Topic awaiting preservation: Modeling practice - skater

Trying to get better at subdiv polygon modeling. It gets tough when you get complex shapes. Still needs some work - her head is screwed up bad, for one thing.

Only 30k or so, so I'll just paste it in here. It is a bit big resolution-wise, but the details get lost in smaller renderings.

Turned down the reflection level on my ceramic material at InI's suggestion






[This message has been edited by Das (edited 09-09-2002).]

Hmm, the waist seems stretched a little bit, though it might just be me, but overall it's pretty impressive. A lot better than i could do =) Do you have a picture or something you're working off of?

I based it off of a Poser pose. Nice thing about Poser is that it's really easy to get any view you want.

I made the model a lot simpler than the poser one, of course, since it's supposed to be ceramic. That was why I chose a ceramic figurine - it justifies the low detail (I can't do high detail subdivs yet)

This is the poser figure.

You know, Das, you could have cropped it down a bit. Cropped as oppossed to sizing it down. Heh.

What is subdiv modeling? Is that like box-modeling but with a few more tricks tossed in?

As far as modeling goes, I think you did a fine job. The only thing that really catches my eye as wrong is the right calf. Same thing thing in the Poser model. The ankle is taking too much of the rotation. There should be a bit more twist in the hip. I used to try to teach this in karate class, and it's not easy. Rotating the hip is good in real life in the virtual world. But in the virtual world, it can do some weird things to the buttocks.

Love the material.

Lately I've been working on modeling my own figure with splines. I've almost got it. In my first few attempts, I was using too many splines for my skill level. Once I took a few out, it got that much easier.

I could've cropped at the front, but I really do like the empty space in front of her as a composition choice. I didn't realize just how much scrolling it would cause, though

Subdiv modeling is often called box modeling. Same thing, I think.

You're right about her right leg. The whole thing is kinda fubar. The meat of the calf should be facing the camera, since the ankle doesn't rotate at the end of the leg. The ankle is also far too sharply angled in the toe-down direction, especially for a skater. A skater's ankles have very limited movement (the boots are designed to help prevent ankle rotation). Poser's pre-defined poses are often a bit off. I should've corrected it before starting work.

I think my best choice would be to just rotate her foot so the blade faces roughly back and the toe points roughly down. That seems to be about right from some skater photos I looked up today. That would leave her leg in about the same position, with the meat of the calf facing up. It would show the blade better, too.

I did learn a lot about modeling with this one, though. It was fun

I did some fiddling with my very own body (as oppossed to using someone else's, which has it's own merits).

I was able to get my foot facing out, but I had to rotate my hips well over 45 degrees. A lot like throwing a round-house, but starting much further back. I'll be the first to tell you that it wasn't exactly comfortable or easy to mantain. Also rotated my shoulders quite a bit, but that can be a good thing to suggest the natural flow of the body. I can't imagine a skater trying to skate like that.

Well, that was fun.


[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 09-10-2002).]