"Purpose dictates Process"

Marcus always tell us this.

And he's right. He's articulate what I've always thought about any type of work in a very simple way. "Purpose dictates Process." If you can't get something to work, make sure you're making it for what it's going to be used for.

I finished my CDC project, which is building a character model from scratch. Final results:

I'm pretty pleased.  I didn't add nipples or a belly button (since they weren't required, per se), but I did add decent feet, which aren't required either.

We also had to UV it, and I daresay I finally understand how to make UVs. FINALLY. Sheesh.

We also had to do a clothing design with details - drawn or sculpted or what have you, but not modeled - but I... did not like what I did. It's embarrassingly bad and I think I need to start drawing again because I'm starting to forget.

After the cut are wireframe details. And rambling. But you can stop reading when the pictures stop.

 Box junction for the remnant of an adam's apple women have, and another for the little dent in the clavicle.

 Trapezius loops.

 Diamond junction there neatly cuts off several loops from heading unnecessarily into the skull, and creates that little indent between the skull and the spine.

 Ear was alright to make, but actually attaching it? Christ. It's got diamond junctions on the back of it, but NEVER on the skull itself. But I did get a decent ear I can use in other models out of it. :)

 Facial loops. Model had slightly more lopsided features, but I had to tone it down to make it look more natural and real. Things seem so much worse when on CG. But perfection seems equally unnatural.

 Isolated double-box junction and a diamond junction on the leg.

 The feet needed and extra three loops on the top and bottom to accommodate the big toe. For the hand, you made space on the side to attach the thumb later. But it's the same concept.

 BUTTS. I wish I'd lowered the star junctions on the sides of her rear to make the butt shape better match what was actually on the model.

 Elbow there. Box junction and diamond junction creating more edges to tie in the hand to the arm. Alternatively, cutting off edges from the hand from going into the arm and body.

 Hey Cai.

 I had to have three diamond junctions practically in a row to remove a bunch of edge loops and make sure they didn't crowd the skull and head. Until I figured it out (with some fantastic help from a classmate - thank you, Jason!), it was a fricking mess. Didn't affect the surface too badly, but it really looked disgusting and incomprehensible.

Part of building for the purpose means the mesh needs to be readable - you need to look at it and be able to understand if it's something that needs to deform or not.

This also required me to think on my feet; my geometry didn't match the tutorial because my edgeloops were much greater in number so I had to compensate for what I saw.

 Un-3-keyed. So it's faceted.

Character Design and Creation (CDC) has, I think, beat SAL  and MOD in terms of what I've learned and how much fun I've had. Usually, finals week, the last week of every month, is hectic and tiring and involves at least one all-nighter and a lot of detesting your own work. This time, I was up until around 2 every morning and I loved every second of it. As always, I gravitate towards art and design of the human body. But Marcus was also very good at teaching.

The more I think about it, the less I like MCR. There were a lot of things I wasn't doing that month, and that is indeed part of why I did so badly. But our instructor simply wasn't up to par as a teacher. He was perfectly friendly as a person and good at his work, but he's not teacher material.

Part of being a student invested in the chosen field is doing independent work and researching methods and tools outside of what you're being taught. This is true, and hands-down makes you better than the student that does only what's required. But we can't research what we don't understand in the first place. When someone is just learning something for the first time - not just a specific method, but an entire field of work - you need to give them a general target to aim for. In MCR, Frank put up images and told us that's what our geometry was supposed to look like. And nothing else.

That tells me nothing. What am I looking for in that image? Why is it a quality result? I saw lines, I saw they made a good shape. I didn't understand how.

He was impatient and inattentive. When he showed us how to do something in class, he'd just show us - he wouldn't really explain what was happening or why. And if we asked him to repeat a process, he'd go through it even faster instead of slowing down and explaining it. He seemed irritated with questions and couldn't explain things in more than one way.

Again, this doesn't make him a bad person. He was friendly. Just not someone I would take classes from if I had my druthers.

Marcus finally told us we were looking to make arcs in our models. He showed us what they were. Explained how neat meshes looked. Explained junctions and how they affected the surface. Showed us a video on how pinching and bad topology happened. Explained how laminate and non-manifold geometry occurred (failed extrude and usually backwards normals, for example). And rather than giving us a step-by-step process on everything... his tutorial videos gave us insight to his thought process, which was exactly what I needed. I need to know how a modeler thinks, and he gave us that.

It took me a while but I think if I honestly sat down and put my entire brain to it, I could model an entire body in a day. Because I was taught correctly.

And I also learned to use my tablet, which sped up my process so much more than the mouse, holy shit.

In any case, that was my entire week. That and How I Met Your Mother, which is such a good killer of homesickness. :D Nerds in NYC? I can dig it.

Also I totally just made an awesome pork roast. OMNOMNOM.