3D Artists & Mesh Makers

Does anyone else enjoy doing 3D meshing? Is it just a hobby or is it your job? (It only counts if you find it at least mildly fun.) How did you get started and what kinds of things do you like to do with it?

 

I started meshing so I could make stuff for Sims 2, almost all of it was converting things from Sims 1 sprites into real 3D objects. Simple as that. However I never realized how much I enjoy it and I'd love to spend most of my time doing meshing. This quarter I decided to take a 3D design class to really see how much I like it, and figured I could use it to maybe make DD scale items (printed through Shapeways) once I have enough skill. Even with being fully aware of my high level of perfectionism I expect from myself even in my hobbies, I'm still stunned with my first completed project. This is the first piece of completely original meshing I have done. I went from not knowing how to use the program to the pics below in one week.

 

Click on the pics to see the full size images on Flickr

 

 

 

 

3DS Max is totally awesome. Please forgive the crummy shadows in the pics, for some reason whenever I placed a light it turned everything black and I don't know how to fix it (My professor didn't know why either). These are not actual renders but screenshots.

 

Any opinions about Shapeways? I've never used them before but simply the possibilities are really exciting. I want to make myself some pastel colored ceramic DD dishes!

 

~Sister Kyoya

Yup, I make 3D models! Went to school specifically for that and animation. My portfolio is here: http://woodwardanimation.com/models.html

 

 

Couple o samples. The Tesla coil was done entirely in Maya (save for some PS work on the textures), and the girl was low-poly modeled in Max and detail-modeled in Zbrush. In general I ping back and forth between Max and Maya--for the most part I prefer strip and spline modeling in Max, but prefer box modeling and rigging in Maya. Lighting is probably equally tricky in both I think, lol. Materials I much prefer the compact material editor in Max, because I think Maya's hypershade interface is a royal pain in the rear. (I'd probably love it if they made it so the nodes snapped to a grid, but as it's set up now they all pile on top of each other and I can never find anything.)

 

I've also been doing some 3D stuff at work, but it's very much WIP at this point so can't really show any of it yet. And no, it's not modeling golf club heads; those are done in various CAD programs by the engineers, and I'm working primarily in Maya and Unity. Think that's about all I ought to say at this point, lol.

 

I've also been eyeballing Shapeways. Haven't printed anything yet, though I may very well at least make Agatha some little tools. Eventually I'd love to 3D print a head and then dye it to match a DD or Obitsu body. (From what I've seen the Polished Strong White Flexible has a decently vinyl-like texture and takes dye pretty nicely.) I'd definitely want to try some small, not-so-intensive things first though just to get a sense of how things work.

 

Sister Kyoya, are you saying that your scene has lights in the viewport but not in render? That's annoying. Maybe try a different render engine, like maybe Mental Ray? (I know MR can be slow and a resource hog, but the results are SO pretty!) You may also want to try copy-pasting stuff into a fresh file in case it's corrupt.

I like to model too, I use Lightwave. I used to model and rig clothing for Poser and sell it at Daz, but I don't have the time anymore. It's a very time consuming task and my job does not leave me much free time. I basically exchanged a hobby that made me money to a doll hobby that costs me money

I have a certain fascination with modeling glass objects, I love to render them as realistically as I can.

 

SwirlyVase by DominiqueBB, on Flickr