and I’ve several ref images I’ve taken of a baby doll (front x side x back views), and I want to put each view ref image into the corresponding Blender quad viewport, but it won’t let me do this. I have Blender 2.6/2.65, d/l from this site.
I’m trying to use Blender with my ref images of the baby doll to model the infant movie character by following the instructions in my copy of Blender Character Development (in blender 2.5) book chapter 8 faithfully where the book says to select the cube, add a loopcut to cut the cube in half (on pages 100 - 101)…begin creating the actual base mesh…using the Extrude tool… but somehow it won’t let me do this.
These are my infant ref images:
How do I start modeling this character’s body (so when finished, I can export it from Blender, import into Poser, add Poser’s default infant skeleton (included with Poser) and then clothe/animate this infant model so it moves and talks realistically?
Hi, I’m back. So far, I think I’m getting the hang of it. Today I was sort of fiddling around using that Blender book I have, and I’ve managed to add the “neck” and the “head” boxes to the first box (which was supposed to be the “torso/body” box, then I moved the “head” box up a little higher b/c I thought the “ET” baby character’s neck was too short, now no matter what I do, I cannot seem to select the “neck” only and move it up higher to connect with the “head” that is, all the boxes, the “head” “neck” “torso” keep being selected (highlighted) no matter how I try to select just the “neck” and the whole assembly (torso, neck, head) all move together as a single unit each time I try to select the neck and move it higher up - how do I select the individual boxes/objects so I can move the character’s neck higher?
Ok, to start out with, you are in “Object” mode (see that little text box in the 3D Viewport header that says “Object Mode”?). Get used to paying attention to that, because the mode you are in affects what you can do. What you are trying to do is edit your object by moving some, but not all, of it’s vertices around, and you must be in “Edit Mode” to do that.
Also, see that Background Images check box? Click the triangle next to it, and it will open into a panel. In that panel you will be able to set up that image to only display in front view, and you can set up other images to display when you are in side or top or back view.
Anyway, you seem to have started off on the wrong foot. I’d recommend you delete what you have and start over with a cube, set up all your background images, then go into edit mode (you can select it from that menu in the header, or just press the tab key which will toggle back and forth from object to edit mode).
There are plenty of tutorials out there, both video and text, that explain how to box model, which is a good place to start learning. But you can’t gloss over anything, since leaving out steps will cause problems later on, and get very frustrating very quickly. This one looks pretty good and is close to what you are trying to do.
I tried to save this tut as a pdf using PDF Creator, but it saved the text and not the images in this tut. I tried setting it to print headers and backgrounds and tried saving it again but same result. how do I get it to save the images as well as text in the PDF?
If you save the tutorial as a “Web Page, Complete” (one of the selections in your browser’s Save As dialog box) the images will be saved along with the text in a folder linked to the file. To access the saved tutorial, open your browser and use the “Open File” option to open the saved page.
I don’t know how PDF Creator works, but if you want to go that route, you may have to save the images individually and insert them into the text only PDF document. Probably not worth the time, imho.
And I’d like to use my Wacom Bamboo tablet to sculpt the head to my liking.
after all this is done I’d like to rig the model for animating in a movie I want to make, and after this, somehow import it (with complete rigging/skeleton) into marvelous designer to clothe it, and then import the entire file into 3DS max for animation. As you can see, this is a multi-step procedure, so could you maybe tell me what’s the best way to go about accomplishing all this?
There aren’t any shortcuts in CG that don’t wind up taking more time in the long run. Since your discovery of a way to create a character did not include learning how to model, adding the extra thumb and toe will require that you go back a step and learn how to model. And sculpt, apparently. At the top of this page, in the BlenderArtist’s header, there is a menu called “New to Blender.” In the menu, the link “Get Started with Blender” takes you to introductory tutorials about using Blender.
Blender plays nicely with Wacom tablets. Just plug it in. I have only used 3DSMax a little bit, only one animation completed, but from what I could tell, Blender has comparable tools and a somewhat easier workflow. Of course, it could be that my novice 3DSMax workflow was faulty.
My advice, unless you are already fluent in poser, clothing designer and 3DSMax, is to buckle down and learn Blender, which can do all of the things those other programs can do. Once you are able to produce the results you want, you’ll be better able to evaluate alternative methods of achieving the same things.
