CMT Biped Video Tutorial

The first series of video tutorials will deal with correctly setting up Maya, getting to know the tools and the constantly recursing skills.

Once the basics are passed, a simple knife will be created using the tools above. It will be created from box-deformation rather than plane-extrusions given that box-deformation will be closer related to cylinder-deformation which will make up 95% of the biped modeling "hard spots".

Edit: In case it wasn't clear, this *is* the start of the CMT Brute Biped tutorial mentioned about in another thread. The biped you ultimately will learn to model will be the CMT H3 Brute Biped.

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Basics

Video 1: Single-plane reference frames (for knife tutorial)
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Resolution: 1680x1048
Size: 14MB, H.264+AAC, Quicktime7
Duration: ~3-4 minutes.

Video 2: Two-plane reference frames (Chimpire renders as reference)
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Resolution: 1680x1048
Size: 11MB, H.264+AAC, Quicktime7
Duration: ~3 minutes.
Supplemental: Ref:Side, Ref:Front

Video 3: Render Settings
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Resolution: 1680x1048
Size: ~44MB, H.264+AAC, Quicktime7
Duration: ~12 minutes.
(Teaches the basics of rendering/playblasts with Maya, and includes how to do the ever-so-requested "Clay Rendering" using Mental Ray)

Video 4: UI Setup
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Resolution: 1680x1048
Size: ~19MB, H.264+AAC, Quicktime7
Duration: ~6 minutes.

Video 5: Basic Tools
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Resolution: 1680x1048
Size: ~50MB, H.264+AAC, Quicktime7
Duration: ~12 minutes.
(Not worth getting for anyone who knows how split polygon, extrude, merge, and delete edge work)

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Knife Tutorial

Video 1: Blade Via Box Modeling
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Resolution: 1680x1048
Size: 41MB, H.264+AAC, Quicktime7
Duration: ~11 minutes.

Video 2: Handle via Cylinder Modeling
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Resolution: 1680x1048
Size: 81MB, H.264+AAC, Quicktime7
Duration: ~21 minutes.

(Video 3 may be coming. The Knife looks like shit and is by no means a serviceable model -- but the point was to teach the skills, not make a knife. Ex: Could cut in more polygons for the blade so the wedge curves with the blade. Could cut in the dip in the back of the blade. Could clean up unnecessary polygons. Etc. Etc. Etc. -- But that wasn't the point of it... the point was to show people how to shift vertices on box models to match topology based on reference frames... then step it up with vertex-shifting a cylinder to make an irregular organic shape.)

More to come as completed. Will hopefully be moved off my site given only a terabyte of transfer per month... with multiple-dollars-per-gig overages.

Feel free to ask questions (about modeling)! I'll do my best to answer them.

Great job. :)

Looks like win. I'll download later.

Maya ftw.

Editted the original post since I only just realized this was only posted in another thread (which not everyone may have seen)

The tutorial will ultimately cover the construction of the CMT Brute Biped.

Hence, of course, why this is posted in the CMT forums, rather than just general editting :p

Also, why it aparently became a sticky :p

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Phopojijo

The biped you ultimately will learn to model will be the CMT H3 Brute Biped.

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How can we model some thing we have no clue what it looks like yet still call it halo 3..
nice work though

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...te_VERYLOW.jpg
(That was before Masters prompted me to make it a video tutorial)

nooooo, lol i am halfway through making this brute...*crys*, i cant use Maya, so i guess im stuck with 3dsmax :D

im still d/l your tuts though, i need to get better at modding

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SgtBotley

nooooo, lol i am halfway through making this brute...*crys*, i cant use Maya, so i guess im stuck with 3dsmax :D

im still d/l your tuts though, i need to get better at modding

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Then finish her up!

They'll each have their own unique artistic flow -- in spite of attempting to be complete recreations of existing reference.

looks sweet (if i modeled, i would get it)

Nice work so far and that brute picture looks like an enemy of the power rangers lol.

obviously im just guessing what an enemy power ranger looks like..:eyesroll:

It really does, I laughed when I saw it

sweet i have maya, but could never really get used to its interface after using max and gmax.

New video uploaded with 2 new ones rendering off for tomorrow (I have an early class and thus cannot babysit my modem for another hour.)

The next two are just "Here's Maya, here's the move tool, here's the polycount HUD display" :p A waste of your 20 minutes if you've EVER used Maya AT ALL.

The render one that's already posted is kinda cool though.

The other two are there now aswell.

Knife #1 and #2 posted.

This creates the basic shape. May come back and add detail to show how to cut in detail... but I'm probably going to jump right in to the Brute next; after all, CMT needs a Brute Biped -- allegedly more than people need these tutorials based on my download records.

Nice tutorials

MAYA FTW

This helps me ALOT considering im using Maya, and making a biped

:D

Nice tuts, though I think I'll stick to my character modeling/animation book. <3 Maya.

You could use them as supplements. When I made my chimpire bipeds I use Game Artists Guide to Maya by Michael McKinley -- along with http://www.poopinmymouth.com/<--- (Real 3d art website)

I'm using Game Character Development with Maya, but yeah, I may refer back to your tuts every so often.

i go to area.autodesk.com it's a lot like 3d-palace and 3dkingdom

one question, how'd you get the reference images for the brute?
and do you have an ETA on the rest of the tutorial?

Reference Image? Took a screenshot of Quicktime playing the HD Documentary (Et Tu Brute?) then cropped in The Gimp.

ETA? None unfortunately. But it should be RIGHT around the time where I ship the finished Biped off to Masters/Dano to be skinned and rigged and shit. Probably will dump them in groups like the first two sections. So -- no, you won't need to wait until the entire thing is done to get more updates... just the final update. If that makes sense.

thanks dude, i saw the documentary too, it looked awesome
your model looks like a start judging by the shots that you posted

Actually that was before I started the video tutorials.

Haven't posted any screen shots yet about what the model looks like. But from what I've seen I should post the tutorials I have spent up once I get the first level of detail down.

Note: The tutorials for bipeds are all the same: Cut/delete/merge edges/vertices, move remaining vertices nearby, look at the topology, compare with reference panes, compare with video, repeat.

That of course is because that's what making a biped from polygons is all about :p

Well, I'm not one for screenshots... I kinda hate the things.

So -- playblast it is.

Playblast -- 6MB 2 Seconds long

Detail is to be added, detail is to be taken away. There's no *correct* polycount... as a matter of fact the butt and a lot of things look pretty awful. But -- like Darwinism you need to have a bunch of the sucks to achieve a good model. Well, not really, but its always on the correct track.

To make a biped, all you do is get something which looks somewhat like you're trying to illustrate, then tweak'n'tweak'n'tweak until it DOES look like what you're trying to illustrate.

My host seems to be having some issues at the moment though... its there, just having a hard time downloading.

Yea I'm looking over the Brute biped tutorial and it will not be the last of the tutorials.

The tutorial blows -- the reference images I used have too much perspective. I'll still release the videos (I currently have over 150-180 minutes of unreleased tutorial footage... 11 parts ranging from 8-25 minutes each... most over 20.) and claim it as a tutorial. But I'll also probably redo my Rilo lowpoly biped from Chimpire using proper image-planes and show you how its really supposed to be made given proper reference.

sweet can't wait for more tuts :)

I'll probably dump my load once I redub (microphone didn't record) #9->11 and make #12 which should hopefully remove the perspective on the shoulders and get them looking like Brutes... and not Samus Aran.