Oddity Apb! How To Solve "pinching"?

[Domarius]

I'm doing a model for one of my classes, and I'm starting to have nightmares about quads and triangles meeting in odd places, and pinching effects that won't go away.

 

I know there is a way to avoid this but I dont' know what it is. Let me show you;

 

This is the close up of the top of a foot. See the stretched shadows that look really ugly? Between the toes, and also fainter ones running up along toward the top of the picture.

 

This is the wireframe of the smoothed mesh above

 

And this is the control mesh (without the smooth modifier applied)

 

 

 

I guess my real problem is - I always get frustrated when I have to add detail to an otherwise very simple and smooth control mesh, because wherever it meets the smooth area, there is always this pinching because I can't gracefully flow the higher detail into the lower detail.

 

Best examples of this are hands and feet. You have a smooth palm or foot, and then you have the actual digits on the end, which use a lot of lines and have to cut into the smooth area somehow - there is always pinching happening there.

[oDDity]

There's no need to flow quads into tris or vice-versa at all. I see you even have some 5 point polys there, which is a no-no and a bad habit.

This foot is all quads. You can always use quads if you try, and you won't get pinching. I'm not familiar with the modeling tools or workflow in max, so I can't really get specific.

 

Here's the foot in max format if you want to look at the poly flow.

[Domarius]

Thanks! I don't need max specific instructions, just geometry principals - like those you just mentioned

 

(I'm not tied to max, I just know more about its interface atm since its what we got taught. I have been modelling in other apps long before this.)

 

I know 5 points or more on a control mesh poly is bad, I just couldn't work out how else to do it. That was the frustrating part.

 

I bet you have some awesome topology on your characters.

 

Another problem area is adding elbows to otherwise smooth arms. I realise its the same principal but like the foot, I have no idea how to do it.

 

Do you happen to know of any other good references for topology, for pretty much the whole body? (Like maybe - your models for instance? )

 

Thanks for the foot. It is totally different than the one I have and I'm looking forward to re-doing the foot properly, and applying the same principal to the hands.

 

I know you should always use quads - its "how" that is frustrating me

[Domarius]

oDDity, my lecturer couldn't help me on this one, but he said if I ever did find some good topology, to let him know.

 

So when I got your foot, I showed him. He found it very interesting and we spent a while examining it and seeing how you acheived different shapes using just quads.

 

I learned a lot just from that foot. I would like to see the topology of the rest of your human models, but I learned from the arrangements of quads in that foot and applied it to the rest of my model to smooth out any wierd shading.

 

It really helped. Those quads between each toe are particularly interesting, I would never have imagined to arrange them like that.

 

I'm gonna put my final product on display here soon. After next week, when everything is done, i'm gonna make some threads here to show the assignments that have been keeping me from the DarkMod. Well the interesting ones anyway

[oDDity]

THe male an female models are already on the FTP in lwo format, but I can put them up in max format. They aren't extremely anatomically detailed or anything, they're really just proportion templates, since 99% of charcaters I do are covered up with clothes or armour anyway. I don't even ned them as proprton templates any more these days.

I've never bothered doing a really antomically correct model, wth all the myology and superficial skin details etc, I can't really see the point, since I've never needed one.

I thought you were doing programming at school anyway, why do you have to learn how to model.

 

edit: In fact. I'll give you the male and female models that ship with modo, they are proper anatomically detailed ones, and will suit your purposes far better. THe mesh is a lot denser though. THey are in files folder 'human models for dom.rar'

[Domarius]

Thankyou very much!

 

To answer your question - I am taking a Bachelour of Multimedia - which means I have to do everything Programming, sound, animating, 3D, web design, digital art, and boring stuff like project management, software engineering... I won't go on. Actually I'm doing 2 different majors Interactive Entertainment (video games) and Internet Computing (web stuff), which is why I have a mix of fun and boring stuff.

[oDDity]

That doesn't make much sense to me. I think it's better to learn one thing really well and become a master at it, than be a jack of all trades, which is what the course sounds like.

Which of those subjects are you interested most in, and want to do as a career? I suppose after you finish that couse you can pick that one thing and become a master at it, and yoiu'll still have workiung knowledge of all the other things. It just takes a lot longer than learning one thing to master level int he first place though.

[Ishtvan]

A lot of the uni majors are ridiculously overgeneralized, then it gets more specific when you get a masters or phd (or join the working world). For example, I majored in Materials Science, so I had to sit through classes on biomaterials and structural materials even though I knew I was only really interested in electronic/optical materials. They think that they're trying to help you by preventing you from getting locked into one thing, in case say the industry takes a dive, but they can definitely overdo it with generality. After the bachelors though you can get nice and specific if you want.

[oDDity]

And another point is that the guy teaching such an overgenerlised course probably doesn't know half the subjects very well anyway. Domarius' lecturerer sounds like he isn't exactly a modeling guru, so how can he really teach it to anyone esle.

[sparhawk]

When I 'learned' programming in school, I also had to revise the teacher every now and then. Once we had an exam and there were four exercises to solve. After talking to him quietly he had to drop two of the exercises, because they were simply wrong. He had no clue about compiler technology and the test would require an answer specific to the compiler he used when he worked them out on his own machine. The C standard allows some freedom to the compiler developers and the result in such cases is undefined. This teacher managed to hit dead on some of these undefined states.

With another teacher I got a bad rating because she had no clue how the standard C library really worked. She teached us some functions and always cautioned that these were "dangerous". At that time I thought she wouldn't want to delve into the finer details of it so I said nothing. But when I used these functions correctly in an exam she gave me a bad rating because she thought my solution wouldn't work. At that time I realized that here caution was not because of protectiveness for her pupils, it was simply lack of knowledge. After showing her the official C standard with the definition of that particular function she had to revise my rating, but she was pissed off about me lecturing her and gave me a worse rating then she should have, claiming another excuse. I guess she learned something at least.

[Dram]

LOL, the teacher gets taught.

[oDDity]

Well, you know the old saying - those who can do it are out there doing it, and those who can't do it, stay in school and teach it.

 

Not always true, but it's not entirely wrong either.

 

I think being a master at the subject your'e teaching is far more important than being a good teacher.

[sparhawk]

I don't think so. Being a good teacher is much more important than knwing everything. It's ok for a teacher to say "I don't know it." but it is far worse if the teacher can not convey his knowledge.

[oDDity]

Not so.

Maybe it varies from subject to subject, but I know I could learn a lot from a master modeler or animator just by watching over his shoulder while he did it. He wouldn't even have to say anything.

I think someone who has worked in the real world for a long time has more to offer students than someone who has spent his time in a classroom. After all, it's the real world the students are destined for.

[sparhawk]

Sure. That's right. It depends on what you want to learn. I know from my history lectures that I never had a teacher who raised my interest in this topic. Only one year was different because the teacher was quite different and I was quite surprised that this could be an interesting topic.

[Hewer]

having a basic knowledge of subjects related to what you're really interested in can do nothing but help in the long run. Once you have your direction and the basics, going to a master is the way to go. My college illustration classes consisted almost entirely of just sitting and painting models. Themed assignments were done on our own time outside of class- in class we just painted and about half the time those classed ended up with most of the class watching over the professor's shoulder as he put paint on canvas. I learned so much more in those classes than in any 'traditional' classes I took.

[Domarius]

Blah blah blah...

 

Multimedia is a term for a reason. When you pick a major, you specialise. Like my 2 majors - video game dev, and internet programming.