BA4: Game Design Document #07

3D “Drop In” Session Notes

Last Thursday I went into uni to attend our allocated drop in session for 3D. I brought along some work I had done over the summer of a 3D brick wall and a character model/mesh I had started work on. Mark was really helpful and was showing me where I had gone wrong and what I had done right as well as giving me tips for future models. 

He also told me to watch this video by Grant Warwick called Hard Surface Essentials which covers a lot of helpful subject matter within 3D. I still need to watch it all but I will post a link to it here so I can find it easily.

http://vimeo.com/10941211

 

Mark also gave me some tips himself for Maya and Mudbox on which I took notes. We were also talking about a possible series of 3D specific tutorials and I told him the sorts of work I would find really helpful regarding what to cover in these sessions.

Here are the notes that I took: 

•  Maya base mesh/model can be incredibly  basic (2 rectangle arms & legs, long rectangle body, square-ish head) when taking into Mudbox for detailing.
•  Ensure quads are all roughly similar in shape and size before exporting to Mudbox.
•  You can do as much detail as you want in Mudbox, it will add geometry to your mesh so that if you transport it back into Maya you can fix up any broken areas and then push onto animation if you need to.
•  Maya has a sub division tool like Mudbox so you can view your model as proxy, caged on sub division surface or sub divided surface. This is done using the 1, 2 & 3 keys.
•  Tri’s aren’t good to export into Mudbox, they will break! However, they are okay in game engines.