculpted teeth, but if you need them as their own model for animation/rendering purposes at the end of the pipeline, it might just be worth modeling them now, and saving the extra step of retopo later.

this is a cool base mesh. you should get more proportion refs online and make some changes to the proportions and muscle definition,
for instance the elbow to shoulder length seems way too short, and the legs muscles look off [comparing to human musculature]
i would flesh out the neck/sternal mastoid areas too
but its a good start. keep it up

@bullet1968: Lol, yeah, no teeth no fun!!! :p

@Mayaniac: I was planning on using the model for a nice highpoly render and maybe combine it with a photoshoped environment or matte painting. I', not that good at animating yet.

@septopus: I see what you mean. Wasn't using any ref until now, but as I'm at about 5 Mio. polies now and topology of the model becomes a bit more workable, I might tweak all that.

Here I began with some detailing. Eventually I will make the facial hair kinda seethrough and let it fade into the fur on the head smoothly. I thought it would be a waste to just cover all.

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/9079/5mio.jpg


TDW ;)

I began with polypainting now, no idea what I'm doing though. Am I supposed to apply only colors or proceed like with a digital painting, like adding shadow and highlights and whatnot? The final model will get some fur in Maya lateron, but I'll expose some parts of the body, like face, chest, abdomen, hands and feet.

Btw, is Maya's fur in anyway dependand on the UVs or could I just scale down such UVs that are covered by fur anyway and have those which are exposed a bit larger???


TDW ;)

Sadly had to end this WIP at this stage. Have some technical issues in ZBrush that I wasn't able to fix. Here's some quick Photoshop edit the Character.


TDW ;)

Wow that is cool mate! Finished! damn....

That's a pretty sweet action pose, wouldn't mind seeing the head a bit lager. The texture screams lizard more than Tiger at the moment. But nice overall.

What technical issues are you having?

I was planning on having most of the body covered wit maya fur, but as the mesh's toplogy got corrupted very badly, it turned out not so nicely.

I made some mistakes on the base mesh, forgot to store morph target and some other things. Now mesh is so bad, that I cannot get any proper UVs done and due to that not texture maps. I made a full retopo of the character and tried to project the details from the highpoly sculpt onto that. It kept destroying my retopo each time. Lately I was told that I have to approach the projection piece by piece instead at once, like I did. I'll try it once again out of curiosity, but several days of troubleshooting got me kinda tired with this project. Guess I'll rather start a new one, paying attention to my recent mistakes.


TDW ;)

Can you show a picture of your "destroyed" mesh. Sometimes it will do that if the new topology doesn't follow the forms of the highpoly mesh properly.

The best thing to do is bring in the new mesh as a subtool to the highpoly. Then SubDiv level by Subdiv level transfer the detail from the highpoly mesh to th new topology. This way at each level you can manually correct any errors while they're minimal, including exiting forms and proportions to improve the quality of the transfer.

If you're having too many problems still, I don't mind trying to transfer the details for you.

I did append it as a subtool, but I projected from original to highest sub d of my retopo at once, instead of doing it step by step and polishing it inbetween. I'm, still quite new to ZBrush and have produced a row of mistakes, but it's not my first model that I had to dump. Won't kill me!!! :P


TDW;)

Alright man, no probs. Its always good to know when to move on.

Finally made something small out of the declined project. Please don't tell me video isn't working!!! :giggle:


TDW;)

Nice TDW...video doesnt work....bahahahahaha

Thx mate, maybe in 10 years from now, you'll actually be able to push that button and play the vid, who knows!!! ;)


TDW;)