Spy Girl

I'll have to hunt down a British English dictionary. I think the difference between "arse" and "ass" is that the former is a more sexy version of the later. The later can also be a donkey.

Thanks for the nice comments about my illustration.

I've done the front and side views of her head. The side view doesn't mtch up quite perfectly. Is this going to be a problem? I'll also have to change the colours since all the vertices and polies in Lightwave are white, and when you have something on a different layer it is black. I haven't found a way to change this.

Not sure exactly how it gets done, but you can probably find out here:

http://members.shaw.ca/LightWavetutorials/Main_Menu.htm

As far as matching the images up, is you have software that supports layering - Bring both into the same file and make the top one about 50% transparent, then you can adjust the images from there.

A.Russel, here is another method thats awsome and returns quick results.
For Game models, reduce the number of sections once you have gotten used to the method.
Cylinder Modelling
I've used the method in both Max and Maya when tutoring my students on modeling techniques, we are able to construct a full model to go in one day.

That looks good and simple. However the tutorial doesn't cover clothes. Would that matter? Could I use one method for the body then another for putting the clothes on?

That is a good tutorial you have there. Should even be pretty easy to use MED with that method.

@ A. Russel - Most the time you will mix and match various methods throughout the models construction. You just have to take time to learn the different modeling methods and determine which will work best for your given situation.

I've fixed up the profile image of the head to match up with the front view better. I've also drawn a couple of body references.

A common technique for clothes is to extrude off the body parts then extend into the clothing items of choice.
It helps when animating as the clothes are linked directly to the animated parts and so form part of the process by default, guiding the finishing touches for a complete animation.
Saves on poly count too.
Cheers.

@Nemesis: Would that mean "drawing" the clothes on with a cutting tool?

Joan of Arc

Take a look at how they do it here.

Yes, I've got that tutorial. Though it looks more difficult than the cylinder method, I think I'll try to go with it. I downloaded the model that the author used to make the cylinder tutorial and it looked aweful. It had holes in it and the face was pug ugly, even at over 3000 polies when converted to triangles.

Like I said, mix and match...

Once you get the body done with the cylinder method, use the method laid out in the joan of arc tutorial for the clothing.

I've started the body.

I'm grateful for any comments or advice, since this is my first model.




At least I know the arms need work. I can now see the wisdom in drawing the reference with the arms down. They look like sausages from the top. I'll make another refence pic of the side of her arm and edit it in the top view.

it really looks great so far, but your modeling in a high poly style with quads. there is nothing wrong with this style of modeling but for realtime stuff its gives you way more polys than you need. if you plan on a ruduction meathod of some sort this could be fine too. i suggest doing a poly count and seeing how may you got so far. here is a good tutorial that shows some good techniques for low poly humans


http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/benmathis/benmathis_1.asp

So far it is 436 polies total.

I might be wrong, but the tutorial you linked looks similar to what I am doing, though it has half as many sections in the torso. I can fix that. Before I go any further should I see how many I can remove and still keep her shape, or can I leave that util finsh the model? I haven't started working on muscle definition yet, and when I do I want to keep it softer than in the tutorials I've seen so far. Maybe that'll help keep the poly count down. I'm less confident about my work on the arms than the legs. Do they look like they are joined on okay?

Thanks for your advice.

Where is your entry?

I think you are counting quads, not tris. (leg = 8 x 10 x 2 = 160) x 2 = 320. Arms are about the same and the torso is about the same as one arm. Not sure if lightwave handles it's polygon counts the same way as Maya - but it looks as though it might. Still should be OK on your polygon budget though. You have plenty of room to work with.

my entry is coming soon, i dont really do concept sketches. i just start throwing around polies. i should have a pic up by tomorrow.

@A Russell

This looks good so far -hope I can do as well when I get my PC back. I just wanted to share this link http://www.3d.sk/ it has body references and I'm not sure but I think in your concept shot that maybe the back of the head is off a bit? Not sure but figured before you get to that part you'd take a look -it may just be me.

Thanks, and thanks for that link, too. I had another that I was going to post. I only used it yesterday, but it's gone ! Hopefully it'll come back online.

I'll double check the back of the head. I knew the first profile reference I drew was off. To be honest, after messing around geting all the bits of the face in the right place, I just sketched the line for the head.

I've nearly finished the body. I've also stripped some polies off it. I'm not sure how to tackle the head yet. I'm looking at different methods. More pics next time.

Good thing I've got over a month to complete it!

I'm not very fast at this.

I managed to get the feet and neck done, and I'm quite happy with them. I also striped a few polies off it. The body is now a total of 958 triangles. I can strip some more off it later if need be.

I started modeling the hands using a different method. However, I'm up to 614 tringles for boths hands, and may need more! Think I might have to find another way to make them.

Hands can be tough to get good, and low on the polygon count. But, believe it or not - you can get down to a bit over 100 polygons (tris) and still keep all 5 fingers in a way which they can be animated. I will be trying to get some writing time in tonight and tomarrow on a few tutorials including hands.

For your body you are on track quite well - though I notice you tesselated your mesh (you can wait to do that later - generally easier the fewer lines you have to look at).

I only tesselated the mesh for the screen shot.

Thanks, I'm looking forward to your tutorial.

HERE They show you how to make low poly hands. You will have a real like hand with this technic.

Cya!

yeah thats the best low poly tutorial out there. i already directed him to this tutorial previously. we need more tutorials like this..... i am thinking of making one myself..... if any other other artists are interested in colaborating on tutorial,,, contact me..... arshlevon@yahoo.com... we need to spread our knowleadge........................................................................................................................................................................if we want to grow
.............................................................................................. we dont need huge corporations ............... to make progress ............. information sould be free.... if we want to be free.................... enough preaching........... lets do it...

Thanks, I do have that tutorial. I'll fo back and try it again. There were a few things in there I don't really understand, like "clone to element." Gotta RTFM again!

Thanks.

clone to element is a 3dsmax exclusive feature. so if your not using 3dsmax you cant clone to element. if you do have 3dsmax... then all you have to do is hold shift and click and drag with you mouse and then you have cloned. after that you will get some options, and clone to element will be one of those options... hope this answered any questions, just went to a nano tech meeting/ speach, that stuff is totally amazing, they are making computers faster than the ones that are out now just out of cells and organic elements, its so crazy...... anyway i am drunk from too much party in name sake of science........ if you have any more questions will be glad to answer at a later time in space....

I use Lightwave. It has clone, but not like the one you described. It sounds as if I could do the same thing simply by copying the target area and moving it.

Sounds like I haven't drunk quite as much as you tonight, so I'll play around with it a bit. Troublesome though it is, I'm going to draw some better reference material for the hand.

Thanks for all your help.

http://fineart.interweb.cz/LoomisBooks/heads/page_01.htm

Take a look.

I did these WIP http://hometown.aol.co.uk/blewp1977/myhomepage/coat%20collection1.jpg?mtbrand=AOL_UK clothes using the cylinder method (although in max, not LW- naughty me!) All you do is get a cylinder with a number of vertical segments and just manipulate it round the body (or arms). Delete the segments near the arm, and do the same cylinder for the arms as well, manipulating the sleeve and deleting the unwanted bits that connect with the body- weld it all together (not shown in this pic)and bosh! One nice coat! (mines about 200 tris)To get double sided, copy the section that needs X2 sides, shrink it a little, reverse its normals and weld it to the outside- this way is nice but it costs tris, so use it sparingly! (Some other engines understand double sided textures, but 3DGS doesnt so )


Why dont you copy the section you want and paste it to a new layer in LW? (button on the bottom row and then click to paste a fresh layer?) This approximates Clone to Element (sort of). Also, you might want a plugin Lscript called Spin Poly Pair from Flay- it allows you to spin tris (LW only spins quads- annoying and silly oversight from Newtek). This will make your life easier when an edge is wrongly aligned when the mesh is triangulated, giving your model a good convex volume.

And before anyone asks, I havent done the head yet either.

That was a very cool, matrix style jacket, Brimstone. Yeah, it would look better with a head on it. I'll check that plugin too. One of the most useful plugins I've found for Lightwave so far is "add faces." It's invaluable, I can practically draw where I want my lines with it dirrectly on the mesh.

I was happy with the feet and arms, but looking closely at how I'd joined the legs on, I could see I'd made a mess. So, I deleted the whole thing except the arms and feet and have started rebuilding the body from scratch.

This time it was much easier and I was more able to intuitively position the points. I've been working around her backside to get the legs to mesh up to the body.


A firmer, better shaped bottom


A nice, low poly bottom, showing a bit of snatch

I still have some work to do around the front to get all the lines right. Then back to the hands. Thank you all for your photo and illustration resources, they have given me lots of good material to draw from. Hands will be particularly difficult seeing as how they are rounded when relaxed. Perhaps making them flat then using a magnet on them is the best way to go?

So much for budgeting myself for four hours a week. Today was a national holiday, and I've been working on this withoug eating since morning.

This is the body, basically finished. I might find something I need when I come to animate it -not sure. I think I can probably stip a few more polies off it later on too. Frivolities like nipples and fingers can be removed if need be.



1504 tris so far.

I'm working on the head.

What does "unify or hide duplicate polygons" mean?

This is hard



First I tried modeling from a box, but that was such a disaster I won't even show a screen shot.

Now I'm trying a spline/ make points and join em up type method. Still looks stupid and way to0 many polies.

I'll look at some other peoples' wire frames and start again tomorrow.

This is very hard.

Try 'face extrude' then manipulate the faces into place using your reference to guide you.
To start. extrude down the profile (edge of face from side on sort of) then fill in.
Cheers.

I've labored over this head for longer than bears thinking about, and it still looks crap.

Although it looks okay against the backdrop, the whole thing just seems too long and drwn, not to mentionthe contours of the face look strange.

656 polies

Now I'm getting all hot and bothered. I'm going to go to the fridge and pour myself a cold drink -something with horns- then I'm going to come back and see if anyone has posted any advice before I erase the whole thing and start again.

Don't be so hard on yourself dude.. this looks GREAT!

yeah, i dont think this looks bad, maybe you have to lay back a little and then look again. i think if you texture it it will look very nice. and as you are trying to achieve a low poly count, what do you want more. i like it very much and i know if working for longer time on the same thing you get a feeling that you dont like it, but thats just temporarily i think. go on

Hmn, thank you everybody, I wasn't expecting that response. I guess I've made a face (anatomically correct or not) though not the face I was hoping for. If you look at my illustrations and reference pics, I was hoping for a cuter, rounder face. I just haven't been able to achieve it.

I'll finish the hair, try texturing then see how it looks.

Thank you for the nice comments.

(of course, I've had some Tanquiri and biters, a large bottle of beer and a bottle of good Italian wine, so it doesn't look so bad to me now. Let's see tomorrow)

One thing you have to consider when you are using low polygon models is that a lot of the detail will be in the texture.

While it takes a bit of practice to say what will be what - a general rule of thumb is to look at the face as a silhouette. If you don't see it sticking out - it doesn't exist on the mesh.

I fixed the face and hair up a bit and put them on the body. Now, onto the clothes. My poly budget is running low. I'm now at 2100 polies, though I'm sure I can find some to cut out.






I would like to put more polies in the hair so I can animate it. However, I think her long dress might bring me close to my limit. I need a few polie for the inside of the back of her hair, too.

Here she is with clothes on. Getting a bit worried about my poly count.

Wow, you have done a really wonderful job here A. Russel! I am very impressed by how your work has progressed!

Can I ask is all of the dress seperate from the legs? What I mean is couldn't you save some poly by say making the top 1/3 of the legs part of the dress -not sure if I'm being clear.

I found a couple nice examples of low poly modeling you may also like

http://d217859.bo21.bootlegweb.com/forum/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=000262

http://come.to/palmery

Thanks Bubaje, I'm thinking of knocking some of the legs off, but I'm holding off on doing so in case I find I need them later on for animating or something (haven't quite worked out how weighting and rigging works, yet). You'll see that there are area where I really need more polygons at the back of the hair and behind the slits in the dress. I haven't pur the gun holster on her leg yet either.

I didn't make life easy on myself for a first model. Can anyone tell me if if is olay to go around and optimise it after it is skinned and animated?

You can generally do a bit of optimising following skinning/animating, though not much. With skinning, you will almost certainly have to redjust the UV map following any removal of faces/vertices - but it is generally pretty straight forward in what needs to be done.

Animation is a bit more complicated. Chances are you are going to be animating with bones (even if you descide to save it out as vertex animation later), so it makes life a lot easier. You will still probably have to readjust the weighting on the mesh to correct any errors which occur due to removed faces.

Just looking at the wires - although it looks as though you are probably pushing 3500 polygons you should have no problem getting it in line. A number of the faces on the legs themselves will not be seen ever - so you will be able to clean those up quite easily.

The clothing will take some creativity, though you can reduce it by about a third and loos no smoothness in the animation.

So, by the sounds of it, it's easier to optimise the mesh before skinning and animation. Unless I optimise it, it will go a little over the 2500 poly limit (but nowhere near 3500).

Thanks for the advice.

Hey, you´re going to apply something like mesh smooth, and check till you have 2000 polys aprox?

Or what?

BTW: The model rocks

It's on the verge of 2500 polies, and I've got a few to add, and a few to take away. That includes her gun.

What do you mean by mesh smoothing? I'm using Lightwave, and I don't know if I can do that.

I'm on the brink of finishing the modeling now (at least I think so, I always seem to find something that needs more work).

2,496 polies!



I had to erase most of her crotch and bottom. Now, onto skinning.

The smoothing that has been mentioned can be found in Lightwave Modeler in Surface Properties (F3 I think) under the BASIC tab. What it does is take the surface normal of two polygons and smooth between them, making it look curvy. You can adjust this (90 deg would equal a sharp corner, anything below that would be smooth, e.g.). For more info try section 31.14 in the Lighwave manual. Nice model BTW!

Because I suck at Photoshop, this took a very long time. I'm still not happy with all of it, especially the gun. I've also had trouble putting the straps on the shoes. Perhaps I should try cylindrical mapping? At the moment I've just got each side of the ankles mapped as plannar.

What I really want is something like Deep Paint where I can paint directly on the model. However, I'm really not in the mood for dropping another hefty sum on 3d sofware at the moment, so if anyone knows any cheap or free programs that can do the job, please let me know.



I'm going to leave the texturing for awhile and move onto animating, since Photoshop is beginning to drive me mental. I'll be using MoCap animation, which I will purchase off the web.

Another bunch of headaches to come. Now, time for a nice cold beer.


Edit> I also managed to find a whole lot of useless polies while I was skinning. The model is now down to about 2300 tris.

looks good, keep up the good work

Looking good! Can I take a peek at your uv map? I did mine a few times with Texporter and it seems it is all one on top of the other making it hard to figure out what is where. I guess I may have to mess with the projection method or break it up in pieces. Thought I was just going to click and get an automagically laid out map ready to paint.

@ Romac: Thanks!

@ Bubaje: Here's a look at the skin. You'll see it's not very efficient, or even finished, yet. Not a good example for you to follow, but here it is anyway.

Thats looking great A.Russell

BTW: What program are you using?

Keep it up

Thank you J_A_B, I'm using Lightwave for the modeling and uv mapping, photoshop for skinning, and I'll use Life Forms for the animation.

@A.Russel - thanks. I'm trying to wrap (or unwrap) the ideas and everything helps.

In the engine, her nose can't be seen from front on. not that it is so bad. Noses are ugly things anyway. However, if anyone has a good way of puting texture on to show the nose elegantly, please let me know.

its cuz the skin gots no shading... add some shading to it.. "simulate" the light sources.... darken the sides of nose.. brighten where light shines etc. not onmly on nose.. but every where...

Well I'm not sure if you have or not but maybe some nostruals?

Look at pictures of online magazins. Especially photographs of women's faces in frontview with smooth light (because there are smooth shadows ).
Something like this, here.


If you work with photoshop, add one 'plain'(german: Ebene) for the shadows and one for the highlights - so you can change the 'strengh' of shadow and highlight later through make them more or less transparent. Take a smooth paintbrush.
The shape of your model is perfect for painting on it nostrils and the root of the nose. The shadow under the nose is the darkest one.

Good luck! I like your spy! Another photograph with nostrils that might fit to your sweet spy.

Assuming that you are still using the same head model as above, you will want to go ahead and "break" (split a single vertice into two - one for the nose and one for the face - don't move them though, leave them co-located) a few of the vertices at the bas of the nose. Right now 3DGS does not support smoothing groups or hard edges - by "breaking" the vertices along the bottom of the nose (where the nostrils will be) you will effectively create a hard edge - this will allow in game lighting to create an actual shadow there.

Once that is out of the way pop back into Photoshop and apply a lighter color near the tip of the nose and a couple darker lines along the sides. Then you want to blend it all together nice and smooth like to make it look realistic. You will want to work on a copy of the skin for that, since you will probably goof once or twice while you work on getting the right technique.

I still haven't been able to animate the dress. If anyone can tell the settings I need to make Motion Designer work properly, please let me know.

Since that might not happen, I'm going to try to animate it using bones from now.

I'm going to keep trying to animate it until the end of the day. If I fail to have animated it by then, her dress will be chopped to a static minskirt so that I can still get it finshed by the end of the competition.

Its a nice looking model Russell, wish i could make something even that close.

hehe do have to comment you like women with 'lofty' chest areas though ( your sig and the model) would like to see the rest of the pic for your sig someday

I lived in korea for over 4 years so i know how you feel

did you put bones in the dress parts too? think it would be easy to animate the parts then ( i don;t know how to work with bones yet but should make it easier then moving by vertexs)

I don't have lightwave or 3dmax to use for modeling stuck to med or what i can find freeware wise ( my shoestring budget is so limited i have to wear slip on shoes )

I do have 3D canvis whish so frar has been a VERY easy modeler to work with
but only works in .3dC format and yet to find a converter for that format.

Also have Amapi 3D v4.15 ( commercial modeler that's not that old thats been released as freeware) but i havn't spent much time learning it yet.


have found MANY tutorials on modeling ( some of the sites i've listed on my tutorials list page). i just don't have a sense of balance while working with the modelers yet. found some nice tips on how to animate without bones without messing up the meshs. guess i just need the time to work on it ( which i don't seem to have)

hehe, in Korea you have to promise to marry them before they'll let you touch them (most of the time). That must have been a hard four years.

I could go through and put bones in the dress. However, that would take 50 bones, all of which I'd have to map to the dress. Lightwave is a pain for animation because you have to make and map the bones in a separate program from the one you model in, and you can't send the bones back for alterations later withoutb screwing up their heirachy. Also, I don't think vertice animation is posible in Lightwave, since you can't edit the polygons or points in Layout.

Anyway, you should give modeling ago. It's fun -until you get to rigging and weight maping and have to try to figure out how to export the thing to MDx format .-

Enough wining, back to the grind...

Why dont you try endomorphs? (Lightwave manual 28.42)

Well, I've basically finished the model and most of the animation (still need a wait sequence).

However, there are several problems that I don't think I'm going to be able to overcome by the end of the weekend:

1) The model is around the wrong way -yes, I've just realized that the model with all its animations on is pointing down the -z.

2) I can't get the animated model into Game Studio. Someone suggested loading the first frame as .x and then using append verts to get the model into MED. Actually, this is not working. Even if it did work, this way would be hugely labour intensive (To export the appended frame from Lightwave I have to put each one through Milkshape first because Lightwaves .3ds export doesn't work). Someone also suggested the lw2md2 plugin for Lightwave -this also doesn't work. I also tried a Lightwave to .x export plugin that supposedly can animations, keyframes \, the whole works -but MED doesn't like it, and only takes one frame.

So, even if I got through and turn every frame of animation around so that it is facing the right direction, I'm still left with not being able to get it into Game Studio. Plus, it seems that there is absolutely no automated possibility for getting an animated model from Lightwave to 3dgs.

I'm going to work on getting the animation around the right way and adding the wait animation, but if I can't find a way to export it by early Sunday, the model will have to be withdrawn from the competition.

Cheers mate. Thanks for the heads up. Ultimate unwrap does actually take the .x file (so long as it it saved as text), though you have to be carefull to weight map every single vertice correctly or it will animate funny. A bit more messing around (actually a lot more, in Lightwave it means I have to set the bone hierachy again ). Anyway, thanks!

Okay, got her animated. Haven't had time to put any pics up yet, but I've finished. I've got to sleep. I'll post screens tomorrow and upload the model to Myrlyn's server.

Shame about the dress, but I ran out of time to fiddle around finding ways of animating it. Anyway, she does look a bit like the picture I drew (see first post).




I might even write up how I made it to save other newbies some time searching around for tutorials and things, if anyone is interested. I've kept over one hundred saves of my work in progress that I can use.

Nice work. You´might need to tweak the envelopes of the bones a little because the arms and legs look very unnatural when bent. But that shouldnt take that long
Elbows and the knees dont overlap while bending. Usualy two bones share some same points and if one of the bone moves it makes it look "smooth". THe "edges" of the human body seperate the two muscles of it and only some skin over it is moving. That way you can bend the arms and legs wihtout bulging the other side of the bone chain. Sounds complicated but thats just because i suck at explaining

Overall I like it. Too bad you didnt skined her a little bit better. Some shadows on the clothes may look a lot better. Also if she is not a super japanese geisha she might be a little too bright.

tris count would be nice to know

Yes, I know the weighting could be a lot better, but I ran out of time, and in the end I just had to get something in by the deadline. Another week and I could have re-done the weights and probably animated the long dress, too. This is my first time to make a model, and I had no idea how involved it all was.

As for the texturing, to be honest I don't like painted on shading all that much, and tried to minimise it. It looks too contrived to me, though I understand it is necessary given the shading limitations of the engine. The face is highlighted, and although it may not be very obvious in the screen shots (the level is at full-bright) there is some shading on the dress too. Of course, I'm sure the texture could have been done a lot better, and I'm going to have to hone my Photoshop skills and hit a few more tutorials on game model skinning.


EDIT> Oh, and it finshed on a little less than 2,300 tris I think.

Congratulations!! A great model, Russell! And congratulations, that you finished it in time!

Yet, after your experiences with Lightwave and the exporting to MED, I curious wether you would give the MED and its bone tools a try. And, give a comparision between the two programms!

Thanks Pappenheimer, and congratulations to you for finishing too.

I imagine that once I get the hang of Lightwave animation, it will be a little bit better than MED. There are a few things that annoy me about Lightwave's separate Modeler and Layout, but I'm getting beter and finding plugins to compensate for the problem areas all the time. Ironically, just as the contest ends, I feel like I'm starting understand everything.

Lightwave's modeler is very good and easy to use in my opinion. I'm looking at other potential sofware packages for animating, but I'd like to make sure I know what I'm doing in Lightwave first.

While I like the Game Studio engine, I'm not so keen on WED or MED, and I hope that there will be more options for replacing these with modeling software in the future... and more ways to convert file formats!

I like the model. now i have to try come up with the skills to make soemthing that is comperable. hehe may get a running contest on trying to one up on every model. unfortunatly you already set the bar high for me and im not a great jumper

Since the results have been announced I hurried this slightly improved version out today for anyone who wants to download it off Myrlyn's site.



Though I'm still not finished with it. I intend to improve theanimatoins and add an animated dress and jiggling boobies (I hadn't actually intended on animating her boobies, but I stumbled across how to do it while I was trying to animate the dress ).

looks realy nice. hehe since you got to see my 2nd human model first hand gonna start skinning that but also redo my contest entry and get that set to Myrlyn to replace that gumby looking one I did for the contest.

I'm only on the base colors for skinning right now of my 2nd model. try to work with some texturing later.

@ Grimber: Why does she look so sad? Anything wrong? Or is her creator a melancholical man?
Let me know your shape, baby! Take off your colours, show your mesh!

@ Russell: The first shot looks great, especially the shadows on the model and the red eyes.

@Grimber: I like her lipstick!

@ Pappenheimer: err, maybe my screen needs callibrating

I'm trying some better texturing to it now. scanned in my own hand and using that as a referance for the models skin.

@ A.Russell: I downloaded now your model. It looks really great, I like its shape, especially its face in flat shaded mode of the MED!
It has a unique asian character!

The file size is killing! I think that is a consequence of importing it from Lightwave. To reduce it, one can look at the animation frames (300! frames, my model has 45) and erase all that frames that are not needed as 'keyframes'. Keyframe is not exactly the right word, because in MED you need a continuesly chain of frames. One can try it this way, erase every second and third, but if a frame represents the 'end' or 'peak' of a special movement, then don't erase it.

@ Grimber: You scan the skin of your Hand to put it on the model? Hopefully not the hairy side?
But honestly, its a nice idea, I know drawings of an artist where always the skin looks like fingerprints - great drawings. It's a pity that I don't remember the artist's name.

The scanners light is a bit bright, plus I don't know how beautiful your hands are. You might try scanning a picture of a person with a skin tone you like and take the colour off that.

As for the number of frames, Myrlyn recons you can over 1,000 and still be okay. I'm currently working on another set of animaions for it, and this time I'll halve the fps. However I've added moreanimations than the last time, so it probably won't be much less.

Messing with skinning a bit more finished applying copy of my skin texture ( no not the finger tip but the skin area between 1st and 2nd knuckle) to the model ( but no highlights/shadowing yet). also used a scanned image of dark leather for the top and skirt. ( havn't made an attempt on face or hair yet.)

as you can see in the mesh (2nd pic)i have all the main body joints jointed ( each arm and leg part is seperate) so when i later animate the arms and legs won't cause mesh deforming/stretching as the aprts are moves. as from first image the joints don't appear to show up in the engine at runtime.

The skins coming along. I think her waist should be a bit slimmer (maybe just my preference )

I uploaded a short tutorial to Myrlyn's site with you in mind. Take a look. You can basically do the same thing, and still make the model segmented (handy for MD7 since there are only absolute weights so far).

You may want to check out the Texturing forum at www.cgtalk.com which is great and links to other resources including skin tutorials I've seen about. One of the moderators has some great tutorials -even if you don't use the specific tools you can learn from them. I think you use Lightwave Alex so you may love them.

http://leigh.cgcommunity.com/

thanks ill look at both areas for the tutorials... i may adjust her waist was thinking about it earlier.

reson why i split her joints was not only for the animating but because my projects an rpg game it will allow me to work with visible armor pieces easier by vec to vertex attaching arm and leg pieces torso and head, vs making the arms model and having to animate it to the model. ( like what george did in his inventory artical in one of his AUM's)

now if i can make a male model using this female with only some minor adjustments ( namely chest and hair) i won't need much doubling up on armor part models either ( should beable to get away with just differnt chest pieces while the rest should be reusuable male or female)

You have some neat effects with it being segmented too. You could have it fall apart like Dirk the Daring, or have it's head fall off when struck with a sword

Grimber, you got a PM from me.

Reading your last post again, it reminds me that I was trying something similar. The pics in my Tutorial. Do you remember the collection of heads? The whole collection is made from two meshs. From the second mesh I already had the whole model.
She and he are the same mesh:


(without the hair)



I wanted to make metamorphoses through spells easy and as an eyecandy. Metamorphing slowly while walking for example.