Ted, what software do you use?

[steamcrow]

Hey Ted!

I was just wondering what software do you design your toys in? What's the process?

I love the style of your work. (Vinyl toy + a little art deco.)

So excited for this project; keep up the inspiring work.

 

[Ted Terranova]

Thanks Steamcrow. I'm glad to hear you're excited! I usually sketch a design using pencil or pen in my sketchbook. Then I'll gather reference material. I have a TON of books on tanks, uniforms, weapons, etc. I also surf the net. This helps me keep my designs feeling based in reality. Then I'll scan my sketch or do a rough 3D model in 3dsmax to figure out the size and proportions. Then I'll work that over in Photoshop to add detail and color. Then to make the sculpt I use Zbrush for organic stuff like clothing and rivets and 3dsmax for the hard surface stuff like tanks, armor, etc. I've been working in video games for 15+ years so I'm really at home with all this software.

 

[RuneBrush]

Thanks Steamcrow. I'm glad to hear you're excited! I usually sketch a design using pencil or pen in my sketchbook. Then I'll gather reference material. I have a TON of books on tanks, uniforms, weapons, etc. I also surf the net. This helps me keep my designs feeling based in reality. Then I'll scan my sketch or do a rough 3D model in 3dsmax to figure out the size and proportions. Then I'll work that over in Photoshop to add detail and color. Then to make the sculpt I use Zbrush for organic stuff like clothing and rivets and 3dsmax for the hard surface stuff like tanks, armor, etc. I've been working in video games for 15+ years so I'm really at home with all this software.

Really wish I'd kept up playing with 3dsmax & Maya now. It was one of the things on my "short list of jobs to go into when I left school" but I ended up going into engineering (and ultimately ended up in web application development).

 

[Grim6]

Thanks Steamcrow. I'm glad to hear you're excited! I usually sketch a design using pencil or pen in my sketchbook. Then I'll gather reference material. I have a TON of books on tanks, uniforms, weapons, etc. I also surf the net. This helps me keep my designs feeling based in reality. Then I'll scan my sketch or do a rough 3D model in 3dsmax to figure out the size and proportions. Then I'll work that over in Photoshop to add detail and color. Then to make the sculpt I use Zbrush for organic stuff like clothing and rivets and 3dsmax for the hard surface stuff like tanks, armor, etc. I've been working in video games for 15+ years so I'm really at home with all this software.

Ted, for those of use without access to Zbrush or 3dsmax (if I had the $700 for it, I probably would have bought moar add-ons in the KS campaign!), is Blender a viable alternative? It's free, but I don't know if it's capable of doing everything you do to create your models.

 

[KAPcom]

Blender is a pretty powerful tool for being free. But, IMHO, it's a bit steeper of a learning curve than some of the other software out there.

 

[Ted Terranova]

I've seen good things with blender but like Kapcom mentioned, it might be steep to jump into. But from the work I've seen people do, it might be worth it.

http://www.sketchup.com from google is pretty good at least to get started. And it's free. Good for hard surface stuff although it looks like google sold it so it may not be free for ever.

You should totally download sculptris. It's a free version of zbrush. I'm not sure what the limits of the free version are but a lot of people love it and get started digital sculpting with it. And did I mention that it's free

http://pixologic.com/sculptris/

Good luck. I love how creative our community is.

 

[Grim6]

I've seen good things with blender but like Kapcom mentioned, it might be steep to jump into. But from the work I've seen people do, it might be worth it.

http://www.sketchup.com from google is pretty good at least to get started. And it's free. Good for hard surface stuff although it looks like google sold it so it may not be free for ever.

You should totally download sculptris. It's a free version of zbrush. I'm not sure what the limits of the free version are but a lot of people love it and get started digital sculpting with it. And did I mention that it's free

http://pixologic.com/sculptris/

Good luck. I love how creative our community is.

Thanks! Scuptris looks incredible! I assume you use pen input, like a wacom tablet to get that level of control over the input?