WelI learnd something... !

[RAYMAN]

Hi been here on and off for the past few months but mainly been away for some time.
Reason one was the death of my last near relative.. and the problems that came with it... !
But that was not the only reason ! I came to a point where I had to understand that making things
in 3d the way I used to do things were to time consuming and frustrating... !
I came to a point where I knew.. well I know how to do it but dont have enough time.
When I came to the old Forums I sort of had the feeling... I wasnt alone.......lots of People I knew
from the past and that were regulars.....well dropped off for basicaly the same reasons....
To much normal life and not enogh time for 3d !
I started to analyse why this was the case...... and.....I had some time to reorganise my belongings...many of these are old mags .. that need to be discarded to make room for.. well my future living. I came acroos some realy good advice from the big boys in 3d Business.. and that was.. to organise things in a better way.. and to reuse what I´ve done before.!!
To be honest ... I had my old files somewhere.....mainly on old CDs... and no way did I know what and where and how those things looked like... ! Well in short useless !
I rethought the process.. and here is what I came up with..
The practice of starting off with a cube.... well isnt always the best !
What I came up with isnt related to any piece of software.. its very basic and can be duplicated in
any enviroment that you have.
The answer is Lego !The second answer is image banks !
When you are half way through your modeling proces store it... render it.....and keep it !
You set up a car model... well you make your cube....make it symmetrical... store it...... rough in the car
with very basic extrusions...... store it ! You the make folders... and organise those...... and keep a picture or a sreenshot of it inside that folder ! Make 2 more Pictures of that screenshot and keep those
in an image bank..... and make those indexable so that you can easily find the folders again !
That way you have access to library of stuff that you made and premade in the past and the steps half way through to the final !
You store basic house shapes .... doors... windows......even pavements fully textured and already populated with items ! If you make the a certian modular size you can dice those pavements together..
and build whole city blocks......in no time ! Spaceships ..??? well if you make basic parts .. same thing..
reuse parts...and there are very good games that you can look into that have the same aproach....rebuild from parts! You build a ship.. well store the curves that come with it when you build them in nurbs. Thbe next ship you will need is just a mouseclick away by just moving a point on the curve.. or just by moving the curve when you make the loft ! There is no need to start from scratch everytime ! Its like a generator .. ! Same withh textures.....! Blender has the awsome nodal texture system... well if you set up a texture engine by altering a few parameters.... you can get an infinite amount of different outputs with just changing a few parameters ! That can save you hours and hours of work !
In ordeer to find those Folders.. well you have your Image bank... !

[v3rd3]

Sorry to hear of your loss Peter. I know you were devoted to your family and this is a big change in your life.

I like the workflow suggestion ... it makes a lot of sense. I have to admit I had the zeal at one point to start everything from scratch, but as you say this takes up a lot of time repeating steps.

Take care of yourself.

[BNG]

My thoughts are with you as well bro, Leroy. I have models spread over like 5 different PC's and staying organized is a bit of a challenge. I tend to organize models in custom object folders as well as scene libraries. I finally figured out how to set file sharing between systems as I mainly create them on my laptop at work.

[RAYMAN]

My thoughts are with you as well bro, Leroy. I have models spread over like 5 different PC's and staying organized is a bit of a challenge. I tend to organize models in custom object folders as well as scene libraries. I finally figured out how to set file sharing between systems as I mainly create them on my laptop at work.

Thank you very much for your Kind words !
As to the indexing..
Ist not such a challange if you make renders or screenshots of the models and organize in picture data banks with tags..... !
Thats the point ! You type in lets say collums.. and you get all the pictures of collums......you then check out ist number.. and you can find the right folder imediatly.... the trick is the picture data bank with indexing that points toa folder... ! The same works with textures and all other assets !

[Dragneye]

BIG hug .. Peter.


I like the picture-file idea. Very practical.