Scottj3d

Many thanks Frank. I appreciate your efforts. I downloaded both tut's and will dive in and maybe have a look at his mesh to see if I can obtain that 2001 moment feeling again and fix my mesh. Jim, I had a look at your site today and somehow I cant see someone doing that kind of work on a Geforce MX, maybe a Quadro. Your work is impressive (I could see the main page and the woman on the link for more but they were the only pages I could navigate) and the swinging head,"awesome". I must have stared at it for 15 mins. I aspire to reach that level of realism. I just hope they will let me have a PC in the nursing home. (or rubber room if I don't figure out the critical areas that I am "snagged" on).

Maybe good work. If I can get my nostrils to connect to the face without that creasing then it will be pretty good work. I am in a quantum loop. I get the nostrils right, then the mouth goes wrong. Step back fix the mouth and the nostrils go wrong. The trick is to tie it all together(smoothly) with fewer splines then comes the great work. Gotta stay in the shallow side of the pool before I take my water wings off and go to the deep side sis. Browse around the forum and you will see some great work!

Is there a simple way to flatten the mesh. I have not found an executable explaination of the process. As I can gather I need to go into the action window and find a contextual menu or something to tell AM which plane to flatten to. And if I have a model of the teeth and select only the exterior surface and hide the cp's will it flatten only the selection and not the whole mesh. I have the David Rogers book in front of me but I must be denser than my mesh. I would appreciate any leads. I can't wait to get some more practice with decals and want to try some bumpmaps. I'm hoping this will help me to find the balance between the detail of the mesh verses adding detail through digital trickery. I made the decals for my eyes but did not flatten the mesh for the spheres, I simply used the planar application method and it seemed too easy. Thanks

I just wanted to smoothe things out and practice some hooks. I think I like the previous pair but with the tips tucked in . I smoothed it out a bit more and figure most of the creasing wont be seen anyways. Now back to the head...

Thanks. I will finish reworking the splines this weekend and post the images of before and after then. Here is the upper mandible. I had to lower the rez a bit as I am having trouble uploading the larger image. 56K modem. I will be tucking the tips of the four front teeth in tonight and trying some hooks to knock out the ripples at the top of the gums and get some light on the gums as well. It's great when things start to "click".

I am definately heavy on the splines! Thats a nice thing about this forum. Seeing other peoples approach to modeling helps to evolve your own. There is alot of good art to gain ideas and inspiration from.

I have been reading everything I can get my hands on and especially spend alot of time at the AM resource matrix just trying to get an understanding of how to do things. About 2 weeks ago it all started to click and I feel more comfortable (actually ADDICTED) in the modeling window and am starting to see how to make and connect the basic shapes to tweak into objects. And yet I have so much to learn. I made the upper teeth and gums for the head and will post them when I make a few more tweaks but I think my splinemanship is improving. I need to work on bumps and decals and tackle the body making process as well. Thanks for all the compliments and the critique's. It's good to be here.

Heres the render (thanks for asking, I needed to know how to do that) I suspected the nostril and mouth area would not be right but I did not think I would have creases across the cheeks. I'll rework it and post it when I get it ready. Thanks for the tips!

Actually the eyes were my first model but they needed a head so I tried my first rotoscope to give them a home. I have made primitives, tubes, spheres etc but nothing that looked like anything worth finding a forum to post it on. I'll work on the render soon as I can and maybe make a copy and rework the splines as I haven't practiced placement of hooks yet. The animation part is still very intimidating but once I master modeling, decaling, and bone rigging maybe I will be ready to tackle the hard stuff.Thanks

Hi all, I am new to 3d software period. AM is the software I plan to learn with and I just started to understand the modeling aspects of the software. This is a screen shot of a rotoscope of my head that I did this weekend. I am still learning to decal and have had limited success as I take the selected "face" into a pose window but cant for the life of me figure out how to flatten it to decal it but I'll get it. I have about 12 hrs on this one and suspect the spline count is too high and need to work on the spline connections at the nostrils and corners of the mouth but am still very happy that it actually looks like a face. I am used to clay and paint but this is addictive. I have looked at some of the other work on the forum and it looks like a good place to learn and share.