athena
04-09-2007, 07:27 PM
I'm taking an online class right now from CG Society (http://www.cgsociety.org/) on Low Poly Character Modeling. This kind of 3D modeling is what's used in video games, but also really good if you plan on animating your finished characters on your home computer... since really, it's not likely that you'll have a render farm behind you to create your finished film.
I can't really pass along everything that we're presently learning... it'd be overwhelming... but I thought maybe I could drop in a few key points. Such as...
#1 Good Animation Begins with a Good Model
The two images that I attached to this post are "Marina the Fish Girl" (aka the *bad* model) and "Sir Stumpy" (aka the *better* model)... you'll note that I don't say good model, because if I were to do him again I'd probably make a few changes... but he's a lot better than Marina.
Marina was the first character I ever modelled. She renders reasonably well, but when it came to animate her... let's just say it wasn't pretty. That's because when I modelled her I was modelling for look and not the ability to animate.
Look at her face and then compare it to Stumpy's face... Stumpy's face, although a little hi-poly, has edge-loops around the eyes and mouth... this provides the geometry to spread out evenly when the eyes close and collapse with the right sort of creasing when the eyes open. Now look at Marina's mouth and eyes--no edge loops... I quite literally cannot open her mouth ever, otherwise her face would snap in half.
This is what I mean by modelling with animation in mind... you lay into the model where you want the joints to be... what will stretch, what will bend... it can't just look good, because if you model only for looks the minute the character moves it's likely to have all kinds of problems.
#2 Watch Your Poly Count
Now, I'm going to have to disagree with Great Dragon on subdivisions here... both of these characters I've attached are subdivided once. When you subdivide--to create a smoothed look--you are adding to the poly count and making the computer work much harder to do its renders. This is particularly true when you're animating.
Marina for instance is...
19,000 polys before subdivision
37,000 polys after 1 subdivision
...this is all that is really needed, but if you really drive the poly count up
102,000 polys after 2 subdivisions
368,000 polys after 3 subdivisions
...even the act of subdividing that high causes my computer to slow down.
Another way to think about it is I could have ten characters of Marina's level of detail in the same scene for the same amount of computer rendering oomph as a single super subdivided version of Marina.
You want to keep an eye on that poly count because when you make your animated film, you are bound to want to have more than one character... and a set... and lights... and lots of pretty colours and textures... you need to spread the load around and not bog down the computer on a single character.
Now, when I say that these are good, but definitely not *great* models, I'm largely referring to poly count... Stumpy is 91,000 polys and if I were to do him again, I'd try to drive that poly count WAY down. When I was making my short film with him, it was very time-consuming to rig/weight him and there were times--particularly after sets and everything else were in place--when the computer really started to grind... and this is not a slow computer by any means, this is a fast, dedicated animation machine with $1000 video card, lots of RAM and plenty of hard drive space... but still, you have to spend those polys wisely.
That's all I got for now... I'll add more as my class progresses. :D
I can't really pass along everything that we're presently learning... it'd be overwhelming... but I thought maybe I could drop in a few key points. Such as...
#1 Good Animation Begins with a Good Model
The two images that I attached to this post are "Marina the Fish Girl" (aka the *bad* model) and "Sir Stumpy" (aka the *better* model)... you'll note that I don't say good model, because if I were to do him again I'd probably make a few changes... but he's a lot better than Marina.
Marina was the first character I ever modelled. She renders reasonably well, but when it came to animate her... let's just say it wasn't pretty. That's because when I modelled her I was modelling for look and not the ability to animate.
Look at her face and then compare it to Stumpy's face... Stumpy's face, although a little hi-poly, has edge-loops around the eyes and mouth... this provides the geometry to spread out evenly when the eyes close and collapse with the right sort of creasing when the eyes open. Now look at Marina's mouth and eyes--no edge loops... I quite literally cannot open her mouth ever, otherwise her face would snap in half.
This is what I mean by modelling with animation in mind... you lay into the model where you want the joints to be... what will stretch, what will bend... it can't just look good, because if you model only for looks the minute the character moves it's likely to have all kinds of problems.
#2 Watch Your Poly Count
Now, I'm going to have to disagree with Great Dragon on subdivisions here... both of these characters I've attached are subdivided once. When you subdivide--to create a smoothed look--you are adding to the poly count and making the computer work much harder to do its renders. This is particularly true when you're animating.
Marina for instance is...
19,000 polys before subdivision
37,000 polys after 1 subdivision
...this is all that is really needed, but if you really drive the poly count up
102,000 polys after 2 subdivisions
368,000 polys after 3 subdivisions
...even the act of subdividing that high causes my computer to slow down.
Another way to think about it is I could have ten characters of Marina's level of detail in the same scene for the same amount of computer rendering oomph as a single super subdivided version of Marina.
You want to keep an eye on that poly count because when you make your animated film, you are bound to want to have more than one character... and a set... and lights... and lots of pretty colours and textures... you need to spread the load around and not bog down the computer on a single character.
Now, when I say that these are good, but definitely not *great* models, I'm largely referring to poly count... Stumpy is 91,000 polys and if I were to do him again, I'd try to drive that poly count WAY down. When I was making my short film with him, it was very time-consuming to rig/weight him and there were times--particularly after sets and everything else were in place--when the computer really started to grind... and this is not a slow computer by any means, this is a fast, dedicated animation machine with $1000 video card, lots of RAM and plenty of hard drive space... but still, you have to spend those polys wisely.
That's all I got for now... I'll add more as my class progresses. :D