Figured out how to model a decent, smoothe head

[gra4mac]

It took a while to figure this out, but I finally modelled a reasonably smooth, human looking head. The technique is fairly simple, but still takes a lot of tweaking. With practice it will go a lot faster. Comments?

[starwarsguy]

Cool! Much better than my first! THe more you make em, the better they get. Just gotta come up with reasons to make more. lol

[jamagica]

Wow..that's gotta be one of the smoothest heads I've seen ever..what's your method?

[Zaryin]

Damn, some of my models still aren't that smooth.

[ZachBG]

Them's some seriously big irises.

[Malaclypse235]

Wow, that is looking very nice!

 

Mal

[gra4mac]

Thanks, I'm rather happy with the results. After almost 4 years of struggling with many things in A:M, I found the best way to make a smooth head is to model it in another app, 3ds Max in this case. The head was box modelled, Max has splines too, but I find that starting with a spherized box and adding what I need is much simpler. Sorry for the sour grapes, but I have fought with A:M for almost everything I've done and I finally realized, I'm slow some times, that A:M just doesn't cut it for me. I greatly admire those who can make it work.

 

Not only does Max do a great job smoothing, but the equivalent of copy flip attach works every time, as does mirror mode, and after 2 weeks of testing Max out and trying all the knobs and dials, it crashed once. I haven't tried rigging and animating a character yet, but I'm really looking forward to it.

 

I expect this thread to disapear soon, so I'll say see you and the best of luck with whatever you do and whatever app you do it in. Happy animating.

[mango]

how do you import it into A:M from 3DStudio Max?

 

I'm curious because we had a demo of modo - www.luxology.com

at Nickelodeon where i work and i was quite imressed with it. the guy giving the demo was writing a Modo to .mdl sdk, but doesn't know when it will be ready

 

jm

[Tunames]

UHHH....I don't think he imported it! That was a little thing called SARCASM

[higginsdj]

Another Application may be the best way for YOU to model a head - that doesn't mean that its THE best way.

 

Lesson 1 - Never blame your tools for lack of experience/skills.

 

Max has smoothing tools - AM doesn't (aside from porcelain). There are great many users of AM who can make smooth Organic objects (including heads) without the need to resort to 'other apps'.

 

Cheers

[robcat2075]

It is a smooth head, and if it works for him, it works for him.

 

I haven't tried rigging and animating a character yet, but I'm really looking forward to it.

 

I did the Animation Showdown 30+ times last year and almost every week, there'd be entries done in 3DS. Very chunky looking. I'm sure that's mostly operator error, but it seems that even at the professional level people struggle with animating in 3DS.

 

For example, the troubling animation in Kaena: The Prophecy (a feature done in 3DS Max). I gotta say I'm not tempted to switch, even for smoother heads.

[Paul Forwood]

Yeah, well I haven't looked for a while but the last time I looked MAX was 100 times the price of A:M with plugins costing as much as the purchase price of A:M.

 

Bang for buck there is nothing on the market that can touch A:M and with every new version it gets better and better and it only costs $99.00 to take that step forward!

 

These forums will answer almost any question that you can raise regarding the software and cgi in general and the small team of programmers who bring these tools to us are doing an amazing job!

 

If you've got money to burn, by all means jump ship but at the end of the day, it all comes down to talent and tenacity.

[Paul Forwood]

Oops! I meant to say 10 times but it is in fact 16.62 times the price - $4,971 (£2,637). And when you want to upgrade get ready to sell your granny!