Most of the Minder model is made up of sub-patched polygons.
One of the biggest learning points for me was the use of sub-patch
weights. Although looking back at the Lightwave manual I can
see how obvious this is, without someone at CGTalk pointing
this out to me I hadn’t really understood how important
this could be for keeping the polygon count down and getting
crisp edges when needed.
When I needed a more defined edge on the top shoulder assembly
I added more geometry with Bandsaw. With Bandsaw the split
polygons go right around the whole loop of polygons and you
end up increasing the number of polygons in areas where you
don’t need them. Once I understood point weighting principals
it was easy to pick the points I needed and using a left/right
slide of the mouse, increase the subpatch weight of that point.
The net result of doing this to a line of points in a crisp
edge with no extra geometry.
In
MODELER use W in the bottom right corner. Set the mode to
SUBPATCH WEIGHT in the dialog box.
Go to MAP and choose WEIGHTS then in POINT mode (use space
bar) pick the points you want to edit and slide the mouse
left and right. If you are in WEIGHT SHADE MODE (e.g. Your
model is GREEN) you will see the area around the point change
to RED or BLUE depending on how much you slide each way.
A
lot of the modeling was done by laying down a set of point
and then joint them up, four at a time into polygons (select
four points and hit Keyboard ‘P’. Then manipulate
the polygons or points into the correct position in the required
viewport. Often I would select a line of points, press ‘T’
to MOVE. Move the points into a new position and use COPY
and PASTE. This copies the points into the new position and
I move the original points back. I then make new polygons
with the new point. The benefit of this method is that it
keeps the points in the same alignment as the initial points
in which every viewport you were using. If you create new
points they start in position ‘0` in the selected viewport
and need moving to align with other point.
Some
of the key points (or Golden nuggets of info) I was thinking
about during modeling and some things I’ve learnt along
the way:
-Name
every little part of the model as you go (Q)
and use a hierarchy. Eg. A pipe of the arm would be:- left.arm.forearm.pipe1.
This is SO improtant for modeling and texturing
-Model a new part for the model
on a new foreground layer with the rest of
the model in a background layer.
-When mirroring anything to
make a symettrical object make sure the shared
points are lined up on the X axis or you will be in a word
of Polygon pain. (Set Value X=0)
-Keeping
major body sets (e.g. the left thigh and all it pipes and
rings) on separate layer until the end of
modelling helps with selecting parts for wight mapping. I
did this by accident lol as I wasn’t goint to use bones
at first so I kept everything on its own layer.
-Hide
parts of the model you aren’t using
as there is less chance of screwing something up. ( - to hide,
\ to reveal)
-Use
Subpatch weighting
to keep the poly count down and the edges crisp.
-To
create pipes I used an eight sided cylinder
that was cut into segments. I started at one end and selected
groups of points and moved them, them moved along and moved
more etc. etc….I could have used loft of outher ways
but I found that this was like modeling in the reasl world
and I would bent a pipes whereever I like. I always tweaked
with DRAGNET set really high and moved point by point.
