Greetings all,
I’m very much a beginner with Blender. I’ve been doing art and have worked in the game world quite a bit. I no longer do game modeling but I found I did miss it.
Blender was a very welcome program for me to find. I’ve worked in Maya and 3ds max but I never felt like I was any good with them…
Blender is very friendly and easy to work with for me. I started with 2.69 so I guess I missed out on a lot of developmental pain and got to use a very polished interface. Thanks blender crew, you are awesome.
As a way to learn the software I’ve been following David Ward and a lot of other postings about how to work with Blender. I must say I love the software and have rediscovered my artist /tech persona. It has been quite fun.
David Ward has a great tutorial on creating a Tim Burton style character. I wanted to post my progress on that project as my sketch book.
Just a quick word of thanks: David Ward , you are awesome! thank you for your clear and concise tutorials, you have made it very easy to learn how to use blender and be good with it.
I am currently up to Tutorial Pt 16…its been a real challenge for me. I’m still learning how to use Blender and I have to stop the modeling and go look up stuff …all the time.
The naked character…sort of based on the Corpse Bride look.
My current status is :
Goal 1: Learn How to use the blender to Model, Lighting, Texture Mapping, Particle Hair and Animate, Goal 2 :Create animation walks and express emotion and a sense of the character, Using the model from this tutorial. Goal 3: Learn to model correctly for good joints and animation. Goal 4: Rebuild the model again and do it better.I’m currently on Goal one and making good progress. I’ll only be talking about Goal 1 for now.
Goal 1: This phase of the goal is about learning, not perfect modeling or other details. So some problems I’ll pass on and come back to once I’ve gotten used to using the software.
- Character model : Done
- Clothes Model: Done
- Particle Hair: Done
- Rig: Done
- Shape Keys for Facial Expressions: In progress.
Problems and Worries:
-
The teeth and gums…they are joined to the body mesh and when I shape key and I somehow mess that mesh up.
Most likely its when I use the sculpt tool to fine tune my shape keys. Would hiding the teeth and gums prevent that? I don’t know. -
My Joints on the shirt and hands are awful. I’ll go back to that later and clean them up as well as the shirt arm elbow joint which I failed at making good mesh loops for.
Current BIG Problem that I’d like to solve:
–His Eye Blink in Shape keys–
I would like to use shape keys for his eye blink but I am getting scale distortions in the mesh.
I use rotate for each of the half-sphere eyelids. While using shape keys I see each half sphere rotates and scales down and then stops and the correct position.
I only use rotation for the shape key.
Result: you see the eye lid come through the eyeball as it rotates into a closed position. Very frustrating.
I’ll post more on that problem. I’m sure there is a solution to this, I am just so new that I don’t even know how to ask questions about it.
Sorry if this post has been a bit long. If you have managed to make it this far you are a brave and caring soul.
Any comments or help is welcome. I mean it. Don’t be nice or polite, it won’t help me get better.
peace,
James