I hear talk about low poly count and high poly count, but I don’t have an understanding of where that starts, and I understand how to block out a 3D ‘stick figure’ in a few minutes, but if I wanted something like an MMO level human proportioned graphic, what am I looking at in terms of hours to crank out one 3D non moving no bones character?
And if I do want to add bones for animation, how does that affect my time table?
I spent over a month making a tank recently and its sitting at 399,000 vertices and 401,000 faces, and is about 95% done, not counting a paint/texture job. Meanwhile, I made a coffee mug in about 25 minutes good enough for 3D printing sans designs, and its about 2600 vertices and 2600 faces.
I’m just trying to get an idea of what I’m getting into and whether there are some time saving techniques. I’ve been trying blocking out a head but I ended up with a cross between a Buddha and an alien. I tried sticking a bunch of metaballs together but ended up with something out of claymation.
The best time saving technique is practice. Speed is largely a function of experience. Don’t look for cheap shortcuts, just make things. Lots of things. Have a plan, so you don’t waste time backtracking after discovering that you aren’t doing things correctly. Learn good topology. Study other people’s models. Practice, practice, practice. 3D art is like any other art. You learn by doing.
It really depends on the MMO. Some MMOs have vertex counts of like 8000 for a character while lower-end ones will have 2000 (estimates). It also depends on whether you want to model clothes/armour for the character or just the body. And of course it depends on your sculpting skills as to how long it’ll take and how well you’ll make it.
Generally you’ll sculpt a high-poly mesh and then create a low-poly version of that mesh and bake down normal maps, bump maps, spec maps, etc. which the game engine will apply to the low-poly mesh to give it the appearance of being more detailed.
I’m not sure how to answer your question as it takes all those variables into account. Hope this helps.
For the head you can either do it by modelling the mesh by hand like this:
I’ve followed this tutorial and it gives a good result easily.
or by sculpting. Here is a really detailed tutorial:
The first way would probably be quicker if you haven’t scultped before and suitable for a MMO style game. The second way can be much more realistic (and fun) - they can both result in a similar vertex count if you are aiming for low-poly for a game.
How long it will take depends on how much detail you want to put in before you’re satisfied so there’s no real answer anybody else can give you.
However, professionals at games studios can usually crank out a throwaway background character in a day or two (high poly, no rig). Hero characters will obviously take longer, especially if there are complications such as physics or exchangeable clothing involved, and then they will often be scrapped and restarted many times until the design sticks.