TABLE OF CONTENTS Deciding on the look of your character is only half the problem. When making a character for export to Shockwave, the first thing to decide is how you want your character to animate. You can use linked hierarchies as with the turtle, or deformable meshes, which use 'Bones' or 'Biped', but you cannot use both combined as we did with the Hitme character. Either way if you want to export your character via Shockwave, you will need to keep the polygon count low.
If you are modeling for an interactive character for export to the Web, you must use polygonal modeling.
| Note | There are other modeling techniques beside polygonal, such as Nurbs (Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines) and Patch modeling. Both can be used for character modeling: Nurbs modeling relies on joining curved Splines in space to create a smooth surface. It is quite a popular technique for character modeling in Maya, and it does take most modifiers, particularly the Morpher modifier well. Patch modeling is where you create patches, which are a bit like squares of material. Figures are built by stitching these patches together rather like making clothes from a pattern. This is a great modeling tool for cloth simulation. Both Nurbs and Patch models tend to be harder to Texture map. In terms of animating for the Web, Shockwave only supports Polygonal modeling, so it is essential that your character is either made this way, or converted to a polygonal mesh before... |
