The eye balls are always separate spheres when working with a creature that will look about, canine, animal, dragon, yeti, etc.) The eyes are also set up on their own rig that is parented with the main animation rig. I hope that helps.

Do you box model (sculpt and morph objects out of primitive shapes), Spline model (create virts and splines the fill them in, like paper mashie), or face model, create a ingle plane the extrude it's edges to create your desired object?

Now as modeling and animation are two entirely separate crafts, and I would highly recommend eventually choosing one and focusing on it. However, knowing the basics of the other is just as important, and at first there isn't a problem in dabbling in both. (Hell that's what I did :P) But eventually it is important to choose which one fits your fancy that way your efforts will be focused thus resulting in better work.


For biological models try to keep your faces as quads or tries as much as possible, (it's ok to have one or two exceptions)

Also, TEXTURES. SELL. THE. MODLE!

and check out this sight.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/

These guys are really good about critique, and so forth, so I highly recommend becoming quite active on that sight.

I hope this helps man, and best of luck!

Thanks for all the help and tips! Thanks! :D I think in the end, I'm probably gonna want to lean more towards animation than just general modeling. But it'd feel great to make really great looking models to animate too.

For keeping the faces as quads and tries, do you mean, like divide it up almost like 4 hemispheres?

As for how I [would like to] model, my mind is sort of set on box modeling. That seems like the simplest process with the most accurate results.

Again, thanks for the help. I hope to have something up in a while. :D

No problem!

Yah, I box model as well, splines are just not my thing, as for quads and tries I'm referring to the number of points that make up a polygon, such as squares and triangles.

Oh, that's what you mean with the quads and tires.

I wanna believe the box modeling process is also the "professional" way to do it. I think the other ones are somewhat more for straight up "artistic" purposes, but different processes for different folks, I guess.

Hmm I wonder if there's any way to collaborate with 3D projects. It'd definitely be something I'd be willing to try after I get the hang of it a bit.

hmmm... that does sound like it could be fun :) (as for spines and such it really is just user preference, so long as the end result looks good and was done in a timely manor, it really doesn't matter how it got there.)

I've thought about it myself, but from what I hear from people who actually do it is that it takes unGodly amounts of time to do. I recall him once telling me it takes 3+ hours do do a single picture where as it takes me 15 minutes for me to do one of my own...so I quashed the idea. I guess if you needed to ask anyone about it, you can ask a friend of mine  Lopside098

3 hours sounds about right considering you're trying to pose the character, build a brand new background, and composition everything correctly. And once you have all the pieces, building a second picture should be even faster. I'm sure that would take a little under 30 minutes to an hour, assuming the model's already built.

If you really wanted to take shortcuts in 3D, you could always just reposition the model and toss in a few splashes of Photoshop.

I guess I can go ask your friend for some pointers some time. And if you're ever interested in getting into 3D, there's several tutorials on a site I heard of called: Blendercookie.com. They've got several free tutorials including a "Getting started" tutorial that takes less than an hour or so to go through.