after completing some blender tutorials and after creating some easier objects with hard geometrics (like furnitures) I try to create my first simple character. -> A plastic duck.
I created the basic shape of my character, but I’ve some problems with the eyes. I used the “Knife Subdivide” and Smooth Function like explained in lhttp://members.lycos.co.uk/duxbellorum/get_a_head.htm to create the eyes.
Here is the wireframe:
Here is the 3D-Dump:
Here is the object I like to model:
I know that I’ve much to learn, but I hope someone could give me a hint how to model the eyes.
First of all, and sorry for the caps here, but DO NOT EVER USE TRIANGLE FACES WHEN YOU PLAN ON USING SUB-SURF!! As you can see in your own screen shots, they look awful when smoothed.
Always use square, (or as they are industry called, quads), when modelling and using sub-surfs. You will get a lot smoother results.
Keep on going though. You will learn along the way.
I would suggest first to start all over and use a cube to sart out as BgDM suggested. You can extrued from the bottom of the cube to form the body. Once you’ve done that, subdivide the side of the face and reshape the vertices to the shape of the eye(it can be a sqaure for now, when you used SubSurf it will round out). Then extrude the vertices inward a little and size it down, then outward and size it down some more. This will form the eyelid. You could then add a sphere for the eye.
yeah, I second the last idea: start simple, then cut in and extrude to get details. try to capture the basic shape before you worry about the eye, for instance. As for tris: as BgDM said, avoid them, but know that occasionally you will have a tri or two- so long as you do this carefully and in the right place it won’t hurt. Well, It won’t hurt too much
thanks for all your tips. Using quads is really better.
Here is my currently work in progress, but I don’t like the eyes. I will do more work for them.
In my plastic duck case it looks good to see where both sides of the model are put together. But if I model a face I don’t want this effect. What should I do to avoid this?
It looks like you modeled one side of the duck and duplicated and mirrored it to form the other side. If this is the case, you have two main options. One, move the sides apart a little. Select 4 vertices at a time and press “f” to make a face. This can be time consuming, as you’ll have to do this for each set of 4 vertices. An easier way is to make sure the “edge” vertices of each side are very close together, then press W, Remove Doubles. As far as the eyes go, they look a little too flat. The project is coming along very nicely, though. Keep up the good work.
hey, It’s 100% better! good work!
as for joining, if the two halfs of the model are separate you’ll have to join them first, just select them and hit ctrl-J.
then you can select the middle verts and rem-doubles or whatever.
note you may want to select all the verts and hit ctrl-N to face all the normals outside, for good smoothing/shading.
Hm, I tried what you said, but it looks not good. If I join both sides, the effect of modeling one side and the second changes automatic is lost. So it’s hard to do symmetric changes.
Beside this problem I joined both sides and removed the doubles. See here the result:
Looks terrible! I don’t know why this bevel is there and why it’s not everywhere. Hm, perhaps it’s on the places where I did extrude operations? I used “Region” to extrude. Would it be look better if I used “Individual Faces”? What could I do now?
I would say it is the normals… select all vertices A-KEY in edit mode, press SPACE , go to Edit->Normals->Recalculate Outside.
If you want to check the normals orientation, you can go to the Editing Menu (F9) (in Edit Mode) and press the “Draw Normals” button under the “Mesh Tools 1”. It will show you the normal of every face
Yes, great. Now it looks really smooth. But I’ll do this only after improving the eyes and some other parts. If I do this it’s harder to do symmetric changes.
I’ll go on and add some water (perhaps sea or bathtub) and then show the result later. Thanks for your help. I read currenty the bender documentation and it has so much great functions I like to use!
