I am a complete noob to Blender, But eager to learn and I thought Blending life would be a good opportunity to give it a try. I am reading as many tutorials as possible and stumbling along slowly. Here is the results so far. Not much character yet really, somewhat androgynous.Considering I’ve only been using blender a week, perhaps an ok start.I love the blender community spirit, and looking forward to taking part!
What 3D software come you from?
I’ve used mostly XSI, but also Maya and max just a little for animation. I’m really impressed with the feature set in Blender and 2.5 is shaping up to be formidable.
I’ve never done work with people, and I am also a bit of a noob. I am interested in the tutorials you are following and where to find them. Your work here looks impressive. All your angles seem to be smooth, but tight where they need to be. I find the eyes to be kind of creepy.
I am watching the blender channel on Vimeo, there lots of great tutorials there.
Yes the eyes are a bit scary I will try and soften the facial expression and try and get a more natural shape for the next update.
Very small change changed the ear and re positioning the eyes, scaled the body, next step is the uv layout and texture. that will be tomorrow night hopefully.
Looking great - a testiment that knowledge of all the tools in a 3D app isn’t what counts… it’s the artist, and therefore jumping from one 3D app to another isn’t a major issue to someone with experience.
Your seams are interesting - what is the logic behind where you have them?
Personally, I’m switching between 2.49 where I know where everything is and 2.5. Are you using the official 2.5 release or an SVN branch?
Thanks for the kind advice, I have been up until now mostly doing animation work. Modeling high poly characters is a new challenge for me. I was very impressed with how one of the other BL2 entrants used the retopo tool to go from a rough sculpt to a very nice poly flow.
Will give the retopo tool a try, the current poly flow is completely against the collarbones.
At the moment I am not using 2.5, since most of the tutorials are for 2.49. but looking forward to it.
The interface layout is much better.
And thanks for the occulsion tip I was looking for that! I really am rather impressed with blender. I may end up evangelical.
As for my logic behind the placing, Well I tried my best to immitate wes’s tutorial on the blender channel.
But specifically I wanted to have a flexible Mask area around the eyes brow and upper cheeks.The chest and shoulders were less deliberate kind of As I went.
I presume that is the nasty fellow you are referring to. The thing is I can’t see a decent place to shift it, or remove it without adding another line of polys around the head. I want the definition in the nose but I don’t want to clutter the brows. I will soldier on.
Just cut the quad to the right of it in half horizontally…
Cheers, will do! I know it is best practice to keep the mesh clean, but are there any more practical reasons
for avoiding triangles? does it tend to cause artifacts or other glitches?
Yes, triangles can cause artifacts, but even worse they usually cause unpredictable deformation. I never leave any tris in my mesh, poles are another issue, never have more than a 5-pole, and place it carefully, they will also cause bad deormations, but when placed properly, they can help!
Welcome to the community!
here are a few changes
Made the Eyes, I painted the texture for the Iris following Antropus’ fantastic tutorial
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~emaslows/forums/documents/PSD_RealisticEyeTexturePainting-Antropus.pdf
I re-topologised the neck and chest
I thought I would attach the latest image
I began Texture painting the face
I followed Wes Burkes Fantastic tutorial video.
http://vimeo.com/7156622
Of all the tutorial videos I’ve watched I think Wes’ style and pace is very easy to understand and follow along. thanks wes!
My next challenge will be
finish the Skin textures
start on the skin shaders
Start adding Hair and props
(sorry about messy posting, new to forums.)
