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  • DlL: I'm new to Maya and our teacher in class is not the most amazing teacher. I'm an animator in my second year. I have fun building...
  • emi: Thank you for the lesson, it very useful, I hope you will make vedio leesons in the future
  • Björn: I guess your character turned out pretty good, but have you never heard that you should never have triangles in your mesh? :o
  • Antony: That's only really true if your mesh is a base to be taken into ZBrush. Even then, ZBrush can handle triangles. For a game model...
  • Alexander Teplitzky: Alexander; 4th year animator. outstanding work - the true face of 3d animation!
  • marie: I love your work. I took up Maya before but one of my teacher doesnot teach us well... Anyway, I find your book so usefull and...
  • marie: You Modeling Reel is awsome! What software did you use? Thanks. =)
  • Antony: Hi Marie, I use Silo, Maya and Photoshop...hope this helps.
  • Simon: Hi Anthony, Well i am looking forward to this tutorial you have going, I will be using Cinema 4D, great wotk loved your red sonja.
  • toolika: cool reel!
  • Fred: Its the coolest I've come across so far...simple and cute.. and not stereotyped...its a tutorial you should start thinking about...
  • ZIKEO: Hi there Dude Nice Tut, simple and to the point. Very much the same way I model already. Z Amapi - Carrara user.
  • portia: this is really one of the best wed site. really very usfull....
  • Bob Martin: What a great contribution to the world of character building. We are all very grateful for artist like you who are willing to...
  • Clebersales: This is very well, congratulations. Not stop, I want see finalized.
  • Aaron: Great tutorial. One of the better ones I've found. However, I can't really tell how you connected the legs to the body. It...
  • Richard: OMG dude! This tutorial is great and your cartoonish female model are simply AWESOME!!!! It would be nice to have some Hair...
  • Jovan: I got your book about 5 years ago and I love your work. But there's two things I would like to say. One, that picture reminds...
  • George Rubio: Easy, useful, short and cooooooool!!! I've seen your tut many many times. Greetings from Mexico City ;)
  • Kleber Xavier: Hello, Greetings. My name is Kleber and I am coming back to you because I would like to make a character for me. She has the...
  • Antony: Hi, please email me and we can discuss this if you like...
  • Anula Singh: Hi I was looking for such tutorial thanks a lot i am able to do now real time human body modeling I am learning MAYA...
  • Andre: Hi Antony As a newbie to 3d, I found this hugely helpful and I really had fun and managed to model the arms, legs and torso...
  • Dillon: Very nice tutorial. I am very confused about how you "joined" the leg and arm to the torso, however. I tried deleting facing and...
  • Jed Hunsaker: Excellent work! I especially like your female modeling skills.
  • Linda Galvin: Nice Reel. Have you considered putting together a how to on building a reel, showing the production steps towards making still...
  • Jack: Wow! It is soo cool of you to share your process. I really am learning a lot from it. Thank you so much!
  • Walter: Thanks for having that tutorial on Character Modelling. I applied what you did in Maya and used it in Lightwave. It was much...
  • Rob: This tutorial was very inspiring to me. I've just begun a college Maya class and I'm excited to learn the techniques as fast as...
April 2009
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Availability

My current contract is due to end in May, which leaves me available for hire from June. I am free for full time game related artwork, animation and rigging as well as high resolution modeling for print, advertising and animation.

So please get in touch so we can discuss how I can help you.

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Open Tutorial - Files

Ok, first here are the latest model files for you -

…and here is the shader I used -

Mandy Skin shader

The shader is much simpler than the Red Sonja one, please let me know if you need any guides on how to use it :)

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Open Tutorial - Hair

I began tweaking the overall look of the image, along with adding the new hair. Below is the initial tweak where I worked on the image as a whole, adjusting the colours etc.

Next I started to paint in the hair.

  1. Because I worked with seperate renders/layers I could easily hide the rendered hair while I worked. Using it as reference for how the hair should fall.
  2. Starting with a darker colour I first blocked in the basic shape.
  3. Next, moving a shade lighter I start to work in the hair details.
  4. Again, stepping up a shade I then work on top of that layer.
  5. This continues, gradually building up the hair detail untill we have a nice covering.

Now, the hair as it stands is a little flat, but it does give us a great base to work on. Below you can see how the current hair looks, with an extra, lighter layer on top.

Now, grab some reference if you feel you need it and start to work in more shape and detail into the hair.

As a final pass, take a white brush and add the hilights around the outside of her hair. As the hair gets finer the light penetrates it easier so the free strands will appear white.

As you can see above I also started this process on the dog, but he is not completed yet

I also darkened the grass as it was too distracting. This scene is all about Mandy afterall, so the background shouldn`t distract you from her

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Open Tutorial - Rendering cont.

A bit of a better update now :)

Once I was more or less happy with the shaders and lighting I then rendered out the different elements, so I had full control over them in Photoshop.

As well as renders of her skin, clothing etc. I also output the shadows and an ambient occlusion pass. I seperated the AO pass so the skin was on a different image as adding the general one would make the skin too dark and dirty looking.

Throwing it all together in Photoshop gave me something like this…

As you can see, its still miles from complete. So now we start to tweak the colours and work in details.

This is where I am at up to now, below is a list of things still to do…

  • Rework the grass, removing the obvious redundant blades and improving the overall look.
  • Add more detail to the cliff surface.
  • Paint in hair detail.
  • Add fur to the dog.
  • Paint in eye details.
  • Add texture to her jeans and a pattern to her shirt.
  • A general tidy up, including softening the edges of Many and the cliff to add a subtle depth of field effect.
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Open Tutorial - Rendering

Hi all, I got a bit ahead of myself and started rendering :) The process so far is documented below…(sorry for the grainy renders)

First I exported the models and rammed them into Maya. Then with a basic shader applied (a pale Lambert) I began to work on the lighting first.

This scene has a main light, a back light and a slight scattering of ambient occlusion.

Next I worked back in the main colours…

Once I was happy with the main colours I worked on the shaders a little, removing all the shininess from areas it wasn`t needed.

Next came a tricky part. I wanted to use SSS (SubSurface Scattering) on her skin to make it appear more realistic. The problem was my computer wasn`t playing and refused to render the whole scene, so after many crashes and reboots I decided to scrap the idea.

So, what I did next was import the skin shader from my Red Sonja piece. After refining the shader and removing the redundant nodes I started to work it into this scene.

Here is how far I am now…stil not finished but a move in the right direction.

I need to finish the rest of the scene so we have the main colours and lighting in place, then I will take her into Photoshop for the post processing part.

I will upload the model, and the main shader I am using next week for you to have a look at.

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
 

 

 

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