It begins...

Good evening :)

I think it's fair to say that I've been hoarding awesome for far too long and the time has come to spread it around a little.

As part of this enormously generous process I have decided to grace the internet with an insight into how I go about building a character model for use in a game engine.

I'll be covering the process from start to finish without going into heavy detail on specific tasks but will be explaining why I make some of the slightly odd looking decisions I do. The focus is on getting a result as quickly and efficiently as possible while minimising the possibility of disaster further down the line.

I'll be using a variety of packages to complete the project - namely max 2009, zbrush 4 and photoshop. You should be able to follow the process in other apps but obviously you'll have to use your initiative a bit.

I expect the reader to be familiar with 3d terminology, the apps in question and the basic principles of realtime 3d work.

The more observant among you will have read the title and have a pretty solid clue as to what I'm going to be making (that's heatblast from Ben10 if you don't fall into the above category).

I picked Heatblast for several reasons - these are some of them...

1: I like Ben 10
2: My 4 year old likes Ben 10 and this will make him think I'm awesome
3: Heatblast is awesome because he's made of fire & stuff
4: Heatblast is a simple character in terms of design so there won't be too many details bogging me down when I explain things
5: I get to muck around with glowing shaders