new lamb to the slaughter

[sanguinewolf]

Hi.. i been a CG hobbist for a fair few years, from doing simple like space ship flying animations to trying to model various things.. but is only now that i have decided to push to created some art and animations that i can be proud of ...

i will be blunt that my modeling skills are VERY weak and limted to basic geometry..

Currently for anything im doing i am using models converted from poser to give me a basis to start creating the ideas in my head into reality.. i know that some may view this as cheating .. but as i have said my modeling is such that i cant get what i want at the moment so i think of myself like a inker for comics, using pre done images to breath life into ... i do hope to be able to take an idea from my head and model it create it from scratch but this is a long way off i feel.. at the moment im happy making art using predone models (fornow)

thats not to say that i dont experiment with doing simple things like a glass with a liquid in.. or some such.. but my goal at the moment is to give realism to things that arnt real... to create life where there was only 2 dimensions..

anyway, i have prolly bored you long enough.. so will wave and go back to 3ds max..

oh yeah i forgot that my weapons of choice are poser pro, 3ds max 2010 and mental ray.. also use photoshop cs4 for texture development and some art work..

[Shipwright]

The way I look at it is that it's all cheating anyway. We're trying to cheat the mind and fool the eye.

All of these programs are just "tools in the toolbox".

The advantage to learning how to do it all in Max is that you will become much more familiar with the software. By knowing your software well, you will be able to create something that more closely matches what's in your mind's eye.

[Froggit Jake]

I gotta agree fully with Shipwright here, and Max has some great built in tutorials to get you into the modeling techniques needed for producing meshes, at least max 8 did, i'm not too sure if 2010 has the same tutorials as it has a few new tools for modeling.

Wish you the best of luck anyway.

[sanguinewolf]

thankyou for the kind words, i will agree that using one program to "create from scratch" is a great way to learn, and i do look for a lot of tutorials to gain knowledge on how to do things and have learnt a lot in the last few months.. from what i have seen within max2010 the new modeling tools are quite interesting to work with giving a simular feel to zbrush or mudbox from what i have seen in demos and tutorials of those programs.. more sort of hands on modeling abilities.. the last atempts at modeling i tried were polygon modeling objects from blueprint plans, IE cars and such without much success.. even following tutorials i get lost ..

[Froggit Jake]

one of the easiest methods i found, was box modeling, i think that's the term, basically starting off with a box and extruding faces etc. into arms and dividing the ends to make fingers and so on.

Though it does prove less great for modeling heads i've found, i just think NURBS are better there.

[sanguinewolf]

i have to say i agree with you there, though i have never used nurbs i looked at the panel for it and went nah not just yet lol but then i been saying that for years with them lol

[Froggit Jake]

I still say it too
Maya made NURBS friendly for me haha, they are a really powerful modeling tool, and some tuts out there make it really a lot easier to understand, though sorry, i can't remember where i saw them. Could have been here or maybe 3d-palace.com .

[sanguinewolf]

kool i go have a rummage and see what i can find, i have been interested to give maya ago, as the results ive seen for maya driven renders have a very realisic finish to them.. is there much between maya and max?

[Froggit Jake]

It's basically the same methods, ive been a max-man for a few years, im not to any high standard, i just learned stuff and moved on to something different. But Maya uses the same methods really, you just go about it a bit different, and it seems and lot more technical, like the material editor for instance is all about the nodes and not a user friendly IMO, but that is just because its a different way of doing it i guess, i am tempted to say im startign to prefer Maya for modelling though, it's got a neat menu system and the site we get tutorials from Escapestudios.com, really simplifies the learning.

My, i ranted a bit there haha, but in escence the way they work isnt too different, but the basic renderer seems a lot better and the workflow and toolds in Maya seem at a glance... better

[sanguinewolf]

yeah i have seen the tuts for maya are FAR easier to find than max versions of same proceedures.. i know what you mean about the material nodes i have seen various mental ray tuts for maya in my search for realistic skin... and it looks VERY confusing, but im guessing you have a lot more control from that than just pluging maps into maxs boxs for defuse and bump ect..