Do you 3d? As in Max, Maya, Blender, SketchUp, Other? Or Modding Games?

Ghostship wrote:

I'd crit, but:
1- you're way better than me
and
2- anything you hear at CGtalk will be sevaral orders of magnitude better than anything I could add.

You have planted a seed. I now have an urge to get back into character modelling for fun.

Did you have a photo reference for the grip on the mic?
CG hands always get me.
Pinky finger. It's really hard to bend the last knuckle of your pinky (mine anyhow). Holding something lightly you'll probably only bend the first knuckle. The last one only a little, and obtuse angle at least.
Last two fingers are for gripping, first two and thumb for manipulating.
Just trying to pull something out of my backside in hopes that it's something useful.

Thanks a lot, Ghostship, follow that itch and get back to modelling. I should add though that you're overestimating CGtalk's helpfulness these days. I used to receive good feedback there, even for my lousy ass crap first projects (check my portfolio there for some old, embarassing stuff, I should be declared legally colorblind). Now that I have something I actually feel entirely proud of, warts and all, there's barely a whisper of feedback to find. Not sure what to make out of it, whenever I post something I try to take a look around and offer my own 2 cent's at other people's threads, but it seems like the theme of my project isn't flashy or cool enough for the young cgi-craving masses. Oh well.

Re. your feedback you're right, there's some room for improvement there in the lead singer's mic hand grip, you're not alone in having issues with cg hands, they are a tough sell and a tougher modelling / set-up job. I'll take a closer look to it and try to achieve a more natural look within the model´s limitations. Thanks a bunch for the help!

PS: on the better than me thing, I've been doing this "professionally" (as in, living out of it) for 6 years and yet whenever I go to cgtalk I see what 19 year olds are doing and weep at how amateur I fell in comparison.

IMAGE(http://forums.cgsociety.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=68490)
Here's the only thing close to finished (and not that close as it is) that I ever posted at cgtalk.

Well, that's pretty good modeling and shading, the bump on the eye wrinkles' lines look a bit random to me, but other than that it would take nitpickery of a higher level than mine to provide a better feedback. Not sure about the topology, but anatomy-wise it looks solid, reminds me of that guy from Lost.

I started googling "mugshot" because of the front and side nature of the photographs. This was The Birdman of Alcatraz.

This may have been early in the mesh.
IMAGE(http://forums.cgsociety.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=65887)

Admittedly not much effort in the wrinkles.
If I recall, the mapping was wonky, so getting the wrinkles in the right spot was tough.
I didn't spend a whole lot of time on the texture.
A different specular at his hair and stublle would probably have added something.
This was all pre -SSS, hair, and sculpting (althought Deep Paint existed)

For what it's worth, I've found the Threedy forums to be pretty good for feedback, and they have some great mini competitions every week if you need a poke to get going again. Things like you get 1 hour to model a kid's toy, post your results!

Edit: Looking at 'em I think I want to make something now too! GWJ gets another Enabler +1

Really nice work Feeank. The only thing that jumps out at me is the teeth on the left character. It may just be the render, or the way the light source is hitting the teeth, but it looks like she is wearing braces on them.

I didn't notice the pinky on the mic until Ghostship did, but I agree on the looser grip.

3D itch firing up for me too. The new Blender looks very nice, and a lot more intuitive, so I'm going to be getting back into that in a big way. Two monitors on my current setup will also help that decision along too.

I under use dual monitor for everything, except MAX. Especially texture mapping.

www.3dtotal.com is good IMO. Pretty casual. Mostly the forum activity is strong.

If you're into buildings

www.cgarchitect.com

In that world I'm 3dway. I used to be ovnoimportance at 3dcafe. Not sure if 3d cafe even exists anymore.

Ghostship wrote:

I started googling "mugshot" because of the front and side nature of the photographs. This was The Birdman of Alcatraz.

This may have been early in the mesh.
IMAGE(http://forums.cgsociety.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=65887)

Admittedly not much effort in the wrinkles.
If I recall, the mapping was wonky, so getting the wrinkles in the right spot was tough.
I didn't spend a whole lot of time on the texture.
A different specular at his hair and stublle would probably have added something.
This was all pre -SSS, hair, and sculpting (althought Deep Paint existed)

That's very good, the mouth here looks a bit less polished than in the first shot you posted though, but that's one complex area to model anyway. The fact that you made this years ago, and yet it stills looks this good should hint you into getting your ass back into 3D. Why, If I may ask, did you stopped doing 3d?

m0nk3yboy wrote:

Really nice work Feeank. The only thing that jumps out at me is the teeth on the left character. It may just be the render, or the way the light source is hitting the teeth, but it looks like she is wearing braces on them.

I didn't notice the pinky on the mic until Ghostship did, but I agree on the looser grip.

3D itch firing up for me too. The new Blender looks very nice, and a lot more intuitive, so I'm going to be getting back into that in a big way. Two monitors on my current setup will also help that decision along too.

Thanks a lot for the feedback, yeah...the teeth stand out and I may have to tone it down before completing the piece. I do, however, expect them to be less obvious after adding depth of field to the render, the lead singer should be the only one in total focus, with the other two girls slightly blurred and the background heavily blurred. (you can check the thread on cgtalk for an earlier version that has DOF added for reference)
Here are some of the references I used for this:
IMAGE(http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/2/19/1235060592421/Estelle-Bennett-member-of-001.jpg)

Feeank wrote:

Why, If I may ask, did you stopped doing 3d?

My life changed and I didn't have the time I used to. [read, had kids].

I ended up making a couple of job changes which made more demands of my time.
Also having kids totally killed the, "spend all day Saturday just modelling and doing nothing else".
I manage my time in hours these days, or less. Then, spending a whole day focusing on one solitary thing was possible. I can't even imagine that now.
16 more years, the kids will be out of the house.

Of course, the job changes lead to my own firm, and the family, well, it's two kids now.

Hey, y'know, it's not THAT long before 'playing with the kids' turns into 'doing my hobbies with the kids'

Thanks Pawz.

I must be at the crux. Four years is feeling long.
It's starting to creep back in though. I can build lego with my oldest. We can spend, usually, just more than an hour, quietly interacting and building something. I LOVE it.
I seem to thrive on long periods of intense uninterrupted concentration. All of my favourite sports are concentration, and individual sports. The one to two minute attention span of a toddler has been trying.

Ghostship wrote:

Thanks Pawz.

I must be at the crux. Four years is feeling long.
It's starting to creep back in though. I can build lego with my oldest. We can spend, usually, just more than an hour, quietly interacting and building something. I LOVE it.
I seem to thrive on long periods of intense uninterrupted concentration. All of my favourite sports are concentration, and individual sports. The one to two minute attention span of a toddler has been trying.

I have a 2 year old and 3.5 year old, so I feel your pain/joy/frustration/reward in terms of time available. Mine are at the stage of waiting for me to build it, then playing giant dinosaurs and trashing it all down to single blocks again.

Lego building is awesome though. Build a simple tower, or anything for that matter, then show them how Daddy can make it on the screen too. Drop in some animation on it while they sleep, and bingo, Daddy's magic lego screen is born.

Ghostship wrote:

You mean lego digital designer?

That's just a static build (but cool nonetheless).

You get to make the whole thing in the 3D app of your choice, then as you guys play with the meatspace models, and the imagination fires up, you take mental notes of the story the wee one is telling, then translate that into a short film or sorts.

Just a thought

So how did a lot of you guys start learning 3D design? School? Free time?

I renewed my membership at Lynda.com, and they have a ton of stuff on 3ds Max and Maya, as well as a really full lesson on Blender, but unfortunately it's showing it's age now that it was made with 2.49. It really goes through everything though.

3D modeling is something I've always wanted to get deep into, just haven't been able to find the time to jump in for extended periods of time.

Citizen86 wrote:

So how did a lot of you guys start learning 3D design? School? Free time?

I started animating after graduating in marketing/advertisement. Not caring much for selling crap and having always been interested in legos, drawing and logical thinking/trouble solving, I lucked my way into Maya PLE 2.0 I think, back in 2002. Tinkered with it, amateurishly modeled almost every Starwars ship I could think of at the time, mainly using booleans operations, and generally wetted my feet with the interface. I had to stop doing it since the country was in turmoil at the time and I needed a job. Then by chance, I lost my job, the economy went to hell and I found a program to study maya focused in training you into working with it professionally right out of the bat. I was about to sell my 200$+ valued MTG card collection to pay for the whole program as I was dead-broke back then, but my family came to the rescue and helped me pay the first fee. A year later, after getting a job teaching english to pay for the program in an institute while attending classes once a week and spending most of the night burning my eyelashes practicing, I was hired by the trainer who gave the lectures and later on went to give some of the lectures myself for new students. Been in the field ever since, never looked back at Adv/Marketing.

Architectural Visualization uses the same software, for the most part. At least, it was that simple back when I started. Lets see, there was 3d Studio, then there was....
Then 3d studio changed to 3ds MAX, then MAX. There was aslo VIZ, which was a stipped down MAX for the architecture world.

Modelling buildings is kind of boring after doing the CAD drawings for them all day, so I started to learn to model characters. I learned in my free time, which as a single guy, newlywed, you have a lot of. I'd spend evenings and weekends modelling and sifting through 3d sites. Back then I bought a book called Sam's Teach Yourslef 3d studio max. It was in the bargain bin because it was for about three software versions earlier. The basic principles are still the same. So don't pay the $80 for the book on the current version.

These days Maya has taken over where MAX used to dominate. I think MAX still holds some of the game market. Doesn't matter really. One you can model in one, you just have to learn what "that command" is called in "this software" and find where they hid it.

My experience is all pre-sculpting, so this may not hold true between Mudbox and Zbrush. I remember the early versions of Zbrush. It didn't make sense to me. I bet it's quite refined comparatively by now.

Ghostship wrote:

My experience is all pre-sculpting, so this may not hold true between Mudbox and Zbrush. I remember the early versions of Zbrush. It didn't make sense to me. I bet it's quite refined comparatively by now.

I really don't like Zbrush, I thought the zball modelling system was impressive, but other than that I thought the user interface was dreadful. Mudbox I do like a lot, very Adobe-like interface which makes it at least familiar to most people.

Sculptris is your best friend if you want to dabble with digital sculpting.

Look at some of the stuff some of us have posted in the "Post Something you've created" thread to see what is possible.

It is so much simpler than Z brush and Mudbox to get into.

As for how I got started? I am all self taught. I went to an art school later and picked up figure drawing and sketching which helped out tremendously. But my foundation was all me because the software had just started coming out. I started in 1991-92 I believe.

Thanks for the experiences guys.

I'm self-teaching right now. Blendercookie.com and Lynda.com are my best friends.

I'm kind of deciding what I should use, although the programs won't completely tie me down. Blender seems like a very decent program now, although I have the student versions of both Maya and Max 2011. I wouldn't be able to do anything commercial with them though, and if I ever did decide to, I don't know if I would land a $3,500 job just to be able to pay for the program.

Plus, the guys at Blendercookie do an awesome job, they've covered an amazing amount of modeling videos and many tips and tricks.

I'm with Fangblackbone. Self taught, I started 3D back in '94, using infiniD, updated to Strata Studio Pro, and then kind of lost the time/opportunity to get into it when Max started showing dominance and wasn't available for the Mac.

I then had no options when OSX came out, until I found Blender, but the interface in version 2.4x was just too difficult for me to get my head around. 2.5x looks awesome, and I actually have a Mac that can handle it fairly well now, it's just a shame the kids came along 3 years ago (I kid) as I'd have alot more time for getting back into it.

I have been a Graphic Designer for the last 17 years, and I've been lucky enough to see it applied to both print and interactive/web/animation over those years.

m0nk3yboy wrote:

I'm with Fangblackbone. Self taught, I started 3D back in '94, using infiniD, updated to Strata Studio Pro, and then kind of lost the time/opportunity to get into it when Max started showing dominance and wasn't available for the Mac.

I then had no options when OSX came out, until I found Blender, but the interface in version 2.4x was just too difficult for me to get my head around. 2.5x looks awesome, and I actually have a Mac that can handle it fairly well now, it's just a shame the kids came along 3 years ago (I kid) as I'd have alot more time for getting back into it.

I have been a Graphic Designer for the last 17 years, and I've been lucky enough to see it applied to both print and interactive/web/animation over those years.

I've got pretty much all the Blender books up until and including the official 2.3 manual. The basics still apply as far as the UI goes. They're yours if you're interested.

Feeank wrote:
Ghostship wrote:

My experience is all pre-sculpting, so this may not hold true between Mudbox and Zbrush. I remember the early versions of Zbrush. It didn't make sense to me. I bet it's quite refined comparatively by now.

I really don't like Zbrush, I thought the zball modelling system was impressive, but other than that I thought the user interface was dreadful. Mudbox I do like a lot, very Adobe-like interface which makes it at least familiar to most people.

While ZBrush does leave quite a bit to be desired, I can't stand Mudbox for different reasons. Namely, switching between the different sub-objects and maintaining their deformations/sculpts is a PITA. Also, Mudbox doesn't appear to optimize the files at all on save-out, so you can quickly get 1GB+ files with an extremely simple model. Plus Mudbox is a resource hog that seemed to crash every 15 minutes on my rig.

I was able to make this in ZBrush, which I don't think I could ever have done in Mudbox. Still not finished, though-- I need to finish retopology for the low poly model and touch up textures in Photoshop.

WipEout wrote:
Feeank wrote:
Ghostship wrote:

My experience is all pre-sculpting, so this may not hold true between Mudbox and Zbrush. I remember the early versions of Zbrush. It didn't make sense to me. I bet it's quite refined comparatively by now.

I really don't like Zbrush, I thought the zball modelling system was impressive, but other than that I thought the user interface was dreadful. Mudbox I do like a lot, very Adobe-like interface which makes it at least familiar to most people.

While ZBrush does leave quite a bit to be desired, I can't stand Mudbox for different reasons. Namely, switching between the different sub-objects and maintaining their deformations/sculpts is a PITA. Also, Mudbox doesn't appear to optimize the files at all on save-out, so you can quickly get 1GB+ files with an extremely simple model. Plus Mudbox is a resource hog that seemed to crash every 15 minutes on my rig.

I was able to make this in ZBrush, which I don't think I could ever have done in Mudbox. Still not finished, though-- I need to finish retopology for the low poly model and touch up textures in Photoshop.

Huh, didn't catch this when you replied WipEout. I haven`t used Zbrush or Mudbox as much as I would like to have a better formed opinion, I've made a few models on both but I wouldn't call myself skilled on any of them, but of the two, I got the best impression and results from Mudbox. Now, I think Zbrush is by far the most popular and has been around longer, so you can say people are happy with the way it works. : /

And now, for the reason I undusted the thread, an update on my Ronettes project: (click for full size if it scales down)
IMAGE(http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j219/feeank/afiche_06.png)

I made a couple of small tweaks here and there: face expressions, mic grip, etc, rendered without DOF and added it in After Effects using a Zdepth channel, as well as adding the noise on top of it all. I think I'm getting there, whatever there ends up being : ) Comment & Critiques welcomed and appreciated.

Wow, you did all that? That's amazing

Gee, thank you Mex, glad you like it, this is what I do when I'm not shooting people in the face.

I'm currently taking a course in SolidWorks. I really, really like it. I seem to "get" the interface, and the mouse gestures are so great I don't know how I got by without them.

Would anyone here be willing to do some work for hire? I'd like to design my own D&D miniatures to print out on a 3D printer but I know nothing of 3D modeling. It would be a small model, 1" scale.

Do you need them textured or anything? Or are you looking solely for 3D sculpts? I might be able to help you out, depending on my current workload and your proposed specs. PM me with details.

1" scale may be too small to get a reasonable detail output from most 3d printers. And while smaller scale is cheaper, there is typically minimum pricing involved. So for instance, $39 is your cost whether its a 1" or 3" figure. Or it might be the case that the 1" is $36 and the 3" is $39.

Materials is also an issue. One material may warp too easily and another maybe too brittle.

Granted, my experience with 3d printers is second hand. I have been keeping tabs on the technology for almost a decade now.