3DAD 043 : Digital Clothing Creation with DAZ Studio

The 3D Art Direct Podcast: 3D Digital Art | Artist Interviews | Digital Art Conferences | Sci-fi and Fantasy Genres

Kim Schneider, better known as Arki is a 3D modeller and texture creator that has just completed a definitive series of tutorials in association with Digital Art Live called Creating Complex Clothing and available on DAZ3D's website that takes the student from concept to finished, saleable product which covers modelling, UV mapping, rigging and texturing.

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Kim has worked as a professional illustrator for RPG games, and her started her 3D digital art journey in 2000 with Poser and then Poser Pro and started selling her content in 2006. Since then, she's been hard at work creating content for DAZ Studio. Her choice of modelling software is Hexagon, UV mapping using UV Layout Pro and UV Mapper Pro, among others such as GIMP, Photoshop, Terragen, Blacksmith3D and more in her workflow.

(clicking on image will open an new window and take you to DAZ3D site)

During the interview, Kim talks about

• Her inspiration for her modelling concepts.
• How to sell your models for profit and her recommended "path to success."
• She talks a little about her pen and paper (role-playing) game that she's in the process of creating.
• Practical knowledge of how things work in order to be able to model them, realistically.
• and her fascination with dragons,

for just a few topics.

Snippet from the transcript

DAL: ... How critical is it to understand how something works in order to be able to model it properly? For example, you and I talked a bit before about modeling a weapon, and you said that you have no interest in it because you have no working knowledge of it. So how critical do you think it is to understand how something works to be able to model it properly?

Kim: Well, if I think of a current project I'm working on, it's a dragon skeleton and I had to do huge amount of research about animal and human skeletons before I could do that. So you have to learn how to model a joint, what kind of joint is used in an elbow or a knee or a wrist. So those are three types of joints already. Or the shoulder, that's another joint there.

So if you don't understand this and don't know how the shape defines functionality, you are probably not going to have a very good time or a fun time modeling that thing. So at least it's true for me, first I have to know what I'm doing, first I have to understand what I'm doing before I can put it into 3D, or model it in clay for that matter, which is very similar in the process.

DAL: Do you model in clay much to get inspiration or to flesh out ideas, I guess?

Kim: I used to. It's very messy. Takes up a lot of space and you have to fire the clay. So I don't do it anymore, but I hope when I get into zeeBrush or zedBrush a little bit more, I will be able to do some more sculpting without the mess and the firing. I said "ZedBrush."

DAL: You said "ZedBrush," yes, that's good, ZedBrush. In Canada, we don't say "Zee," we say "Zed." So ZedBrush.

Kim: The eternal struggle.

DAL: And ZedZed Top.

Kim: Yeah. That's a bit clunky.

DAL: Yeah, doesn't quite roll off the tongue. So, that's an interesting question. You know what? I had never thought of the human skeleton in that way, that there are, you know, a fixed number of joints that move in a fixed direction, and depending on any fantastical creature that you're gonna build, you have to understand how all of the different joints come together. And I'm assuming, just extrapolating on that, then now you have to understand the different kinds of muscles and the connection points to the bones in order to flesh out, if you will, the figure as well, right?

Kim: Yes, exactly, because what I'm doing right now with the dragon skeleton is... the starting point was a sketch of one of my dragon species for my game, and I used the silhouette to model the skeleton inside. And what I was doing that I already noticed I think the proportions are off, it's not going to work the way I thought it would. So maybe when I have a lot of time, I'm going to add muscle and maybe internal organs and then model the outside skin and then see how that looks. It's going to be close to my initial design, but then slightly different. So I will sort of reverse engineer my own species, so it's going to be interesting...