My first cut on Kurt's cool cartoon doggie tute...

# 1 28-07-2004 , 06:03 AM

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My first cut on Kurt's cool cartoon doggie tute...

I have started graduate school and took a couple classes this summer so its been a while since I modeled anything.

I wanted to try out maya 6 unlimited and I needed a maya fix so I cranked out Kurt's Cartoon Doggy tute.

I want to thank Kurt Boutilier for once again producing a wonderfully useful and informative tutorial and thanks to both Simply Maya and Kurt for offering it to the community (and poor students like me) for free.

To do:
-- refine muscle details
-- work on some head detail and proportions
-- redo the eyes
-- tweak the paws a bit

Kurt, put up a side view of that bulldog please, so I can model this fellow a buddy. (smile)

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Last edited by ctbram; 05-08-2004 at 03:48 PM.

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# 2 28-07-2004 , 10:34 AM

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hey...looks nice !

The Minas Tirith Project - Building Modeler
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# 3 28-07-2004 , 03:16 PM

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I have a question about DXF.

I think I might have history problems with this model causing Maya to hang / crash.

My question(s) are:

1. How do I export dxf and reimport to clean up history problems?

I tried the aliastomaya.mll but that only lets me export dxf but not import???

I tried dwgtranslator.mll but that one:

lets me import and export but converts the model to 1/3 scale, converts all nurbs to polygons and converts all single poly objects into individual polygons that I have to go around and merge every single vertex to get a single polyobject again and since I have vertices (like the points of the hair on top of each other on purpose) I can't use any global operation to recombine the model. The end result if hours of tedium and frustration trying to get back to a working point.

Can someone please explain in maya 6 and 5 EXACTLY what mlls I have to have loaded and EXACTLY how to export / import dxf for a nurbs AND a polyobject without having nurbs converted to polygons and polyobject broken into individual polgons that then have to be individually stitched back into a single polyobject please?

Also a quest for Kurt...

Kurt, I notice you model with trianlges in you polyobjects. When I do this mental ray will not render. Some times it is a ROYAL pain in the %$#$ to try to manually remove each and every triangle (it especially sucks to have to add edges all the way around models and literally hundreds of extra polygons just to get rid of a single triangle.

My question is what do you do Kurt?

Not use mental ray? Collapse your subd (which increases the poly count significantly)? Grin and bare manually trying to remove every triangle?

I would like to see a tutorial on lightening a mesh. There are tools in maya but they suck to say the least. There has to be a way to take a completely symetric model and then lighten the geometry AND keep quads? Whenever I try to reduce I get a completely trashed geometry.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 28-07-2004 at 03:19 PM.

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# 4 28-07-2004 , 03:39 PM

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I have never used mental ray..... For the most part i try and keep my mesh as clean as i can with quads but some times no matter what you need a few tris in there to get the shape you need ......

Most of my models are pretty easy to see where the 3 sided faces are and i'll go in there and move edges around adding edges wiht split poly to get a 4 sided face.

As far as exporting and that i just select my mesh and export the mesh out unclicking channels, history ETC in the option box.. seems to do the trick for me. Then just import into a new scene.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination, knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world. (Albert Einstein)

https://www.artstation.com/kurtb

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# 5 29-07-2004 , 05:32 AM

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Kurt what renderer do you use? Your cyborg frog render was fantastic. Are you using an uber renderer like renderman?

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 6 29-07-2004 , 02:43 PM

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ctbram the frog render is all maya rendered. The rain drops where a second layer pasted on in post with Photoshop... Im not very knowledgeable with mental ray yet.

Kurt

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination, knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world. (Albert Einstein)

https://www.artstation.com/kurtb

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