Introduction to Maya - Modeling Fundamentals Vol 1
This course will look at the fundamentals of modeling in Maya with an emphasis on creating good topology. We'll look at what makes a good model in Maya and why objects are modeled in the way they are.
# 1 07-05-2007 , 07:10 PM
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womans head

Here is a pic of a model of a womans head that I will be making into a medusa once I add the snakes and with texture. It will be used for a school project.

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# 2 07-05-2007 , 09:12 PM
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Can we see a wireframe please?


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# 3 08-05-2007 , 12:31 AM
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here is a wire

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# 4 08-05-2007 , 12:53 AM
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# 5 08-05-2007 , 05:34 AM
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thanks Ros. I have just start realistic characters and characters themselves for that matter. I looked at the thread topology. Mine looks similar when not in sub d like I have the mesh right now but I still could make it better. How much does it effect your animation of the character by the way if its not super clean topology. I have saw some good characters before in class but the topology was not as clean as some of the ones on the topology thread. They seemed to animate okay to. Is the topology something employers look at or is it some other reason people stress clean topology. I know quads are important, but if you have all quads but not super clean topology but the model still looks good does it make a huge difference.

# 6 08-05-2007 , 08:16 PM
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Is there any chance you could show a low poly wire of the topology.

One thing to look out for is to not have the head a sphere (as from the pic it looks like the points will meet on the top of the head, if you look in the topology thread the top of the ehads in there are made up form squares, this will make it a lot easier when you come to adding the snakes etc, and for uv mapping.

Good topology helps out when UV mapping, and especially in animation, if somethings out and it dosend deform correctly then youl have some akward looking deformations that will srand right out on a human head (as were all pre programmed to notice humans) You can get away with the odd n-gon or tri (look at some of Steven Stahlberg work for the tri and n-gon placment) in the right place (i.e somewhare where that point dose not move that much.

A good book to see if you can get hold of is Maya secrets ofthe Pros, theres a facial modeling section in there that goes over topology and the theorys behind it.

If youve got a decent low poly start on it then there shouldent be a problem in changing a few bits to suit, plus you'll get better marks!!

Good Luck


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# 7 09-05-2007 , 03:48 AM
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I dont have any low poly but here is some wire frames.

# 8 09-05-2007 , 03:49 AM
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top view.

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# 9 09-05-2007 , 03:50 AM
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side view

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# 10 09-05-2007 , 03:54 AM
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Originally posted by gster123
Is there any chance you could show a low poly wire of the topology.

One thing to look out for is to not have the head a sphere (as from the pic it looks like the points will meet on the top of the head, if you look in the topology thread the top of the ehads in there are made up form squares, this will make it a lot easier when you come to adding the snakes etc, and for uv mapping.

Good topology helps out when UV mapping, and especially in animation, if somethings out and it dosend deform correctly then youl have some akward looking deformations that will srand right out on a human head (as were all pre programmed to notice humans) You can get away with the odd n-gon or tri (look at some of Steven Stahlberg work for the tri and n-gon placment) in the right place (i.e somewhare where that point dose not move that much.

A good book to see if you can get hold of is Maya secrets ofthe Pros, theres a facial modeling section in there that goes over topology and the theorys behind it.

If youve got a decent low poly start on it then there shouldent be a problem in changing a few bits to suit, plus you'll get better marks!!

Good Luck

Gster123 you know your stuff the points definetly met on top of the head. I don't know how that happened because I used a box method. I guess the more characters I do the better I will get at topology.

# 11 09-05-2007 , 05:48 PM
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Yeah, its a hard thing to do as theres lots of considerations, heres a pic of a head that I've been working on in my spare time (only done a couple of hours work on it and it needs some extra refining so dont laugh, joking).

Form the pic you can see how the top of the head is in a series of squares, this way if I wanted to either model hair (or snakes in your case) I can just extrude the hair/snakes out from the squares and still maintain a geo that I can control with relative ease (as theres not a mass of geo from the points that would become uncontrolable)

Hope it helps.

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# 12 09-05-2007 , 09:02 PM
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Nice Model Steve. Love it.


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# 13 10-05-2007 , 04:21 AM
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it looks like subd's try to start at polymodeling and if you have mastered that to a degree try nurbs and then learn subd's since their quite hard to master
and it doesn't look like you modeled from a cube since the geometry is pinched at the top of the head


there are other ways to make the head, i for instance somehow suck at box modeling , i always seem to end up deleting the entire head and so i use patch modeling to create heads which i personally find much easier.
there's a tutorial dvd from gnomon that explains this way very good it''s called something like game modeling workshop or something like that.

hope this helped and good luck
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