[Previous entry: "Been a while..."] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Idol... day 2"]
06/23/2003 Archived Entry: "Behold..."
In the little free time I've had, I've been learing 3ds Max. While I do have some experience with it, I haven't done much in the poly modeling department. So... over the past two days, here's what I've done:
Yep... that's the Idol from raiders.
First I modeled the thing in 3d. I found that poly modeling wasn't terribly tough to get the hang of. I modeled the thing on my first try, within a few hours. Optomizing it took a little effort however. Of course, skinning it took another day.
I had to figure out UV mapping. This site helped immensley. I ended up selecting all the polys on a side of the model, used plannar map to flatten it out un the UV mapping window, then took a screen shot of it. Then, I found images of the front, back and sides of the model through Googles image search. In Photoshop, I matches all the colors of the images to a more golden color (like the front shot), then I scaled, rotated and overlayed those shots on top of the screen shot I took of the UV map.
Finally, In Max, I tweaked the UV map to fit the skin a bit better. Not bad for a first try, eh?
I feel a lot more confident in my modeling abilites now. Although that was my first attempt, I think my skills in radiant helped quite a bit in making the transition. I really love playing with this. I may make the staff / medallion and ark next.