Digital Tutors - Creating cartoon characters in 3DS Max

As this is my first time modelling a humanoid character, I decided to watch a  class by Digital Tutors in order to pick up the base knowledge I'll need. I chose this class because it seemed to be the most relevant one to my project, considering I wasn't aiming to create a realistic character. I will start modelling the character soon using these techniques, and then blog about any issues I come across.

The lessons covered the following topics:

Lessons 1 - 2: Introduction & Adding Viewport Backgrounds

This lesson is very helpful for setting up the scene in 3DS Max, and has shown me a new way to model using blueprints that I've never tried before.

Lessons 3 - 20: Creating the head

Before I started watching the class I had no idea how to create complex organic models, but I now know a very efficient method using the blueprints. To put it simply, it involves drawing a spline across the outline of the drawing, and then converting it to polygons. Once this is done for both the front and side views, they can be connected together and morphed to create the framework for the model.

Lessons 21 - 26: Creating facial features

Although I don't plan to put a lot of focus on facial rigging for my model, I still want to model the interior of the mouth so I can go back to it in future. These lessons showed me how to create the teeth and tongue using basic shapes, and then reshaping and dividing them to give detail.

Lessons 27 - 43: Creating the body

In a similar way to the facial features, he made the body of his character using shapes and then morphing them. Although I found it interesting to watch, I don't think it'll be as useful for my character as he has more complicated shapes on his body. I will most likely use the method he used to create the head.

Lessons 44 - 45: Creating the eyes

The eyes were made as normal spheres, but then morphed using an FFD Binding to shape them into the head with no overlapping. The eyes can still be rotated around, but the shape always stays the same.