Blending Life modeling timelapse
October 14th, 2008 by andy
Since I haven’t done any realistic modeling recently, I’ve decided to give the blending life contest a go and try modeling a photorealistic human character. It’s fun doing this kind of stuff again after a couple of years modeling monsters, rodents and bunnies. I’ve certainly learned a lot about keeping meshes clean during big buck bunny. Even though the characters were not photorealistic, the amount of freedom of movement (squash & stretch) they had to be capable of, forced me to rethink my approach to developing mesh topology.
The biggest change I made to my workflow is not using Optimal Mode anymore for drawing the mesh wireframe in edit mode. Although it has its advantages for displaying the poly flow very clearly, it makes things look too pretty. Since you have no clear idea where the vertices and faces really are, the underlying mesh tends to get very messy if you don’t watch out! (This is one of the bigger mistakes I made in Creature Factory).
Using this “freeform-extrude-fill-poly-by-poly” workflow is just a personal preference of mine. It might be a bit slower than box modeling but for me it’s easier to think about the topology that way… dunno.
A nice modeling mantra: keep it quad - keep quads regular - concave quads are evil ;)
I will try and capture as much of the process as I can, modeling, texturing, shading and rendering, etc. I hope that’ll force me to finish this bugger! I based my mesh loosely around the reference provided by 3d.sk. The video is sped up 10 times.
enjoy!
.andy
October 14th, 2008 at 13:19
Amazing Video..modeling demostration!
I enjoy watching……..!!!!!
Hey!your “Dark Orange Blender Theme” looks very cool!
Can you share it? somewhere we can download this Theme python file?
Thanks
all the best for the Photorealistic Contest!
October 14th, 2008 at 17:28
Thank you Andy, you always inspire me with your work. I also learn a lot. You are just one of blender´s guru!!
Thanks!!!
October 15th, 2008 at 07:14
Great time lapse, when will we see a final render ?
As you know, I am a big fan of photo realism so this is very interesting - the master and the challenge. good luck!
October 16th, 2008 at 01:55
Looking forward to this. Good luck!
October 16th, 2008 at 19:25
Yes, the video is super cool and the theme too. May you send us the python file for the theme ? pls , thx
October 17th, 2008 at 02:32
yeah the theme ! :D love it.
October 19th, 2008 at 10:43
thanks a lot for the kind words :)
unfortunately it’s a bit difficult to publish my theme, since i made some modifications to the blender button drawtypes and sliders to look more slick (it’s shaded and slightly rounded. the sliders do not have handles) as you can see here: http://www.artificial3d.com/images/screenshots/darkorange.jpg
everything is made to fit my gnome theme more or less…
if you just want the color scheme, here’s a slightly modified version that uses the rounded buttons. i hope it works:
http://www.artificial3d.com/files/darkorange.py
cheers,
.andy
October 20th, 2008 at 20:08
Very Nice Andy. Again you’re some of the best Blender’s Artists ! waw awsome. Oh yeah, to make it more fun, activate the shaded buton in blender !
October 24th, 2008 at 14:28
I just found your site, congratulations for your works and for the good usage of blender, im making the transition from max to blender, it have been a little difficult, i notice that u use ubuntu, i have tried to use one time but blender didnt work with compiz, please add me in msn if u use, the same mail that i send u here, again congrats and cheers from brazil, your site is in my daily schedule.
Andre…
October 28th, 2008 at 21:47
Hi Andy! I always amired your work, since early versions of Blender. I think that creature factory models are great.
October 31st, 2008 at 16:42
Thanks for sharing this Andy… for some reason timelapse modelling vids always inspire me!
Do you always start out by modelling the eye area? I suppose it’s quite a logical place to start to make sure the loops turn out right…
Keep up the great work!
November 10th, 2008 at 21:23
Dude!!! You just unlocked achievment: EPIC WIN!!!!11
November 10th, 2008 at 21:23
sorry for double post. It was an accident… now i feel smaller…er
November 12th, 2008 at 16:19
Great work so far ! I also dropped Optimal Mode when modeling some time ago, it leads to horrible meshes…
Are you going to sculpt on this fella ?
November 30th, 2008 at 16:32
that was astounding! due to the speed, I mised one pice- can anyone talk me through that eye/eyelid workflow? I saw the basic outer eye construction simply enough- did the eye get duplicated and slightly scaled in for creating the inner area? And how did that eyelid line get made- it looked like it was part of the eye sphere loop modified but I’m not certain…any help (or links to this technique) much appreciated!
Thanks!
CG
August 25th, 2009 at 13:43
Hy Andy,
Great job on this face, I am really amazed. Especially that You work on almost highpoly version from scratch, poly by poly. GREAT
I have a little question about one thing. When working on the eye, around 2:36, you manage to clear some edges from the triangles that blender makes automatically when subdividing edges. How did U do that?
It would be a greatthing to know, Iit would save some time.
Thanks
Bibusz