This resources page is mostly a scratchpad of links and things I come across.

Print on Demand info

Free tools

Information on some of the software tools I use.

3D Coat is a sculpting and texturing tool that offers a voxel-based suite of tools to enable a very good representation of digital sculpting combined with direct painting on the resulting 3d model.

Digital scultping is hard to describe but after some practice with the software you can really achive a workflow that feels like you are sculpting on and with the on-screen model. Much like Photoshop, you can then draw, paint and edit in ’2D’ onto your sculpt.

Many users create somewhat traditional models as used in modern games, organic creatures or very life-like humans. I enojy a more abstract style as used in my image ‘3 Sisters‘

Crab-depth is another image made by 3D Coat and was special to me as it was my satisfying result from using a new graphics tablet. The colours are ‘hand-painted’ on and I used a reference image from Cirque-De-Soleil for inspiration

Vue is my preferred landscape & all-things “nature” tool. More information here for those interested in learning about Vue.

Carrara is a very capable and perhaps too modest program that offers 3d modelling & animation similar to the better known 3d Heavyweights such as Maya and Blender. I like it because it is very fast at rendering and offers for me a very stable program that whilst getting a bit old-fashioned at being only 32-bit based, it really offers the artist an advantage in workflow methods due to its easy to learn UI and uncomplicated nature. Daz offers a pretty casual and friendly forum based user community

Carrara can be found on a free coverdisc included on a book by Daz, currently selling on Amazon for $23 + P&P. It is a version that can be upgraded to the latest quite cheaply.

Figures, characters and avatars

3d objects (often called models or mesh) can be made in Carrara or more specialist tools such as Hexagon, which is also made by the same producers as Carrara. Hexagon is a fantastic model-maker and has plenty of tutorials available. User forums are a great way of getting to know the program and an even better way of getting help.

Links to tutorials here. I recommend first watching some video tutorials, getting used to the interface and navigating your way around 3d space as this can be a stumbling block for new users. Here is a thread linking to a free video series for Hexagon users

Tutorials

Geekatplay offer possibly the best range of free video tutorials for Hexagon and other 3d software such as Poser, Carrara, Daz3D, Vue, 3DCoat and more.

Interesting memo written by Walt Disney in the early days at Disney, shows his plan for teaching animation to staff & much other stuff in depth. Letters of Note: How to Train an Animator, by Walt Disney