Master Character Animation in 3ds Max with Pro Techniques

What is Character Modeling?

Character modeling is the process of transforming a concept, essentially an idea, into a three-dimensional model. The character artist builds the model from the ground up using tools such as polygon box modeling, hard surface modeling, and digital sculpting techniques.

Think of it like the traditional art of sculpting a statue. In classical art this was done with clay, marble, and other materials. The artist would start with a large block of material and use additive or subtractive techniques to create their vision.

What is Character Modeling?

Character modeling is the process of transforming a concept, essentially an idea, into a three-dimensional model. The character artist builds the model from the ground up using tools such as polygon box modeling, hard surface modeling, and digital sculpting techniques.

Think of it like the traditional art of sculpting a statue. In classical art this was done with clay, marble, and other materials. The artist would start with a large block of material and use additive or subtractive techniques to create their vision.

Topology is the layout of a model, it defines how the vertices and edges are situated to make the mesh surface. Good topology is important if you want smooth frame rates (real time) and good deformation in both realtime animation and pre-rendered output.

Modeling Human Head
Modeling 3d Human head is considered one of the complicated things to do may be because of the fact that the structure and form of a human face is so familiar to everyone that even a small fault in the 3D model is easy to notice.

I have tried to make the process as simple as possible in the video tutorial. This is the basic head modeling using editpoly and playing with polygons, after the finished head we apply turbosmooth to see the final resolution of the mesh. Tubosmooth add more subdivisions and make s the mesh high resolution making the surface smooth and beautiful.

For realistic head modelling there is a amazing article in the external resources below, though our process is way more simpler and for the most simplistic character but going through these techniques will give you firm idea to follow the edge flow, topology as well as anatomy where required.

Hair modelling and animation has long been a major obstacle in computer graphics and most recent techniques often leave animators and modellers with little control over the final shape of the character’s hairdo. Similarly, when simulating the dynamic properties of hair, control is taken away from the animator and handed over to a set of physics equations. Cartoon hair is often long and flowing and does not always obey the laws of physics. This lack of control inhibits the whole style of the animation and constrains animators’ artistic expressions for characters.

As it would be impractical to animate every strand of hair on a character’s head, or even clumps of hair, the solution proposed was to use a NURBS volume to define the shape and motion of the hair. This would give the modellers and animators control over the final overall shape of the hairstyle without them having to worry about each individual strand of hair.

Whereas the Disney system attempts to fill the volume with realistic looking hair, this paper presents a system that fills it with clumps of hair geometry and renders it non-photo realistically. This will not only drastically reduce rendering time but also give a stylised look to the hair that can be adjusted by a set of design utilities and the shading parameters built in our system. 

Making realistic clothes in 3d is one of the most challenging tasks since the innovation of CG animation. Clothing is an extremely important aspect of 3D character development, it can transform the models and tell a story behind the character's personality. In this tutorial making 3d clothes is easier as you can see we have used the simplistic approach to get our required results. It our creative imagination with the right planning to create simple clothes in just a few minutes.