3d Character help

Firstly i'd, like to say that for your first 3D effort, you are onto an excellant start. It took me heaps of trys to do some thing even as half as good, and i'm still learning.

I'm not sure about this, but i'm quite certain that the faces ARE the number of trianlges(Poly's) in your scene, but correct me if i'm wrong.

Don't worry to much about how it will bend when you rig it at the moment, it's only your first model and you're already of to a great start. If it doesn't bend properly later, you can easily fix it later with a few edge divide or cuts(Are you using MAX?), but seeing as you are aiming for mid poly you shouldn't encounter to many probs.

Quads aren't a bad thing, the only thing about them is that, when you work in Editable Poly, it's mainly quads and because of this you get incorrect poly counts (seeing as a quad is mad of 2 tri's). Otherwise, they are ok.

Finally, I can't see any problems the proportions and so on look ok, the fact that you ar a 2D artist helps a lot with proportions. I have heaps of trouble with Proportions cos i can't draw very well.

Thanks bullet! I've modelled two other things before. My bedroom and a pumpkin (tutorial, boring stuff). However this is my first time trying to model something as one whole mesh for animation. What is "Editable Poly"?

Also, in todays game standards, what is considered low poly, medium and high poly? I've heard people say around 3000 is the approx for low poly?

Here is the concept drawing of what I am modelling:

[img]http://users.bigpond.com/jason129/swksheet.jpg[/img]

nice, ive just finished making a character in maya myself (my first character also :P ) and to me it looks like your doing great :D

only real crit is that the upperarms need to be thickened out a bit atm but otherwise i looks great to me (though id be interested to see what his abs look like when you dont have the wirefram (deselected in object mode) because they might look like just a lump on his chest...).

as for skeletal work im not to sure as i used a pre-created skeleton and skinned my character to that.

keep it up!!! :D

quote:What is "Editable Poly"?

Don't worry about it if you use Maya, i don't think it's in it, but in max it's a way of manipulting your object and still keeping it in quads.

quote:Also, in todays game standards, what is considered low poly, medium and high poly? I've heard people say around 3000 is the approx for low poly?

I just copied and psted this of the 3dbuzz web page, though 5000 does sound a bit excessive.
Generally, low poly models have less than 5000 polygons. Low polygon models are mainly used in games and anywhere real-time rendering is required. In Half-Life for example, the maximum suggested amount of polygons on the screen at once is 3000, so a Half-life model could be up to 1000 polygons if no more than 3 of the models are on the screen simultaneously.

To answer your original question. Maya doesnt differentiate between types of polys. You just have polygons. A triangle is the base type. But a Quad and nGon are also polys. You can see the invisible edges by going to Display > Custom Polygon Display (Option box). In the section labelled 'Face', just check the Triangle box. In Maya, you can't affect invisible edges and they will automatically be turned to try to make the face plannar. If you want to affect an edge, you have to draw it in. To work in quads and find out the tri count in Maya 5 and earlier. there are two methods. First is install Bonus Tools. It come on the Maya CD or can be downloaded from their site (requires reg). It has a bunch of free Scripts that have been made over the years and Alias just refuse to include with Maya :/ There are only about two Scripts that come with it that I find useful, so installing the whole thing is a waste of time (as there are other scripts that will slow down load time when I wont even use them). The other option is...

www.highend3d.com

The best source to look for free scripts, plugins and shaders. Here is a direct link to the area that you want.

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/mel/?group=melscripts&section=modeling&so…

Just Ctrl+f and search for 'triangle'. There is a triangle counter there.

As for more detail around deformation areas. Depends on how many influences you are allowed to use when skinning. If you are allowed to use a few, then more detail is generally a good thing. If you only have one bone influence per vert, then you may not want to have too many polys around there. You will probably start to get some odd folds happening.

Looks good dude.. just be aware of the facing poly's on the inside mesh, Quads are the only way to go with maya.. tri's are just as fine.. with the way maya is setup up for modelling, keeping everything as quads really makes it easy to see the poly flow.. or the way the edges flow around the hull of the model.. this also carry's over when creating extra detail for the deformable areas of the mesh... I usually lay down new edges/faces along lines of topology that follows where the skin might possibly fold or deform.. like wrinkles... but you know it all depends on preference..

bullet: Thanks for the info. Only 3000 polys on screen at once for HL? HL is pretty old though, I assume the number of polys has risen considerably?

Aven: thanks for your advice. I will check out those scripts once I finish modelling. When you talk about 'how many influences I'm allowed to use' do you mean the complexity of my skeleton? I will have a basic skeleton and I am considering learning how to rig the hands too however that might be way too hard!

Me109: Thanks for the help, what could be wrong with the facing polys on the inside of the mesh? I had a look inside the mesh and there were some weird faces in there and I deleted them... I hope that's not a bad thing because I'll have to start again... Or did thos faces serve a purpose? Sometimes I'll move a vert and it'll turn out there's another vert underneath it and all of a sudden I have another 'layer' or face underneath?? I didn't get what was going on so I deleted some...

I hope it's going to be ok. I really appreciate everyones help, here's an update of my progress:
[img]http://users.bigpond.com/jason129/update.jpg[/img]

Top model dude.. you have a real nack for how something should look in 3d. good show old chap!
nah the facing poly thing was to do with when you duplicate the two halfs of the model you still hadnt delete the 'inside' faces, which I think you found and deleted now anyhow..
Looking at how things are going I reckon once you finish, you'll have about 6k poly mesh too..
if you want to keep it low.. its easier to rip out the access poly once you finish!

nice!

Thanks Me109! 6k polys? eesh. Gotta try to keep it at least below 5K.... But you're right, I'll get rid of the excess later. Once I finish modelling, I don't need to use the smooth tool or anything like that right? What you see is what you get isn't it? Because I tried using the smooth tool and it looked ugly...

I've been modelling this assuming that I'll texture it straight after. No other tweaks etc. Is this what happens in the game industry? or are there some special things that must be done to it before it moves on to texturing/rigging/animating etc?

This is your first character model? Wow, great work! I?ve been modelling for over a year, and my characters still don?t look that good!

This first model just goes to show how important traditional art skills are in 3D art (as in you have a good sense of proportion, anatomy, etc). [:)]

yeah some of the tools can be a bit... pffffttttt... to use.. ie. the sculpt polygon tool... Now maya dosent use smoothing groups for polygons.. so you have to set smoothing by the angle of normal to the adjacent polygon normal.. 0 --> 180 degrees etc... look in editpoly-->normals-->softhard