I need n-gons!

Title says it all. I’ve been trying to follow a video by an artist named Masahiro Ushiyama. This video infact: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac4qV2uIF3Q

Here’s my problem. He uses Maya, which supports Ngons. I use Blender, which until bmesh is finished, doesn’t. I tried following along, making quads out of certain shapes and keeping up. That got messy real fast though.

Honestly, I’m not sure if this kind of question even belongs here but…does anyone know of a piece of free software on par with Blender that supports ngons? In addition, when creating sphere primitives, it has to let me also set the rings as well as the segments in the sphere. I’ve tried 3dsmax 2011, but it only lets me set the segments of a sphere.

You could always try using a Bmesh build from Graphicall.

try wings3d…

You can avoid needing n-gons. You’ll need to make more faces.

GCWilkinson: I didn’t realize there were any builds at all. I’ll look into it. Anything I should watch out for?

Tungee: Tried it. Felt clunky and generally unpleasant for me to use. Blender turned me out :wink:

dleri: That’s what I tried to do, but that makes following along difficult. I’m not that experienced of a modeler, and trying to accommodate for the lack of ngons in Blender that way just ends up with me getting confused, especially when the artist in the video I posted starts making sweeping changes.

Nothing in particular, just be aware that it is not fully stable yet and is still in development.

Now which build am I looking for? Nothing there says “this is a bmesh build!”

edit: ooh, I found one. But, does every revision following the one that says it includes bmesh also include bmesh?

edit2: That’s too bad…the two bmesh builds on Graphicall crash on using Mirror. That’s no good…

You say you are not very experienced. Then, why are you sticking to this tutorial? Why not pick some written for Blender. Get up to speed as a modeler and then you’ll see how you can get around Ngons. I miss them too. Wish Blender had’em. But you can get by without them. After you are more experienced, then go back and tackle that tutorial. You can do that head without them in a snap. He only uses them in a couple of places where you could get around it easily. And if you notice when he subdivides it in the end it is all quads. :wink:

EDIT EDIT: and and… looking at it again. Really the guy is a great artist, but the parts where he uses the Ngons…well, the worst example of polyflow in the whole head. They are more of a band aid than truly functional.

Aerosol: I would try and find another tutorial that doesn’t use n-gons. There are several on the net and you can find them through these forums or by doing a google search.

If you need specific links please send me a private message or email me: declin.guyver at gmail.com

If your looking for a great series on modelling the human head here’s one by Johnathan:


And as stated above you definitely do not need any n-gons at all when modelling the human head. It’s best to try to avoid using them when learning to model as they tend to become a crutch later on if you rely on them too much.

First off, it’s not a tutorial. It’s something that shows his workflow. I’ve been wanting to make a head that looks just like that kind of style for a while (the JRPG style, if you will). I can and have made a head using other methods (among other things). I want to specifically try this one, though.

Yes, I also noticed that at the end, the model is all quads. But as I previously stated, some steps in the video are hard to follow when I have extra edges and such.

Thanks for all the information. I’ll make do with the builds I have, saving often.

Believe me. The skills he has has nothing to do whether he uses ngons or not. It’s the knowledge of the human head that he can make good models like that. Also proper use of edgeflows on the face.

I fully understand what you are dealing with. I guess what I was trying to get you to see was that it is the polyflow he is using that is the key. And there are so many tutorials and examples. Really, trust me on this. It has nothing to do with this guys particular work flow that will give you a model like that. You’d be just as well off looking at the final result, looking at some other tutorials to get a more well rounded idea. Then come back to his tutorial for the sake of seeing what he does. I am not sure crashing Blender all the time is going to be such fun. Up to you. Just trying to help you.

dont use mirror modifier, if your modeling you might need that so. think of that ahead, mirror modifier crashes.

If it’s that broken, he WOULD be better off with Wings3D.

I vote for Wings3D for modelling with maximum freedom.

If you want you can quadrangulate your mesh when exporting from Wings to Blender, for further editing like scuplting, painting and rendering.

… or donate to bmesh project and hope for the best :smiley:
I wish farsthary could jump bmesh code also.

Done… then, after an entire year of patience and yoga, went to Wings.

@aerosol
If you need n-gons you need n-gons.
If you want to follow the work flow exactly you need maya.
If you want a free program that allows you to use a similar workflow you need wings.
If you want to use blender you need to modify the work flow.
The process is actually quite simple.
You will notice that while he starts with tris, quads and n-gons. He ends up with mainly quads.
So where he has n-gons you would use a quad and a temporary tri. At a later stage where he ends up with two quads you would have a quad and two tris. Simply convert the tris to a quad. Where he has a lot of n-gons at the ears you would use only tris until you reach the final stage of the modelling process and then convert the tris to quads. I’ve modelled this head with other quad only software using this process and it works pretty well. Sorry I don’t have the head as an example it was just an exercise in modelling.

P.S. I must say I find it amusing that you start this thread by saying I need n-gons.
Then you say you’ve used max which has n-gons and then find a reason not to use it. Doesn’t max have a slice tool.
Then you say Is there a free software that I can use and then find a reason not to use it either, “Too clunky”.
Maybe you should have started by saying I need Maya.

@carrozza

problem solved!

go learn wings, but if/when ngons comes to blender with bmesh. are you not just going back to blender then? I’m skeptic myself to app jump to much, you never get indepth enough.