Modeling/Texturing: How does one reach the elite level like top modders on Nexus?

[fftfan]

I can't believe how awesome CROSS_Courser is, it really makes me want to try creating new Fallout 4 outfits on a similar level! So I've got the basics down in 3DS/Maya as well as a bit of GIMP/Photoshop but how can I progress towards that level?

 

I guess the problem for me is I feel a bit spoiled by many of the awesome mods on Nexus that IMO are professional quality, there are enough that if I make something myself that isn't at that level it feels totally out of place in the game IMO. So now after installing and using a bunch of them I find I am now extremely critical of any flaws like if I try creating something in 3DS I end up fixating on flaws, this ends up resulting in me disliking it and stopping/deleting it. Or I try doing bodyslide conversion in Outfit Studio and it end up having clipping/weight issues which bother me enough that I end up never using them. It ends up feeling pointless to work on things I won't ever use in my game. I need to feel I am using a methodology that will at least eventually lead to some kind of actual results I will want to use in my game.

Edited December 2, 2017 by fftfan

[jmenaru]

Dude, come on this is hilarious. Do you think that you're just going to open up some software and the next day you'll achieve mastery over it ? It takes months/years and hundreds to thousands of hours of practice. Nobody just learned that stuff over night.

 

Point is that of course it's not going to look good in the beginning, as is with all things. Keep that in mind, lower your expectations, start small, find some tutorials made by professionals in areas that interest you and work up from there.

[Ethreon]

Google

 

<software here> tutorial. Sort them by either videos or docs. Watch, read.. and be ready for the road cause this is a long journey.

[fftfan]

Dude, come on this is hilarious. Do you think that you're just going to open up some software and the next day you'll achieve mastery over it ? It takes months/years and hundreds to thousands of hours of practice. Nobody just learned that stuff over night.

 

Point is that of course it's not going to look good in the beginning, as is with all things. Keep that in mind, lower your expectations, start small, find some tutorials made by professionals in areas that interest you and work up from there.

I was really excited to see that armor TBH. Your stuff is really cool too IMO.

 

No I am just hoping to possibly make the journey a little more concrete, find the right track. Not in a day but moreso like milestones being able to compare work done after say 10 hours vs 100 hours and see certain improvements.

 

Like weightlifting/exercise, if you have good habits, good plan and good diet you can be sure to see improvements over time. No plan, poor diet and poor form will mean no improvement most of the time. I'm feeling like currently I'm going with no plan and poor form, wondering if there's any way to change that.

 

Some authors seemed to just show up with great stuff so it seemed to me like maybe they did learn very quickly unless they just never release anything till they had thousands of hours of practice.

 

I'm at probably hour 25 and I still feel like anyone without experience can probably do the same with just super quick rundown on UI/ basic functions. I just want to make sure that by say hour 100 I've gotten somewhere and maybe upload something okay.

 

Google

 

<software here> tutorial. Sort them by either videos or docs. Watch, read.. and be ready for the road cause this is a long journey.

I guess I tend to get hung up on if I can still follow tutorial if say it's 3DS Max 2012 or photoshop tutorial from 5-10 years ago.

Edited December 2, 2017 by fftfan

[Raider5]

read lots of tuts, practice, practice some more and then add in more practice.

 

in my opinion modeling is the easy part, texturing is what makes or breaks a project and that takes a good eye, some talent and, you guessed it, Practice LOL.

 

as far as tools, yes 3ds Max, Maya or blender. Blender is free and has a learning curve. Photoshop or Gimp for textures. even the old tuts are still pretty valuable and relevant.

[fftfan]

read lots of tuts, practice, practice some more and then add in more practice.

 

in my opinion modeling is the easy part, texturing is what makes or breaks a project and that takes a good eye, some talent and, you guessed it, Practice LOL.

 

as far as tools, yes 3ds Max, Maya or blender. Blender is free and has a learning curve. Photoshop or Gimp for textures. even the old tuts are still pretty valuable and relevant.

Maybe it's just practice needed at this point. Most basic stuff I can do or can easily pick up and understand from a google search. Just want to try to make sure I am not stuck at the same skill level even after more hours(which I feel like anyone can reach if they get a 101 basics overview), I don't feel that all that far progressed relative to time put in so it made me wonder if I need to make some changes. Like in weight lifting if you don't have any sign of progress after a month or two probably it's time to reevaluate things probably gotta take a look at methods being used and consider another plan or at least making some kind of change. Unless modest things take 100+ hours to learn to do kind of well?

 

Texturing certainly is the hard part.

 

Would anyone want to give feedback if I got going on a mini project and post pics here? Like let's say a headband or something :laugh: .

Edited December 2, 2017 by fftfan

[JimmyRJump]

First things first. Don't look at other people's work with the mindset of "I'm never going to be able to do that" or even "why doesn't my work look like that?"

 

Instead, use it as a goal you want to achieve and don't let some excellent work you see bring you down but instead let it inspire you by showing you what can be achieved when you set your mind to it.

 

And the latter is what counts. Setting your mind to it.

 

Me, I'm a feet first guy. If there's something I want to do I go look around for what's needed and I start. When I get stuck, I go again look around and see what can eventually get me unstuck.

 

You've already gone the distance of getting the tools and surround you with what is needed to do what you want to do. Now, it's just a question of not giving up and try to refine what you do within what's possible with the tools you have.

 

Keep also in mind that some people are more talented than others. Not saying this to get you all depressed and stuff, but there's the odd chance that, at the end of the ride, you're less talented than those you look up to.

 

Of course, there's an equal chance you have more talent.

 

The point is to keep on trying until you think it's right. May take a month, a year or worse case scenario, a lifetime. Just enjoy it.

[jkruse05]

I'm still working toward that level, but I can tell you where I started, and show you where I've ended up.

 

Take it slow, start with something small and work your way up. The first mods I ever made for a Bethesda game were just using the construction kit for Morrowind. Made myself a house. My first mod involving modeling was for Oblivion. I converted the Fighter's Guild sword and shield decoration into usable weapons that could be pulled off the wall. I later tried making my own weapons, but the textures were always crap, so I never released anything. Morrowind and Oblivion were easy because nothing really had moving parts. There were no reload animations or cycling bolts that had to be lined up. I managed it all with just one or two tutorials.

 

Between Oblivion and Fallout 3 I took an Autocad course at the University. As it turned out that was more similar to Hammer (Half Life 2's map editor) than Blender, but definitely made both easier.

 

My first modelling for Fallout was just minor adjustments to the Fallout 3 power armor meshes in Blender, and at that time Blender had more or less full support for .nif, which made everything much easier. You can see the results in the "Feminized Power Armor" mod in my signature. I had to pour through tutorials, and messed up a couple times before I got it working, because I hadn't messed clothing before. Then I decided it was time for weapons, so I made a couple of full weapon models. They were supposed to be redesigns of the old pulse weapons, but the UV (texture) process in Blender had changed since Oblivion and, with college courses to worry about, I never figured out how to do it.

 

After that I was done until New Vegas, and for that I just updated the feminized power armors.

 

Between Fallout New Vegas and Skyrim I practiced a bit by making a modular Thompson SMG and a crystal weapon set, just models. I still hadn't figured out how to do the new UV mapping, and had other things to worry about.

 

I did nothing for Skyrim, things had changed and I didn't have the free time to relearn.

 

Fast forward another 5 years or so. Around half a year after Fallout 4 came out I found myself unemployed, I needed something to do to keep my mind occupied, so I went back and started relearning how to model for Fallout 4. If you're only using free tools it's a complicated process, but with the help of many tutorials, the most helpful of which were from MikeMoore, I got back into the modding scene. I focused on basic things that were simple to implement, additional weapon parts and mesh combinations. You can see the humble results in my signature.

 

A few months ago I decided that I had learned enough and practiced enough to try a full weapon. Currently I'm at this stage.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/images/96872

It's not professional grade by any measure, but I'm pretty happy with it.

Working on other visuals (digital paintings) in GIMP helped me finally make acceptable textures.

 

It takes plenty of practice and education, self and/or otherwise, but you can get there.

[fftfan]

Would it be insightful to those who can give advice if I go make things and post them in this topic? Like general critique or "oh your methods are not correct here are the principles you need to follow". Maybe a lot easier if there's something to respond directly to?

I don't always have the level of free time I want but right now am sick so maybe that'll help give me a little bit more of a window to focus on this, it's keeping me awake right now so at least I can read through and respond in this topic. A bunch of my old ideas are coming back to me, most are better suited for TES but maybe I can do something kinda funny like raiders who dress up as characters like cosplayers. Maybe a silly mod idea might be better idea for starting and at least it isn't quite as silly as My Little Pony mods. And the people who hate anime/JRPGs could have fun killing raiders dressed up like Naruto characters. This came to me from hearing Naruto VAs in Far Harbor I thought wouldn't it be funny to dress them up as their Naruto character.

 

Google

<software here> tutorial. Sort them by either videos or docs. Watch, read.. and be ready for the road cause this is a long journey.

Any that you can recommend? Actually your work is one of the reasons to think that there must be better methods I am missing, you produce a lot of high quality stuff in high quantities and TBH my recent settlements rely a ton on The Master Plan. Like I pretty much consider your stuff vital at this point, I've got everything or close to everything.

 

I'm still working toward that level, but I can tell you where I started, and show you where I've ended up.

Take it slow, start with something small and work your way up. The first mods I ever made for a Bethesda game were just using the construction kit for Morrowind. Made myself a house. My first mod involving modeling was for Oblivion. I converted the Fighter's Guild sword and shield decoration into usable weapons that could be pulled off the wall. I later tried making my own weapons, but the textures were always crap, so I never released anything. Morrowind and Oblivion were easy because nothing really had moving parts. There were no reload animations or cycling bolts that had to be lined up. I managed it all with just one or two tutorials.

Between Oblivion and Fallout 3 I took an Autocad course at the University. As it turned out that was more similar to Hammer (Half Life 2's map editor) than Blender, but definitely made both easier.

My first modelling for Fallout was just minor adjustments to the Fallout 3 power armor meshes in Blender, and at that time Blender had more or less full support for .nif, which made everything much easier. You can see the results in the "Feminized Power Armor" mod in my signature. I had to pour through tutorials, and messed up a couple times before I got it working, because I hadn't messed clothing before. Then I decided it was time for weapons, so I made a couple of full weapon models. They were supposed to be redesigns of the old pulse weapons, but the UV (texture) process in Blender had changed since Oblivion and, with college courses to worry about, I never figured out how to do it.

After that I was done until New Vegas, and for that I just updated the feminized power armors.

Between Fallout New Vegas and Skyrim I practiced a bit by making a modular Thompson SMG and a crystal weapon set, just models. I still hadn't figured out how to do the new UV mapping, and had other things to worry about.

I did nothing for Skyrim, things had changed and I didn't have the free time to relearn.

Fast forward another 5 years or so. Around half a year after Fallout 4 came out I found myself unemployed, I needed something to do to keep my mind occupied, so I went back and started relearning how to model for Fallout 4. If you're only using free tools it's a complicated process, but with the help of many tutorials, the most helpful of which were from MikeMoore, I got back into the modding scene. I focused on basic things that were simple to implement, additional weapon parts and mesh combinations. You can see the humble results in my signature.

A few months ago I decided that I had learned enough and practiced enough to try a full weapon. Currently I'm at this stage.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/images/96872
It's not professional grade by any measure, but I'm pretty happy with it.
Working on other visuals (digital paintings) in GIMP helped me finally make acceptable textures.

It takes plenty of practice and education, self and/or otherwise, but you can get there.

 

Great post! Reassuring because the early part for you is probably similar to the level I am at. I have done conversions between body types for Oblivion, I had also starting on T2 Judgement Paladin armor. made the shoulder but there were problems with it. Vertex count was probably silly for armor back then and doing Reduce Polygon basically turned it into goo like I'm pretty sure nobody would be able to tell what it is afterwards. Maybe the shape was too weird but the UV mapping never worked, just kept making nonsense.

I don't have it anymore as it was on an old PC I don't have anymore. I can't even run Skyrim on that thing so I actually skipped the game as far as modding went and been gone for a very long time. I would still visit Nexus from time to time but it was basically window shopping. It's like I've been around for a while but actually I just started since this is my first gaming PC. I actually want to retry T2 Judgement armor but want to have better strategies so I will be able to produce a prototype. I am thinking it's probably way smarter to ask for advice than just try randomly. As a Blender user maybe you might understand this old question I had one that I do not know if it may or may not still matter on 3DS: Is there any kind of "Design Requirement"/rules of thumb for making a mesh so that UV map creation might produce something sensible? Something(s) that I need to keep in mind so I don't make 5-10k vertex object only to find out UV mapping cannot be done for whatever reason?

I will check out MikeMoore's stuff. That's exactly what I hoped people might post here, recommendations. There are many tutorials for 3DS Max & Photoshop/GIMP but not all are geared for these games since many devs also use 3DS Max & Photoshop as well as many who use Photoshop for completely different things from games textures. I found few for Blender so that contributed to me deciding to switch.

 

A few months ago I decided that I had learned enough and practiced enough to try a full weapon. Currently I'm at this stage.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/images/96872
It's not professional grade by any measure, but I'm pretty happy with it.
Working on other visuals (digital paintings) in GIMP helped me finally make acceptable textures.

 

That's pretty good IMO. I think with only minor work like tweaks to the _n/_m textures it can become pretty realisitic. (This comment might even be incorrect, the "smooth" appearance might even just be solely due to Blender's weird rendering).
Hand painting(inside GIMP/Photoshop) is certainly very difficult so I hope through learning the tricks of each program I can avoid/minimize having to do too much direct hand painting. I do have an FPS mouse a Logitech G502 with a quick DPI button used for sniping(+ other buttons for low/high DPI presets) I can use for detailed movement if needed since my understanding is it more or less pretty much can't be avoided. Might get an art tablet someday but those things are crazy expensive so who knows.

read lots of tuts, practice, practice some more and then add in more practice. in my opinion modeling is the easy part, texturing is what makes or breaks a project and that takes a good eye, some talent and, you guessed it, Practice LOL. as far as tools, yes 3ds Max, Maya or blender. Blender is free and has a learning curve. Photoshop or Gimp for textures. even the old tuts are still pretty valuable and relevant.

I agree completely and texturing side of things is what really makes me think I need to ask the experts before proceeding.

I used Blender for quite a while till I asked a fairly big modder who said I should drop Blender for 3DS Max or Maya. Didn't want to at first, he stopped responding when I said I wanted to stick with Blender. But more recently I changed my mind when I got back into modding couple months ago after building a new PC, when I'd googled tutorials for creating custom models for Fallout 4 and found little to nothing for Blender users I think was due to blender devs not adding Nif support for Skyrim & Fallout 4 and I think they stopped development on it for Blender. There was that and I'm sick of Blender's UV unwrapping system plus people say 3DS is good at UVs, so now I'm totally set on switching. I've got 3DS & Maya and have learned basics in them, at least it was quite a lot easier to pickup since I'd used Blender vs being my first 3D program ever.

 

First things first. Don't look at other people's work with the mindset of "I'm never going to be able to do that" or even "why doesn't my work look like that?" Instead, use it as a goal you want to achieve and don't let some excellent work you see bring you down but instead let it inspire you by showing you what can be achieved when you set your mind to it. And the latter is what counts. Setting your mind to it. Me, I'm a feet first guy. If there's something I want to do I go look around for what's needed and I start. When I get stuck, I go again look around and see what can eventually get me unstuck. You've already gone the distance of getting the tools and surround you with what is needed to do what you want to do. Now, it's just a question of not giving up and try to refine what you do within what's possible with the tools you have. Keep also in mind that some people are more talented than others. Not saying this to get you all depressed and stuff, but there's the odd chance that, at the end of the ride, you're less talented than those you look up to. Of course, there's an equal chance you have more talent. The point is to keep on trying until you think it's right. May take a month, a year or worse case scenario, a lifetime. Just enjoy it.

 

Thanks for post! I am also a feet first kind of guy. I always had desire to make art but IRL do not have any talent in drawing, I like anime and appreciate the higher quality ones. I liked some of the characters and always wished I could draw them. I guess this is another source of critical mindset, the difference in quality from the top animes and mediocre stuff is absolutely gigantic. There are a lot of totally soulless trash shows, probably this is what drives people away from anime and creates the anime haters. I want to someday make real mods not soulless stuff. I want to contribute on Nexus but only actual stuff not cardboard swords and super low effort stuff that is just annoying to see on New Files.


Main reason for this topic is I feel it'd be good to ask for advice. I have got the basics down like the level anyone can probably achieve after a little time spent like I don't know 100% of the functions but I can google any function and read autodesk's description or somebody else's comment and generally be okay from that point to use it. But moving beyond that level of ability is seeming slow, difficult and just not as simple as getting the 101 basics down so I am feeling it is probably time to evaluate the strategies being used. It feels possible there's missing elements like I am in the dark somehow, that the absence of which can be causing my progress to be much slower. Like the models I made in Blender seem to be impossible to actually create UV maps for so it made me wonder if it's due to some design thing I did some fundamental reason that for some reason equals "cannot be done". It might just be a Blender thing but trying Unwrap basically just made some Divide by Zero kind of nonsense. But a lot of things in Blender seem pretty shoddy so I did switch to 3DS.


Other skills in life when you hit a wall it can be smart to seek advice, new information and try re-evaluating how I am doing something or am thinking about it. Sometimes afterwards I realize that this was the missing thing needed to move forward. I don't want to make a giant and likely boring wall of text but sometimes asking the experts/gurus can be the thing needed. Sometimes I had been stubborn in not wanting to do this and it causes a lot of wasted time. I'm hoping I can avoid being stubborn here and avoid wasting time. Actually needing help but being in denial about it can greatly hinder progress and effort without progress can be a motivation killer.

Edited December 3, 2017 by fftfan

[Raider5]

IN blender the most important part of UV mapping is the set up. you can show Blender how to break down a model into sections by isolating those sections with seams. then you can essentially export the pattern to paint your texture on. when the texture is finished you attach it to materials, uv unwrap and the sections appear exactly where you want them on the texture.

 

okay sorry I know thats a little off topic.

 

Good luck, hope to see how you progress over time.