Polygonal Modeling
February 7th, 2003
By Brian J. Immel
Setting Up Image Planes for Reference
1. Begin by scanning your front and side view of the character into Photoshop.
- Scan at least 72 dpi. I normally use 150-200 dpi so when I zoom in on the character layout in Maya, the resolution holds up.
- Make sure the two scanned images have at least one height or width value that is the same (scale one of them down to match the other).
- Save each image separate as a .TGA (nothing higher than 24-bit) or .TIF (no compression) format.
2. In Maya, Create two Lambert shaders using the Hypershade in Maya. Each shader should be labeled as front-view-shader and side-view-shader so you can recognize which shader is what later on.
3. Link the sketches you scanned into Photoshop to the shaders in Maya by clicking on the checker box in the Attribute Editor of the shader. A window will pop up and you should select the option named File. This will create a render node to an external file. Select the scanned images.
4. Apply the shaders to the object either by middle-mousing the shader (not the file) to the image plane or select the image plane, right-click the shader and select Assign Selected Objects.
5. Know the image ratios! Not using the proper image ratios will cause the image to stretch.
- If an image is 640 x 480, the ratio will be 4:3. Use Photoshop or ACDSee or image properties to learn what the image ratio is.
- Once you know the image ratio, you need to set up a NURBS plane with this ratio. Example: the front view a character has a ratio of 16:3. Create a plane with the Scale X = 16 and Scale Z = 3.
- Each image plane will have a different ratio. Don’t assume that each image plane will have the same ratio values.
6. One you have created planes for front and side images, you will need to put them in a layer and lock that layer so the contents of it will not be selectable. Now we are ready to start modeling.
For more information on how to use and model from a character sheet, see the tutorial called Character Sheets.
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