Index to the 30 lessons in this tutorial

  With the skeleton and joints in place you still don't have a model that looks real or even has any substance at all. It is just the underlying components that tell the model how to move. You still have to make your model in a realistic manner. This is done with the wireframe and the skin textures.

The Wire Frame and Skin of a Model

You have a skeleton, now you need to make it real

After the skeleton has been created there are two more things that you need to do to bring it to life.

You have to create the wire frame structure that defines the shape of the model then you have to create the pictures that will go on it.

This Model was downloaded from 3D-Resources.com
http://www.3d-resources.com and created by Psionic

The picture above with all the red lines is the wire frame structure of the dwarf. These is the shape of the model. It is built around the skeleton and it could be any shape at all. You could make the dwarf plump, skinny, or change the shape of his head, arms, etc.

Important concept: This is polygon modeling and all of these shapes you see are triangles. The skin of your model will be a series of dozens, or even hundreds of these triangles. All the modeling is done by assembling groups of triangles together.

This polygon modeling with lots of triangles brings up an important point. The more triangles you use the more detailed your model will be - and the more work it is.

Now that you have the shape you have to also define the skin and you do this by creating a picture that will be poured onto the model. It looks kind of strange but this is what you would make:

This Model was downloaded from 3D-Resources.com
http://www.3d-resources.com and created by Psionic

This is the final product for the dwarf animation. It defines how the dwarf looks all the way around and it makes things much easier for you. The game will take this image and pour it right onto the dwarf skeleton and wireframe.

We are ready to download and get familiar with Milkshape