Some one told me to post here

[mdunakin]

Some one told me to post here, so I am.
Hopefully, this will work, as I have never been over here and have no clue as to how the people are here, good, bad, friendly or what? Or if anyone really looks at this forum?
I know I never have, but of course, this means nothing if the rest of the world comes here :)
right? :)

Anyway, to the WIP post:

OK, it's all basically done, at least for now.
I think about all I need left is the very, very tedious task of adding all those little tiny white and black speckles for the back and legs, sort of like what's on the face. But, for the most part, he's done.
I just want to get out of texturing and get started with the rigging.
And then even better, the fun of making the scene that he'll go in.
That's where I am more comfortable :)

http://www.md-arts.com/HT_WIP_3_Whole_Done_1.jpg
http://www.md-arts.com/HT_WIP_3_Whole_Done_1b.jpg
http://www.md-arts.com/HT_WIP_3_Whole_Done_1c.jpg
http://www.md-arts.com/HT_WIP_3_Whole_Done_Top_1.jpg
http://www.md-arts.com/HT_WIP_3_Whole_Done_Top_1a.jpg
http://www.md-arts.com/HT_WIP_3_Whole_Done_Bot_1.jpg
http://www.md-arts.com/HT_WIP_3_Whole_Done_Bot_1a.jpg

see ya'll for now.

..................md :)
P.S> Oh, and the basic steps I took, are over in the alt.binaries group.

[JeromeMD]

Nice. Very nice work.

Why is everyone here better than me?...

[Zarathustra]

That looks awesome. I would like to see the tut. I have no idea about the newsgroup. I have never been over there and have no clue as to how the people are there, good, bad, friendly or what? Or if anyone really looks at it.
Just curious, why haven't you posted it on your site?

Well, I do remember you from the old forum. It's the same as before, just all dolled up and pretty looking. Same quality mixed with clowns as before.
I remember you helping me out with that snake tutorial. It would be nice to have another good guy around.

[js33]

Hey Mark,

You finally made it here. Hehehe
Actually if you visit often you will find alot of good people here.
Also a lot less pollution than on the newsgroup and NO spam. Yeah. Also you will see alot more images here than on the binaries group.

Cheers,
JS

[Jimzip]

That's really neat!
Did you make a tut for it?

Jimzip:D

[mdunakin]

Hmmm,,, OK.
It seems to be a good croud and a good bunch here, people wize that is.
So, I guess I'll bookmark this place and come back here more.

And first, I might as well get this out of the way.
I have no plans for any tut on this.
And I also never want to talk about making them ever again, since my last TOTAL failure at trying to get a tut CD put out.
Well, I will still talk about them, but I don't want to is all :)
And yes, I will always still put tuts out from time to time, but now I'm really sick and burnt out on that whole area of my life, i.e. making tuts.

I kept wishing I would've had someone to work with directly when I was making those tuts, as I needed someone who I could trust to be there every time and respond "on time" with comments and suggestions and anything else.

I wanted to send stuff to beta testers and like that, but had the distinct feeling that people only wanted free tuts from me and were not willing to put in any actual time with constructive help.
if I'm wrong, then let me know.
I would still like to finish that flippin Cd some age.
or at least before the tuts are obsolete :)

ooopppsss, getting off topic here.

As for not posting on my own site, I haven't added a single thing there in ages, other then new tuts from time to time, because I want to trash that old site and make a new one, but just can't seem to come up with a decent new design.
I sort of have one ready, but then after I stare at it for several hours, I end up thinking that it sucks.

I will post up here, as i did in the alt.bin group, my steps for the texturing. That is, if anyone wants to hear about it?
it's not an actual tut or anything like that, but more along the lines of the steps I did and like a "tips" sort of deal.

let me know?

............................md :)
You can email me directly too if anyone wants to, as i check my email every hour and I don't always come here.

md@md-arts.com

[oxyg3n]

Hello,

I like your lizard alot, the textures are really sweet!! Well, I havent seem a lizard like this in a while but I think that he looks flat in some of the poses, but it may just be the position that he is in.

[mdunakin]

Thanx oxyg3n, here is a real photo of one kind of these lizards, my brother caught it in Navada.
You can see just how small they are and also how flat they are.
Mine's actually thinker then the real thing.
They lie flat in the sand and then eat ants all day.

............md :)

[oxyg3n]

What a life... lying in the sand feasting on ants all day!!

What kind of lizard is it?? I had an iguana for about 7 years, and when he was scared or surprised by my cat he sure could blow his body up large like a ballon.

...well... What are you going to do with it? Are you going to animate him?

[mdunakin]

He's a Horned Lizard, or more commonly called, a Horny Toad.
Even though it's not a toad :)

Don't know about animating him yet, as I hate rigging.
Right now I've got him with a basic rig for posing as I want to get on with the scene part of this.
Going to see if I can make a teddy bear cactus right now.

................md :)

[Zarathustra]

Yeah, if you were to post your steps that would be cool. I'm sure they would be well received.

[mdunakin]

Ok, hang on a sec whilst i find that stuff.....

Here it all is.
I'll see if I can dig up Brizon's part of this and post that up as well.
And yes, I use Deep Paint 3D for the painting part of this.

>>>>>>
My steps for texturing are all basically the same as what brizon layed out, so I don't really want to repete his steps, but, I will say that I did some certain things different and will do so on all my future models.

Here's a simple version of the things/steps I used/did and will also go so far as to suggest it for others.

When you build the model, go ahead and do what has been suggested and start with your sub-d model and end up with the frozen unwelded model for the texturing. This is assuming you are using Deep Paint 3D.
I won't even bother trying to tell anyone any other way, as I can't even see living without DP.

Anyway, with your sub-d model, go ahead and name as many surfaces as you want.
In fact, after what I just went through, I'd suggest naming all sorts of parts with their own surfaces, as you will see why.
Things like, belly, side face, mouth, toung, head, points front back whatever, body back points (on top) and so on and so on.

The reason I found this to work better then just naming a few surfaces, is because of the way the UV Atlas handles things.
If you have more things named a certain way, then you will get farrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr better UV seperation results when you go to make the Atlas UV map. This keeps things more better cleanly sperated, which will come in handy when you go to paint in DP. (Trust me)

Now, with this sub-d, fully named surfaced Atlas UV map object, go ahead and freeze this and do the Unweld of the object.
Now!, save this object with "ALL" the same surface name, such as Skin, as opposed to all those different surface names.
What this will do, is to make your life a zillion times easier when you bring this new object into DP, because you will only work with the one named surface and not be forced to use lots of maps for all those seperate surfaces.
I'm only using three surfaces for this little guy, C, B, S. (color, bump, shine) I know I could use more, but he doesn't seem to need them. (or at least I don't feel he does :)

Anyway, what you will notice now when painting in DP, is that "now" all the screwy looking Atlas parts of the map, will tend to make better sense and will inturn make things more paintable, easier to paint on. Less bizar overlapping from one area to another, which Atlas tends to do. Beleave me on this one, you'll be a much happier camper if you do this.

Now, when all is said and done, you can always load back in your sub-d model and load up the same "few" textures to all those seperate surfaces, "OR!!!" you can do what I did and take that sub-d model and also save it as a seperate object that has all the same named surface applied to it. If you find you truely need better sperate control over certain areas, then go with a model that has those areas named as such.

Anyway, I don't think I'm leaving anything out, but ask me any questions if you need to?

>>>>>>>>>
Here's the Brizon part of this:
1) load your subd version
2) create an Atlas UV map for the entire mesh or just the surfaces that will
be using it
3) In the surfaces panel setup the UV map (minus the image file cause
obviously its not done yet heh)
4) save that model, thats your LW version
5) next, freeze the model, how poly intensive it ends up is upto you
6) your UV map(s) should be intact but with lots of polygons
7) unweld the object, if you do this with a subd mesh it'll mess up, but on
a frozen mesh it should be fine.. if you have smoothing on in the surface(s)
then you'll notice that stops working, thats ok and a good test to see its
unwelded
8) save that version out as your Deep Paint model
9) go into Deep Paint and use the correct version to paint on, if you make
sure you use Projection mapping and a large enough image map for your model,
you should get pretty much 100% perfect looking maps
10) when your done, export those maps, and simply add them to your LW model,
hey presto, done

try doing the above method, but without unwelding the object.. you'll see
why its very important to unweld for usable maps ;)

...............................md :)

[Matt]

Welcome aboard Mark!

I'm interested, what happened with this tutorial CD you mentioned? Was it that bad?

Matt

[mdunakin]

No, the CD would've been great, it was (and still is) the experience that sucked so badly.
When I make tuts for my web site, I don't have to worry about competing with anybody else or worrying about is it perfect or not or anything else like that.
But when you are making something to "sell" to people, then it's a whole other story.
plus, the main problems were that I kept getting myself soooooooooo lost in what the heck I was doing, that every time I'd start over (which has been lots of times) I couldn't tell what I was doing the last time I was working.
I have no work flow or something or I'm just plain a stupid dumb-*** or something?
Cuz I must be.
No one can be that dense, can they?

And the whole time I would work on it, I couldn't think worth a crap because I just kept worrying that it wouldn't be any good.
That was why I wanted and NEEDED someone to test out my work for me and give me real life opinions and constructive opinions and suggestions while I made the thing.
but I would email people asking if they wanted to test stuff out and they would say yes, but then later when I would try and get ahold of them, I never could.
I can't be trying to depend on someone that isn't really going to be there.

And I have some brainy type lw friends, but all they do is critisize the way things look or are setup, instead of commenting on the tutorial itself.
I needed someone that's not good enough at lw, but good enough to actually know what the heck to look for and make realistic comments on the tuts themselves.
This has never happened.
I am thoroughly sick of the whole things and several good, nay, great tutorials are ending up going to wastes.

Oh well......................................md :(

[Zarathustra]

The whole tut thing is a bit mysterious in the LW world. Most people are generous enough to post them and I think everyone is spoiled now expecting all this knowledge for free. It seems amazing that people who would get your tuts to test would just vanish and not help you out.

Well, you might've ended up like Larry pushing your cd everytime someone asked a question, so look on the bright side.:)

If not here, maybe try CGTalk in the LW forum for recruiting tut testers.
I think if you posted some killer work here and there and rode the buzz with "hey, I got a cd I'm selling" you'd probably make some decent $$$.

[mdunakin]

Hmmm,,, Well, how brainy are you?
E me privately.

Too brainy, too newbie, intermediate?
Some amount of time on your hands?
Able to give realistic and constructive opinions and suggestions or comments?

md@md-arts.com