Introduction
Hello everybody i am Efrain O Panneflek Dominican but living in Holland and new to this community and around 1 week into using blender.
My history dates way back when steven stalhberg was my tutor in 3d rhinoceros around 10 years ago, and we still keep in contact.
the programs i got used to over the years are, Maya,3d max modo, zbrush cinema 4d and now Blender.
About the design
this will become a full body female, with a 2 headed dragon witch i am also currently modeling.
Both of these characters will be created in blender and textured in blender.
its basically a test for me to get used to blenders environment.
So this is something for my self in spare time.
remember i just simply duplicated the half head, and simply printed the screen, the head is now almost complete, and i will upload a picture soon.
currently i am working on her body.
Forgive me if I misread you statement and you already know about this, you can use a mirror modifer while you work on you model, attach it to you model in object mode and just make sure its stacked above the subsurface modifer
and welcome to the forum
But i will do my best
tyrant moneky, yeah i dint knew how to do it in blender when i took that shot, but i do now.
heres one of my oldest models, i think 8 years old, i was still learning texturing back then.
Remember i do this for a hobby, but talking to some programmers who also like to create games, so i will probely be working on that soon.
another update.
I must say, i really would like for blender to update the cut tool, like maya or cinema4d, or adleast an option to click and select the best cut option for your self, it really takes a way some artistic flow for me ad this moment.
Course i am not so happy with a couple of results when i do cut it, like triangles or hard time fixing 5 point stars due the cut options.
Lets say kind of annoying so i do hope they chance it a bit.
For that reason i am modeling 2 body’s 1 in blender and one in cinema, and see what will be better.
If some one has a nice tutorial some where on how to model a female body within blender, i would like to see it to help me figguer out nice solutions o building a full body in blender.
You just need to relax and give Blender a chance. I also use Maya but as my (graduate student) copy isn’t “legitimate” I feel a lot more comfortable using Blender.
There are some very fast ways of modeling in Blender… I actually prefer modeling in Blender because other software doesn’t match some of the features I’ve found.
I see you are up to the ears… (fear, trembling and dread :eek:)
In your first post, I would have said…
Use “clipping” when in mirror mode, so the middle seam is joined with the two halves.
Looks like you have been extruding edge by edge. This is accurate but it’s also very slow. You might want to consider starting with a UV sphere, tilting it so the pole is where the mouth should be and then use sculpt tools and proportional editing along with edgeloop slide functions to pull your head into shape.
hy lancer thnxs for the reply, and i would love to hear the tools you found and how you put them to use.
As far as my characters ears i will probely fill the whole and cut it from the head and start extruding then putting it back.
I also dint extruded much only the back of the head was extruded.
the face was actually 1 big plane with 4 vertices, the left 2 i moved into the front face and chin, and the right 2 vertices i moved to the eyebrow and the other to the jaw.
then simply added the edge flows of the mouth nose and eyes. and a bit of extruding.
and about the sphere technical modeling i might try it again, i used to do it in maya when i bought the book.
what tools do you find use full when modeling a character in blender.
The F key to fill spaces… I so wish Maya had this. CTRL-R for insert edgeloop also very handy.
Sculpt tool in Blender is legendary (the UV unwrapper ain’t half bad either). Many people use sculpt for fine detail. Frankly it’s an awesome shaping tool - just use a big brush. Similar to proportional edit (newsflash: while Maya has a similar SoftMod tool, a proper proportional edit like ours has only just been announced for Maya 2009)
That UV sphere method of doing heads I mentioned before is fast, and if you do it right, it means no more major worries with edgeloops etc - they jus tend to work out. If you want lots of circles leading into an eye, delete the whole area and extrude inward a few times. I usually rebuilt the back of the head on the UV sphere workflow, otherwise it goes diagonal.
Edgeloop slide - add as many edgeloops as you like - then slide them around into even spacings Then there’s the knife tool, along with cool functions like changing tris to quads.
Oh - if you like extruding, try (with an edge selected) holding CTRL down and clicking the mouse. It even follows around in a sweeping circle… great for starting those ears you are about to do!
Mirror modifier (of course) but with clipping.
Subdiv modifier is awesome. Maya2008 tried to catch up but theirs still isn’t as flexible. Use CTRL+1, CTRL+2 or CTRL+3 to apply it quickly… but make sure you learn the four buttons in the subdiv modifier panel. I can see you are aleady using it… frankly, I switch back and forth all the time.
To get cool wires (like the shot I gave above) make an ALT-D clone of your mesh. This is an “instance” in that changes to one will affect the other. On the new one, set the material type to “OBJ” and give a new material of “wire” with Ztrans on and z value of slightly higher than the original (0.04 instead of 0). The z value makes the wire mesh render slightly in front of the other one so the wires just pop out of the skin. I usually have an ALT-D wire clone on another layer so I can switch it on and off any time I want to take a decent shot of the topology.
9.Retopo tool - I mean wow! When you edit a mesh with the “retopo” button on, the vertices immediately stick to whatever is most immediately in the background. This means that you can have a mesh with really bad topology(typical with sculpt when using multires) and all you need to do is start with a single plain in front of it and extrude the “correct” edgeloops into place… it’s almost like drawing edgeloops with a marker pen!
The Node editor is fantastic. Takes care of much of your post processing needs. Have you also seen the compositor? Not many other 3D packages can claim to be an all in one powerhouse like Blender.
There’s heaps more. It’s late here and that’s just some of them. I thought I’d give you ten for a nice round number.
Oh - and you do know how to split windows and such?
Wahaha, i see someone else here got a 3d.sk account
My face is rusting due to a lack of time… another project doomed to stay WIP forever…
I just didn´t like the references forehead, i had to change that a bit
Well its a rather old WIP, and there are some topological booo´s there… especially cheek, chinbone area and the good old ear
Thanks allot lancer, and sorry for my late reply, i lost a friend this week was abit hard for for me, but i am doing ok now, life go’s on i guess, it just reminds ppl enjoy the time you have and enjoy every moment of it, course before you know it it could be over.
lancer, you really helpt me allot by giving me this info, and i fallowed your advice, to stik around and get used to blender, and i dit and found out alot of positive features witch i really like of blender.
I studied physics and particles, compositioning, and animating armature and texturing, and off course the sculpting witch you recommended, and i must say once you get the hang of the hot keys you will have a power full tool in your possession.
i searched all over the web and youtube and watched many hours of tutorials and fallowing some of them and preforming it on my blender.
Its getting more fun cloth and hair are all interesting.
i even installed the script greenscreen and composited a video.
and i am really thinking to put my self 100% into blender for a wail and see how that go’s.
Your advice really helpt me allot and it made me start out a quest to be an advanced user of blender and share my finding.
i done so many effects in this last week and dint got tiered for one bit.
ps arexma your modeling is going the right way :D, keep up the good job
Then there’s the knife tool, along with cool functions like changing tris to quads.
