


A few is fine, but you don’t want to end up with too many. A pole is a vertex that has five or more edges connected to it. This can cause rendering artifacts.Īnother thing to keep an eye on are poles. Don’t make your quads long and narrow, or too large. You could model in tris if you wanted, but this is much harder on the human brain. At render time models are tessellated into triangles, so it helps to keep things tidy.
#Character modeling maya 2016 tutorial skin
You’re doing half the modeling, and when it comes time to rig you can mirror your joints, skin weights and blend shapes.įor the geometry, when working in Maya you want to keep your mesh in quads (four-sided polygons). To model in halves across the x-axis is something that will save you lots of time. You should create your characters with symmetry. A lighter mesh also gets easier to rig and animate. Cartoon characters are less detailed, which makes for lighter builds. It’s much easier to make a cartoon character, than a true to life portrait. The more realistic the character, the harder it gets to nail it, so start simple. Use image planes, both for the front and side, rather than try to work of a single reference. It’s often better to pick a character that there’s plenty of reference for, than try to design your own. Because 3D modeling is such a time consuming process, it helps to know exactly what you’re trying to do. So plow the internet for as much reference material as you can. As a rule, you can never have too much reference. One of the keys to creating successful character models is to use reference.
