Intro

Basics Design Concepts

Proportion

Proportion is the comparison of dimensions or distribution of forms. It is the relationship in scale between one element and another, or between a whole object and one of its parts. Differing proportions within a composition can relate to different kinds of balance or symmetry, and can help establish visual weight and depth. In the example to the right, notice how the smaller elements seem to recede into the background while the larger elements come to the front.

Visual Balance

What I mean by this is not symmetry, to have visual balance you don't need your artwork to be the same on each side. Balance in design is similar to balance in physics. A large shape close to the center can be balanced by a small shape close to the edge. A large light toned shape will be balanced by a small dark toned shape (the darker the shape the heavier it appears to be).

Think like a Texture Artist

• Put seams in hidden areas and areas of little deformation if possible
• Straighten edges when unfolding ropes or belts etc. It's much more time consuming to paint a pattern along something bent
• Keep your UVs clean and regular in size
• Check for flipped UVs using an image with text or numbers (shown below)
• Use the full tile provided to you. Every pixel counts
• Remove any stretching that is created by poor UVs

Poor examples

Sphere 2.0

A big mistake that many junior artists do is to use a default sphere when building eyes or props. The problem with this is that a default sphere always has the edge loops intersecting at the top. This is a huge problem when it comes to sculpting, deformations, or texture painting. There are two quick and easy methods to start sculpting with a better spherical base mesh:

Start with a cube

Shown below is an example of creating a sphere from a cube. The green cube on the left has just been subdivided 2 times. This doesn't create a geometrically perfect sphere, but 9 times out of 10 its a great way to start sculpting.

Delete some edges

Another great way to create a spherical base mesh is to create an 8 sided sphere. Then simply delete the four edges highlighted below in red.

Bevel like a Pro

Don't fight topology. It will always win.

With all the new tool available to handle retopologisation, there is no excuse for poor edge flow. Especially if you are doing character work and need to deform the mesh for animation. You will need clean topology that conforms and follows the main shapes on your mesh. These shapes could be muscles, folds in cloth, or as small as wrinkles. What ever you do, don't skip this part, as topology always wins.

In the image below, I've added a simple stoke to a plane that goes against the original clean grid topology. The orange lines on the left plane show how much the shapes fights against the topology. It stretches your polygons and creats non-manifold geo which is horrible when rendering or adding detail in Zbrush or Mudbox. To fix this, all you need to do is redirect the orange edges to follow the main ridge. I have indicated this with the image on the right. Once you redirect the topology to follow the main shapes you will have a much easier time creating deformations on your characters and also rendering.

Turn out the Lights

When sculpting, turn off lights in your scene or apply a constant shader. The idea here is to be able to read the silhouette clearly. If you can tell what a character is doing by just it's silhouette, then you are on the right track. This trick is always used by 2D artists, so use it to your advantage. If you can't seem to get the character in a dynamic pose then this will help you fix the problem.

These characters have a great silhouette profile and are very recognisable!

These are some poses of a character created by Víctor Santos. They work incredibly well as silhouettes.

Study anatomy

If you want to be a character or creature modeler you MUST study anatomy. No matter how good you are at topology or using Zbrush, if you don't know what is under the skin, then you will never be able to create a realistic model. With all the new freedom provided by programs like Zbrush and Mudbox it's all too easy to just start sculpting away. To make it worse, there are so many amazing artists out there creating stunning work in a matter of hours. This is all too much of a temptation for a newbie, but please resist the urge to go too far with these tools without understanding anatomy.

Proportions

When creating human characters, regardless of size and weight, they all abide by standard proportions. Shown below are some ideal proportions for a basic human body. Pay close attention to how the body is divided into "head units" and where each unit intersects the body. You will see in the second image how a baby is only four "head units" in height as apposed to a full grown adult which is eight "head units" tall.

Don't just build a T-Pose and start rigging

Spend some time quickly posing your character into a range of positions similar to what it will need to perform. You don't need the skinning to be clean. The purpose of doing this is to see if the character can achieve the poses! Can the character touch it's mouth? Can it walk? Can it interact with the other character?

Also, don't be afraid to put a quick armature inside your model to represent the bone structure. At the very least it will help you think about where joints bend from and how close they should be to the surface.

The example below shows how amazing ZBrush Artist - Ty Shelton uses a quick skeleton to enable posing. While sculpting, Ty can now quickly pose his character and make sure it can hit the poses displayed on his 2D concept page.

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Real clay = Better skills

A skill that I recommend all digital sculptors do is to step away from the computer and use clay to sculpt. Yes, it can be difficult, but you will learn an incredible amount from this process. It will make you think about volume and detail more clearly as you can't just click "undo" or import someone else's base mesh.

These sculptures are done by Damon Bard and are truly amazing!

Gustea from Ratatouille.

Vanessa from Bee Movie.

Image Based Modeling

This is a very powerful method of modeling and a technique that is worth practicing. It will not only help you accurately recreate real-world scenes and objects but will allow you to project photos onto your model as base textures.

When doing this technique, the better the photographic reference, the higher chance you have of creating a successful 3D scene. Don't forget, that in most 3D packages the camera you look through will have controls to simulate real-world settings such as focal length, lens size, and sensor sizes. Make sure to setup your virtual camera with this information, especially if you don't have a full-frame sensor on your camera which is what most software uses by default. To find this out, just check your manufacturers handbook.

For example a Canon EOS 450D has a cropped sensor which is 22.2 x 14.8 mm. This would equate to a Maya camera with a Film Back of 0.874 x 0.582. All I did to figure this out was convert from mm to inches.

To make this process a little easier their are off-the-shelf tools to help. Some of these are: Image Modeler, PhotoModeler, and a more basic option Google SketchUp.

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Turntable Etiquette

There is nothing worse than creating an awesome model and letting it down by rendering a horrible turntable! You have done the hard work, so make sure to show it off the best way possible.

The biggest mistake you can make is to have the turntable rotate too quickly. You may know every bump and fold on your mesh, but you need to allow a first time viewer be able to appreciate your models detail.

Don't render on a white background. Pure white is not a friendly colour for renders, especially when you have a dark shaded model. Use a light grey instead.

Rotate around the centre of gravity, not object centre. Too often I see great models that have been rendered with an odd looking axis point. Don't just assume that you should spin a model on it's local centre. Find an axis that works visually instead.

Shown below is a great reference for turntables. It was done by our recent winner of the Computer Graphics Student Awards - Maximilian-Gordon Vogt

Show your Work in Progress

Don't be afraid to show your WIP. Everyone had to start where you are probably now. Everyone has a model they are embarrassed to have their name attached too. The sooner you get over this, the better. In the industry you will have to show your work to a supervisor or lead every day… and in most cases in front of all your team mates. There is no shame is showing a WIP, if it has good form and you can explain what your next steps are then you are going to be a rock star.

Primitive World

Don't be afraid to use proxy shapes to flesh out a model. It's an old technique but very handy to do if you are just starting out and not comfortable with more advanced techniques or software packages like Zbrush. Just start placing simple primitive shapes around to build up your volumes. Then either combine these into a new mesh, or just use it as a template to start building a clean model.

Below is a great examplation by Andrew Silke from The Guerrilla CG Project.

Think about your character or creature

Too often I see character designs that just couldn't work. If you are trying to design and build a believable creature then make sure it could work in the real world. How does it eat? Does it run at lot? What does it eat? Where does it live? Think about this stuff before you start building. There is nothing worse than seeing a well executed model of a creature who's legs would snap off if it tried to stand up. Same goes for products or cars. Think about what you are building! Do your research. Then go back and do some more!

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Hands are not extruded cubes

Hands may look easy, but they can have as much expression as a face.

You can clearly see from the hand on the left that the volume is correct and the thumb connection area is fleshy. Although it's not perfect and there are loads of terminating poles in high deformation areas, it feels correct.

The hand model on the right is the most common hand seen by newbies. Don't look at the old tutorials floating around the net and start with a cube, divide into four and then extrude five fingers. You can clearly see this model was started from a cube and just extruded four fingers and a thumb (if you can call it that). Don't make this mistake. You have a hand, look at it. Now look at it again! Also, make sure to model hands in a relaxed pose, don't model them flat and tense.

Characters are NOT Symmetrical

A big mistake many newbie artists to 3D make is to not add any asymmetry to their characters. What I have done below is to edit a photo of Jack Nicholson. The animated gif cycles between a symmetrical version and a non-symmetrical version. You will notice that the symmetrical version looks very much like a typical 3d character model. I must say I'd be pretty stoked with a render that looked like the symmetrical version, but look at how weird it actually looks.

Things to notice are how different the skin folds are on each side. Their volume, direction and depth are very different. The hair line and ears are very different. In true Jack style, notice how different his eye brows are, even though this is a relaxed pose.

Changing subtle things like this, even is cartoon characters, will really help stop your characters looking like they are stunned mullets.

Don't forget the light rig

You've created an amazing 3D model, you want to show it off in all it's glory, so make sure to use a light rig that compliments your work! With so many scripts, tools and rendering engines available today, there is no excuse to have poor lighting for your turntables or images. A poor light rig can totally ruin a good model, so make sure you spend the time setting up a render scene to use each time. In my opinion, the best way to easily show off a model is to put a HDR image on an environement dome and use this as your light source. The key is to then turn on Ambient Occlusion (AO). What this does is simulate a real world lighting condition and it clearly shows all the bumps and finer detail of your mesh by creating darker areas where light doesn't bounce as much. Also, make sure to drop in some lights for shadow casting. This will help ground the model to any ground plan geo or plinths and also simulate a strong light source like the sun or studio lights.

Image courtesy of Autodesk Mudbox.

Add detail where it's needed, not everywhere

Do you need to model the thread on that bolt? Sure, it's a fun little challenge, but does your scene really need an additional 100,00 polygons that won't be seen on your 1K render of a motorbike! Be sensible about what you model.

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Who cares about story!

In terms of film making it's the most important component, but in terms of modeling it's about as useful as a parachute in a spelling bee. This comment relates more towards modelers creating final year projects or bits for their demo reel. There is nothing worse that watching a poor attempt at a short film and seeing incomplete or weak character models and sets.

When I review demo reels I don't pay much attention to camera angles, story, continuity, effects, animation, sound, and all the other components involved with short films. I want to see models. Sure it's great to know you can do these things, but in all my years I've only seen a handful of young artists who can pull this off. The other ones you never hear from because they set themselves up to fail.

At the end of the day if you want to be a modeler then focus on this only. Create hard surface models, props, characters, and practically everything you see. If you want a job in VFX Films or Commercials then take a photo of something and build it. If you want a job in Feature Animation do the same, or get your hands on some great concept art and build that too... just don't waste your time with other stuff.

Eyeballs

Everyone who starts modeling in 3D at some point in time tries to build a human character. Unfortunately this happens all too quickly but that's not my immediate concern here. My problem is the eyes! You've all heard it before, they are the "window to our souls". What good is a wicked head sculpt if the eyes are poor. It's the first thing you look at, you have no choice about it, it's human nature.

Size

Firstly if you are going to make a human head, make sure the size of the eyes is correct. A general guide is that an adult eye is approximately 24mm in diameter. Eyes are also about 50mm apart. For a lot of characters this doesn't have to be absolute, but if you get this wrong from the start you will really struggle to get any realism into a face.

Off-Center

Take a close look at the images below in regards to iris placement (this is the coloured section). Look where the iris gets cut off by the upper eyelid. The pupil is not in the centre of the lids, it's higher that this. If your character is looking funny, then there is a great chance this is the problem. The image on the left especially shows this off, look how the bottom of the retina is well above the lower eyelid.

Not Circular

It might sound obvious, but the eye cavity is not circular. Too often this is done and it instantly shows a serious lack of anatomy knowledge. This might sound harsh, but if you want to be a modeler you need to pay attention to the small details. Look at the images below and check out the shape of the eyelids, they are elliptical and sharp in the corners, and the top eyelid is not the same as the bottom.

Build the socket

A great way to help build realistic eyes is to actually build the socket too. By doing this and making the eyeball fit inside you are automatically putting extra effort into making it fit snuggly. If you don't do this and just intersect the eyelid straight into the eyeball you're renders will lack any realism or detail. You will also not get any nice shadowing or more importantly, specular highlights.

Soft blobby sculpts

One of the biggest mistakes I see from people who say they can use Zbrush or Mudbox is soft blobby sculpts. Take the example below, it has some nice proportions and volumes but it could have been so much better. Make sure to change your brush size, flatten faces, pinch areas and change your brush falloff. Not everything should have the same feel which is what lets this sculpt down.

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Hybrid characters on your own time

I don't know what it is about newbies and hybrid creatures. For some reason most newbies feel the need to combine humans and animals together to create a hybrid creature. I don't want to get any psychiatrists involved and analyse this on a higher level, all I ask is that you resist the urge to put them on your Demo Reel. In the majority of cases, these characters lack serious character design skill and also highlight a poor level of anatomical knowledge.

This section might sound a little harsh, but it's for good reason! When starting out in 3D modeling it's easy to get carried away but until you have a seriously strong understanding of anatomy you will never create a convincing hybrid character. Learn anatomy first, play with hybrid freaks later.

Conclusion

Hopefully some of these tips will help you reduce your initial mistakes and also help you get your first job. There are many more tips and tricks to learn, but the best thing you can possibly do is practice your craft. This means looking more carefully at objects around you day-to-day, look at how things are constructed, how they feel, and how they deform and react to forces. If you want a job as a modeler, attention to detail is key... it truly is the small details that count. Good luck and stay within the guidelines.