First concept, first model

Reminds me of some designs for Cthulhu. Looks like it could end up being quite cool once hes been made. Definitely stick with the tenticles.

Is it going to be high or low poly? and i hear you about the lack of time thing, i barely get any and when i do i can't bring myself to actually do any 3D, instead i play games. But holidays are nearly here so that's a good thing.

bullet, as its going to be a UT2k4 character ive got room to breathe as far as polycount goes, but its not going to be one of those largly detailed highpoly characters no.

aven: yeah i didnt actually think about cthulhu, this guy was more based on some alien research work i was doing for a game project for someone (which unfortunatly fell through), the tentacles were actually a result of a warhammer40k tyranids influence (i used to play em).

He looks like he could fit into the UFO: Enemy Unknown world [:D]

Am interested to see how you go moony [:)]

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/simages2/349_oltholdahead1L.jpg[/img]

da da! the head, the tentacles were made entirely out of the extrude tool (after making a grid of the face where they would extrude from with the split pologon tool) and there not terribly flashy but i really dont mind :) More or less thats the only tools that have been used, otherwise it was just moving verteces, edges and faces. Im pretty happy with how it turned out really :D

Nice Start mate, The tentacles are looking great. It's great for the first model, which you are just learning from, but if you do want it i just suggest a bit more detail in the eyes and so on, but otherwise awe4some job

at this stage i thought the eyes could be left to a texture under the brow there

You're getting off to a pretty good start. The outer edges of the eyebrows looks a little odd, but I'm not too sure if it is the look you are going for. It just blends into the side of his head a little too abruptly.

The tentacles look good, but you may want to make them less grid like. Maybe shift them around and delete one of the tentacles from the middle. Rearrange them around and make them look a little more random.

Also. Be careful with Maya's Face counter. I'm not sure if you realise, but it doesn't tell you how many triangles there are. It tells you how many nGons you have. You will need Bonus Tools or a script to get Triangle counting. If you need the script, I can post it up here.

the brow does look like it ends kinda ubrubptly but look at the wires, its just softened some edges (sorta thing.. u know, i forget the proper term for it) and not others on the edge there. I know the tenacles are rather grid like because for the sake of simplicity thats how i set them up, they may change later if i really thinkt they need too (i get the feeling they will get tweaked eventually when a body is made and so on). That script would be nice (and how to impliment it, install it etc) thanks :)

Nice start MoonUnit, Im interested to see how the animation for the tentacles comes out.

The MEL Script is called cdf.mel and the author of it appears to be French. It was found at http://www.highend3d.com/maya/mel/?group=melscripts?ion=modeling

There are a whole bunch of free Scripts and Plug-ins available there (for many different apps).

Here is the Script. Just Right-Click, Save As. 1.8k (tiny)
http://home.netspeed.com.au/mlanham/cdf.mel

In your My Documents folder, there should be a Maya folder. In the Maya folder, there will be a version folder. Copy the file into a Scripts folder within the version folder. ie:

Version 5.01 on my system looks like
C:Documents and SettingsMattMy Documentsmaya5.0scripts
Version 6.0 looks like
C:Documents and SettingsMattMy Documentsmaya6.0scripts

Now just run Maya, and select your mesh or meshes that you wish to have counted. Type in cdf in the command line (down the bottom of the UI). In the bar next to it, it will give you the count. If you have troubles or want to set the script up to be effected by a Hotkey, let me know.

all im getting when i run it is "Aucun(s) Polygone(s) selectionn?(s)" in the box, not actually any figures

You have to have the mesh(es) selected. Are you running PLE? If so, let me know and I can check on my friend's comp.

oops didnt have it selected, my bad :P
according to your script my count is as follows
Triangles: 492 Faces: 284 Vertex: 270 Edges: 552

so it was pretty much fine

Phht. Not my script :)

Just in case you ever need/want to check how many triangles you have in it :)

Keep us updated with your efforts.

allmost completed the toroso :) Just gotta bit more tweaking to do (eh, ive been tweaking for hours :P) Also done some tweakage on the head. With the tentacles, im gonna fiddle around with them after ive mirrored it over so the "grid" is not entirely simetrical, ive done a bit of tweakage allready tho.

i take it your the only maya enthusiast here aven :P ive used max and well it was max 3 but maya is so much easier for me (well with what i know how to do in both) and im kinda following along with the UT2k4 SE tuts. Ill probably learn max eventually, but maya is my stepping stone into the 3D world atm :D

btw any way i can do nice wire shots which are all spiffy with large black lines on the edges and so on that you know of, atm im just selecting in object mode and hitting print screen :P

I'm in a similat boat to you. Used Max 3.1 (some 2.5, but very little) at the AIE for a bit over a year. There were a few things that irritated me about the program. Did the Maya course. Loved it. Programs can make a major difference, but there isn't one supreme 3D program :)

As for Wireframe rendering. My friend wrote this up a while ago. It takes a bit of setting up, but it works really well.
http://www.jozvex.com/tutorials/wireframe.html

He is more interested in the technical side of Maya than the artistic side. He also has some other mental ray tutes there that are very handy. I'm still bugging him to finish them off :)

Moonunit - good start
Question in regards to the concept though, did you want to have a 'normal' sized character, or a fairly short, dwarf sized one?

If its the latter, you're doing fine.
If not, check these out
http://www.fineart.sk/photos/figure/014.JPG
http://www.fineart.sk/photos/figure/015.JPG

Won't talk too much, hopefully, if you need it, the pics will help

hes going to be "normal sized" but he is after all a moster of sorts and my first model, so im not being too strict with his proportion. Also im not being to strict with following the concept, i just kinda need it to get me started. I am terrible at just working from nothing. Thanks for those handy pics though :)

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/simages2/349_oltholdatorso1L.jpg[/img]

torso complete!! i cant beleive how well that went, oh sure the shoulders are a mess and the like but hes pretty round (started with a box) and all and even if he is a bit "cartoony" thats allways been me so im not too bothered :P . He looks pretty wide when i mirror it over though... im hoping that once the arms and legs are in he wont look so wide, if he does... more tweaking XP

oh and btw, i know the spine things from the concept arent there, they may or may not be added in at the very end, ill decide wether or not i want them then

Cool start dude... good to see some maya going down :).. don't forget to delete the mesh history everynow and again to speed things up!

oh yeah, thanks for reminding me, i was gonna do that after i welded the head on but i forgot :P

before most of you have even seen the torso or even a lot of you have seen any progress the modelling is complete!! Ive done a bit of work with normals but im not too fussed, once the textures on it wont be that noticable anyway. He has been triangulated so thats why his poly count has suddenly risen dramaticaly.

oh and Bob, u were right, his proportions were a bit odd, his proportions are now different to the concept. I just made everything to concept then rescaled a bit and the like.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/simages2/349_oltholdacomplete1L.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/simages2/349_oltholdawiren1L.jpg[/img]

EDIT: errr ok for some reason its cut off my wire image at the bottom there... even when i re-upload, thats weird :S

Pretty good for a first model.

His legs look a little scrawny. They don't look like they would be able to hold up that beer gut too well. Thickening them up would help out a lot.

The feet look like they are lacking a lot of detail. When you look at the concept art, you had all the toes in. On the model, there are only two toes for each foot. It is really noticeable because you have all his fingers in there.

You may want to tweak the palm of his hands just a little. He doesn't have the dip in the palm or the pads on either side.

Depending on how many vert influences you have per bone, you may have troubles with his deformation areas (joints). EDIT: Sorry. Other way around. How many bone influences for each vert.

And..... he needs some arse cheeks :D

Those are just little picks. It is very cool for a first model, and you can only get better :) BTW, is it your first model full stop or your first Maya made model?

Looking good, keep it up, but I am not sure, but your renders look poor for some reason, like low quality, or you just compress it?

yeh if i sat down to do the best that i could do then theres lots of things id go and fix up, like i said ive never really been good with hands and feet (tried them before and boooooy was that a mess, the hands actually took two attempts here). Unfortunatly i forgot to make a save before he was triangulated and mirrored, which would have been easier to edit. No doubt ill make another one (not the same character mind) after this is over anyway. Oh and yeah its my first model model, ive messed around and made a terrible messy torso in 3Ds Max and made a character entirely out of basic geometric shapes but otherwise my experience is pretty much naught :P oh errr and he did have a crack... i think i killed it when i was welding his legs and forgot to make a new one.... oh well :P

the renders are straight renders of what i have in my perspective frame, there is not lights or anything added, they are saved as tga files then transported to PS where i make the 800x600 images which are then saved as Jpegs. dunno why u get that impression.

Lol he looks funny as! Good job for a first model Moony.

I think what cody is talking about is the fuzzyness around the edges of the mesh. Probably comes from the compilation process in photoshop, something to do with the selection by the looks of it.

Congrats on your model Moony, I am astounded by your persevereance, you had the model finished in a couple of days. I bought the paul steed book ages ago and still can't get it finished. I'll start in the holidays which start this week, great job too.

Ah that's cool. They were just little suggestions more than faults anyway. For the hand thing. Just sit down and try modelling just a hand or just a foot. Nothing else. Try one with as much detail as you want, and then go down from there. This way you are just trying to pay attention to one area of the body. You can consentrate on getting the volume right for it.

For the Hand, here is a video grab by Martin Krol
http://news.cgland.com/ntimg/noorungy/hand.avi
For the foot, here is something by Stephen Stahlberg
http://www.3d.sk/tutorials/Modeling_a_foot_in_Maya.htm

Neither are really tutes, but they are a start :)

If they are just plain renders, you probably have your anti-aliasing settings too low. Just go to your render globals and bump them up a bit. Either that or just click on the Quality drop down box and select 'Production'. When you down sized the image in PS, it just tried adding in it's own AA :)

Looks good dude.. a few problems here and there... like with proportions.. from the renders it looks like you have vertices that still havent been welded together properly, especially around the ankle... you should also select all your faces and under >editpolygons>normal>soften/harden set your normal smoothing to 120 or something.. that'll make it nicer....
but as Aven stated.. you should go back a few stages and concentrate on different parts of the model....
it might be worth at this stage to start learning how to uv map in maya as well..
anyhoww... keep it up...

Hazard/cody: Cant say where the fuzziness around the edge of th mesh comes from, i save them as tga's so theres no background, allthough its probably from resizing, not sure if those ones were re-sized.

Bullet: thanks, his arms and legs are nothing more then cylinders that i messed with a bit though, as he didnt have and detail on his limbs. Also i was off sick on thurs so i spent some of that time working on him.

Aven: thanks for the links, might get working on some just hand and feet models sometime soon.

Me109: yeah i think the ankles thing might have to do with normals, there all welded properly and everything.... Most of the model is on a pretty smooth normals setting, but some areas i left a little sharper because it looks odd and blobby with a high normal setting (like the face).

Ive got my fair share of school work but the holidays are coming up so ill have him in UT2k4 soon enough... i hope :P