Character modeling, etc book - help?

[AlienBZ]

Well, by this time next month I'll be getting ready to start buying books for my copy of 3DS Max from Amazon and Barnes & Noble's websites again, in particular books on character (and animal/bird/reptile, as well as spaceship/flying saucer, common household/electronic object, and alien) modeling books so could you guys please give me advice on some good books that come with tutorials that I can buy at these places/sites?

 

These books may be as old as Max 6 and later, as I already have 2 Max 6 books that I bought back in Aug. of this year.

 

So which books should I buy (not too expensive, please)?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Cad64]

All you need to do is get yourself a good beginners guide to learning Studio Max. You need something that will walk you through the entire interface and introduce you to all the tools and techniques for using them. Once you learn all about the program and how the tools work, you will be able to build anything you can imagine.

 

I can't really recommend any books though. I learned most everything I know from watching training videos.

[Cad64]

The videos at 3D Total are very good: http://www.3dtotal.com/training/

 

The "Eva Wild" series is excellent. Probably the best I've seen for character modeling in Max. It walks you through modeling, texturing, rigging and animating a character. It is well worth the money if you want to learn character modeling and animating in Max.

 

"The Dozer" videos are great for learning hard surface modeling. The techniques discussed in this training could be used to build any type of vehicle, spaceship, household objects or whatever.

 

"Lighting & Materials" and "ArchiCD II" are both great for learning how to work with materials, lighting and rendering.

 

Unfortunately, training is not cheap. That's why I'm trying to point you to videos that will truly help you with what you're trying to accomplish.

[AlienBZ]

Cad64, I did a bit of searching on Amazon and found this character modeling book that I picked up for about $7 total.

 

Character modeling book I found

 

Before ordering it, I scanned the preview pages and it looks good to me (actually, I got it ~500 pages for under $3 + S & H).

 

What do you think of it, Cad64?

 

I never know that it was on the market before discovering it just now.

[Cad64]

I read some of the reviews and they seem to be pretty mixed. Some people really like the book while others really hate it. But, you only spent $7 on it, so I'm sure you will get your money's worth. In the future though, I would recommend thoroughly researching books before purchasing. Make sure you buy training material that has mostly good reviews. And look for books that have been released recently. That book came out in 2005, so it's pretty old. If you keep buying old books you will never learn about the latest tools and techniques.

[AlienBZ]

well, I'm finally getting somewhere with my 3D character modeling at last! My big breakthrough came today (for the first time) at Barnes & Noble's cafe when I was trying to model this infant character model

 

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?313714-Newbie-Question-modeling-a-human-alien-baby-character-for-a-movie-help

 

which caused me to gain an understanding of how 3D modeling worked, and after I got home I got this far in modeling this baby character in 3DS max

 

look -

 

what do you think of my work so far?

 

although I tried doing this model in blender, it proved too hard, i was getting frustrated, so i decided i'd create my people and alien, etc models in max, and use blender to sculpt them with my bamboo capture tablet/pens.

[Cad64]

what do you think of my work so far?

 

There is nothing to see. All you've done are the ankles. But I can see that you're doing twice the work that is actually necessary. For a character, you only need to create half the model and then mirror across. There is no need to model the entire character.

[AlienBZ]

I've (last night) started with a half a box to model this infant ET (alien baby) model from, using my 3ds max 6 animation/visual effects techniques book I got last year, I'm doing tut 3.5 on pg 87 - 89 in that book, and today i've successfully exported the default infant skeleton (exported as multiple frames) from Poser and imported it (by selecting "my_file_name"_0_0.3ds although there were other files under that same name but numbered say from 0_1 thru 0_14 which I left untouched in the folder where I exported this skeleton from Poser) I only merged "filename_0_0.3ds" into last night's scene) into max (actually I merged this infant skeleton into my work from last night), and since this infant skeleton was seen by max as 1 whole object, I went into modify > edit geometry > explode > objects (by choosing to explode as objects instead of elements) and now I'm trying to follow the instructions in my max bible chapter 9 trying to link the infant skeleton's bones as a parent/child hierarchy so I can rig it up before modeling last night's half box into an infant ET character and then placing this skeleton into the ET model, binding the skeleton rigging to the model, and animating it before making clothing for it - but somehow, the link button isn't working at all for me (max bible's instructions on pg 253 says link button's supposed to turn into a dark yellow color to show I'm in link mode, but regardless of what I try, my link button remains white, does nothing at all).

 

am I missing something?

 

did I explode the skeleton's bones the wrong way (as objects instead as elements) or what?

 

what I'm trying to do at this point is make the skeleton's arms stick straight out from the sides (like the photos on tut 3.5 on pg 89 of this max 6 book) without the bones breaking off of the skeleton's body before modeling the infant ET character. (and then after putting/binding skeleton to model extrusions, move the arms back to sides to shape as needed according to ref images)

 

could anyone please tell me what I'm supposed to do?

 

(note: I used the quad menu to hide my half box model that is to be shaped into this character)

 

here are shots of my work so far:

[Cad64]

I don't think you're understanding the terminology. When the words "Bone" or "Skeleton" are used, it is not in reference to a skeleton mesh, which is what you have imported from Poser. Linking your baby model to that skeleton mesh will do nothing for you in terms of animation. You need to create a character rig using the bone tools.

 

Here's a 5 part tutorial on the subject of building a character rig: https://tutsplus.com/tutorial/complete-human-character-rig-in-3d-studio-max-part-1/

[AlienBZ]

when I tried creating bones about a year ago, my bones always were positioned at right angles to my character's (using characters I d/l from these free sites) leg, at a 90 degree angle and also always laying sideways (off to the character's side) as if they were laying flat on the ground as I created each bone (for shinn, thigh, etc) - how do I fix this?

 

also, do i have to discard that infant skeleton/mesh?

 

if not, what good is it?

[Cad64]

when I tried creating bones about a year ago, my bones always were positioned at right angles to my character's (using characters I d/l from these free sites) leg, at a 90 degree angle and also always laying sideways (off to the character's side) as if they were laying flat on the ground as I created each bone (for shinn, thigh, etc) - how do I fix this?

 

I have already explained this and told you what you need to do: http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?79306-trying-to-create-(rig-using-animation-gt-bone-tool)-rigging-skeleton-help

 

And yes, discard the skeleton mesh. It is of no use.