I’ve been “Blending” for a few months now, and I’m about ready to dig in and start my first serious character model (of my own character). I’m going to create it with the intention of animating it at a later date.
I’ve been using Tony Mullen’s “Introducing Character Animation with Blender” to learn the process so far.
One thing I’m divided on is this:
Should I create the character “naked” (and bald), and then create clothes and hair later and fit them to the character (I might move into Daz Studio at some point)? Or should I create the whole darn thing as one piece and just separate the textures?
Does anyone have any insight from their own experiences?
My own [limited] experience has taught me some things I’d wished I’d learned earlier…
Model naked characters only if you want them in the nude. The less vertices you have the easier it is to animate, and for your computer to calculated. Make only what you need to see.
If you are going to be using Shape Keys, you will never be able to change your mesh again - if you try you will surely get weird results. If your character is clothed - you could get around this be making the head a separate object and parent it to the same armature [ Just like eyes are separate objects connected to the same armature ] That way you could change his clothes at some point…
Particle hair is vertex intense and will probably slow your computer to a crawl. They’re developing a new Blender build for Project Peach, which might be easier to use too. For now I’d definitely keep it as a separate object too.