Megaman Characters

[MaJoRoesch]

I'm pretty much a newbie to modeling. I've done some basic stuff in the past, but for the most part I haven't gone that deep. Now, I'm trying to model this character.

http://www.atomic-fire.com/gallery/albums/x/main/normal_zero6.jpg

It's not the hardest model, and I can do 3Dtotal's Low Poly Pilot and Joan of Arc without much trouble. Why on earth does this one stupid model keep stopping me!

How should I model this? Any tips/tuts?

EDIT: Using 3ds Max 6



Attached is a shot of my typical results so far.

[shadowedge]

Hey! its Zero! :)

He shouldn't be too hard to do. and it seems you're modeling him using 1 geometry. My suggestion is, model him in sections (like, knee-down, then thigh, etc) And Since zero is a somewhat robotic character, it wouldnt be so bad if parts of the body were separate geometries.

Also, what I do when modelling symetrical geometries (like human bodies), I build only one side, then mirror then merge.

hope this helps, good luck. :)

[Puckducker]

Part of the difficulty in modelling a 2D hand drawn character is that a line on paper can be interpreted many different ways in a 3D enviroment. So, a character that appears simple may indeed prove quite challening in adapting to a faithful 3D model. Indeed, there are certainly some place on Zero that will have this challege. Try not to copy the reference 100% if it's just not working out. Interperet what you see, and try to hit something that is faithful to the design, but also works well in a 3D space.

But beyond that, shadow has a good suggestion to help you out. I'd also try sticking to modelling in quads only. Don't tri-angulate things unless you have to. The mesh will look a lot cleaner and will be much easier to work with and view without all those extra edges.

[MaJoRoesch]

What do you mean by quads? I haven't heard of that term.

[gfx.KhronoS]

Quads are squares :)

[BiG ToE-3DT]

What do you mean by quads? I haven't heard of that term.

your model is in editable mesh mode, thats why we can see the tri's, if you switch over to editable poly, the tri's will go away.


For modeling, do it poly by poly. So take a plane, position it to where you want it, then extrude an edge to where you want that, and keep doing that until you have made the shape your going after.

[MaJoRoesch]

I see. I'll use editable poly and see how it does without the tri's.


What I'm doing is basically what I learned from all the tuts. Make a box, cylinder, sphere, etc; extrude then manipulate polys as needed to shape the mess and possibly use vertixes to refine the mesh, and repeat till I get a good shape. Think that's the best method for this?

[fartbunny]

all of that depends on your personale taste..
you can use standard geometry, convert it to editable poly and work from there..
or you can take a plane, position it, convert to poly and start extruding edges (my prefered way)
also you can use nurbs to create the lines, but that isn't very popular because it's rather hard, but very efficient if you get it down..
but indeed, if you model a rather robotic character, the easiest way is to model the part seperately so you don't have the problem of skinning every single vert..