Fox Raptor

Thank you everyone for your input. It really does help. So I'm figuring at least for this one, that just groups + materials and some selectively placed decals should suffice for my needs. On the note of materials, I did have one question. Hypothetically speaking, if I wanted to export the model so a friend could use it with their copy of 3DS, would the materials kinda get 'baked' into a texture map for the model and be saved along with the export data? Or would my friend have to re-texture the thing on their own? I should hopefully have a finished version of Leviathan up reasonably soon.

As a matter of fact, "crazy like a..." is part of it. Anyway, the character is Fairy Leviathan from the Rockman/Megaman Zero games. This is what I've got so far with just going with the flat colored groups for some parts, she's otherwise untextured. And this is the reference sheet I've been using for her. So as you can see, it's nothing that requires photo realism in the least. As a general rule of thumb, I prefer to make my work look more drawn when possible(I still fail hard at trying to use that one ink material properly). Which is also part of the reason I'm asking this; for something that doesn't require much detail, is it really that efficient to basically texture the whole thing? @Gerry Thanks for the encouragement. Do you happen you know any good tutorials for using the Ink Stroke material plug-in? I've had almost no luck getting it to do what I want on my own. @Eric Your intent doesn't sound much different than mine, do you have anything posted? I checked your profile, but I didn't find a website or gallery listed. @Everyone Sorry for posting this under one reply instead of replying individually, I didn't wanna clutter things too much, ya know?

Greetings again everyone, once more, the long time lurker(I swear I'd contribute more if you guys around here weren't so good at helping, ya just beat me to the punch 10 out of 10 times.) rears his head while looking to pick the brains of the Animation: Master community. Anyway here's the pickle I've got. I've been working on and off on a model I started late June and I've gotten to the point where I've finished the mesh and now it's time to make it look more like a someone. Yeah, time to texture map this thing. So while I'm gradually frustrating myself flattening pieces out(The tutorial on the Virtual Media Studios site was very useful), I start thinking "Ya know... AM does allow us to simply apply a flat color to a group. Wouldn't it be easier just to texture the parts that need extra detail, like where that solid color transitions to more complicated things?" Which is why I'm here right now. I wanted to know if there are any particular pros or cons about this approach. I mean, alot of the models I've dissected to learn what I have about mesh design have been textured from head to toe. Is that just the best way to go? If requested, I can provide screenshots of my model and the reference sheet I was using for her. Not sure if that would do any good, but I know for some people it helps to see what's being worked on. Thanks in advance and I hope to hear from you guys again soon. -Fox

Thanks muchly. Anyway, the way I'm working is that I have a kinda place-holder body that I was using as a form to build the clothes over. I've been working on it and have been doing alright(Least in my opinion), but I mostly was asking if there were any tricks I should be aware of. You mentioned some books that might contain something useful, perhaps if I could get a PM or something with some titles? As for searching the forum, I've run a few searches and mostly come up with hits that reference using an enlarged copy of the body to make a shirt or pants/shorts. I checked ARM as well and found mostly the same. As for Google... eh, my results there got me more clothing stores than tutorial sites. I appreciate the heads up though.

Hey everyone, Been working on a model of Kisuke Urahara from Bleach for the past couple weeks and so far, I'm liking what I've got. However now I'm on the task of dressing the man and it dawned on me that the more robe-style attire of his 'wannabe kimono top' is a little more complicated to work with than I anticipated. So I wanted to know if anyone had any good suggestions on modelling that sort of thing. I went ahead and attached my reference image if anyone needs an idea of what I'm working on. Thanks in advance, I look forward to hearing from you guys soon.

So this is one of those things I really don't have to consider while using AM?

Yo guys, long time no post. I'll save the catch-ups for another thread, but I have a question that's been bugging me lately and I figured it seemed a little newb-ish, so I thought this would be the place to put it. The topic description pretty much says it all; I've been reading alot of 3D tutorials about edgeloops and I'd like to know exactly how they make facial expressions easier to work with. Maybe I'm just missing something cause I haven't really done much outside of blinking and some fairly simplistic expression work, but I feel like I'm kinda missing something here. Thanks in advance and I hope you hear from you guys soon.