Alternative to clay yeay!

Sooooo...

Let's switch to CG for a bit. This is no Maya tutorial blog, I only want to share the work I came out with on Maya and Mudbox. The pics follow the steps of creating my model.

- I start by modeling a simple low res mesh on Maya using templates to guide me in doing the main volumes. It's simple really, just a matter of recreating what is already in front of you. The hard part is to get it done with only quads. Why? Because triangles are EVIL! They will tore your textures apart when you get to do the UV maps and therefore destroy hours of work. So don't. This also is a block-in part of the job so again, feel free to change the main volumes. At the very end of that part you should smooth it just once (double the polys) to have a reasonable resolution on your character. Mine is, as you can see, an ugly, marshmallowy, not-structured kinda ape.

- When you're happy with your basic mesh (you want to have your whole character modeled at that time and closed: no holes or missing faces in your SINGLE volume or you're about to face hell when your arrive on MudBox), you are to export an .obj selection which you'll be able to work on. This is the funny part now: just get as crazy as you can on the detailing (you can have a really amazing definition if your computer is able to sustain it). For example, my last CG sculpture was over 300000 polys for one bust. Do the muscles, bones, veins, tendons and fat and even the skin texture can be mapped (better in the UV mapping though).

- I use MudBox to change the basic mesh into what I really wanted at first so what I do is basically shape it in high res and then turn the work back into the same number of polys I had when I got into MudBox. You'll loose most of the detailing but will keep the exact main silhouette of your character. You can totally get back into MudBox as much as you want. This workflow is the best way I know to get as close as what you have in mind, and pretty fast!

- Back into Maya now with your .obj export, you can totally start to work over fabric details like, belts, clothes and every non-organic item.

And again little samples of my work in Dan Platt's class of Advanced Character Modelling.

Enjoy and have great CG models done!!!