Blog - Nauz

1 comment by Nauz on Dec 6th, 2009 digg this super bookmark

Hi there!

First it's important to decide, which 3d modeling program you'd like to use.
I personally decided to learn Maya, because I found beginner tutorials by a talented modeler, which were Half-Life related.

So first of, you should watch some beginner tutorials for your modeling software, and after watching them try to reproduce the result yourself. "Learning by doing"

Note: Video tutorials are usually better. in text-tutorials, authors like to forget to mention how they did something, which leaves you frustrated.

You may should choose another software than maya though, because tutorials that are Half-Life-Modelling related are rather rare for it. Best choice would be probably XSI Mod tool or 3DS Max, or maybe even Blender.

This way you'll learn some keyboard shortcuts and modeling techniques, the first step you need to become a good modeler

To get a clue of the way the mesh is build from polygons, you also should import models made by valve in your 3d application and have a look at them.
Again, there are lots of tutorials how to it's done. So a general tip is: Watch tutorials, try the stuff you learned from it on your own, watch more tutorials.

Also, the texture of the model is ofc important, especially for low poly models in games. So make sure you learn how to use Photoshop or another image-editing program

My textures are mostly based on edited and overlayed real-life textures, so have a look at textures on <!-- m -->Cgtextures.com<!-- m --> for example, but never leave the textures you use from there unedited, many people would notice.

So after learning the basics, which can sometimes be frustrating, but mostly fun, use reference images for your models. Before you start your model you should find many pictures of the object you would like to model in different perspectives and lights.
This way you'll get the shape of it right!

Summarized: I watched lots of tutorials, "learned from people with skills", learned their techniques and by modeling myself I also started creating my own techniques. I think that's a good combination to become a good modeler.

If you're ever stuck with something and you can't find a solution on google, don't worry. Just register on some forums like interlopers. In the modeling section, many people will try to help you there, I used that forums often, too. (Either to help others or to get help)

My general workflow looks like this:

-> Get reference images
-> start modeling the 3d mesh with polygons
-> make sure the mesh is clean, no inverted faces, you applied stuff like "smoothing groups" (You'll learn that from tutorials, again.) and you're happy with the mesh
-> unwrap the uv map, make sure it's clean by using (for a example) a white-black checkered texture
-> export the finished uv map and create a texture based on it
-> keep checking what the texture looks like applied to your model in your 3d modeling application, until you're happy with it
-> export the model to the source engine
-> compile the model and edit the material text files, check in half life model viewer and in game

If you want an awesome tutorial to start with, you may watch this <!-- m -->Moddb.com ... for-source<!-- m -->

it covers the complete modeling process, from modeling a weapon, to texturing, animating and exporting it to the source engine.
You probably won't be able to create a complete weapon on your own yet, after watching it the first time, but you'll see how everything works, which I recommended you in the beginning.

hope this is kinda helpful