HELP! I am sculpty illiterate....

OK, I've tried Maya--and failed miserably. I never realized how much MATH was involved in a sculpty. At any rate, I am now conceding that I may never master the sculpty, so I'm on the hunt for someone who might be willing to create a single custom sculpty. I have seen so many amazing ones out there, and purchased so many packs, I know that this is one that could be banged out fairly quickly. It's not a rough one, I swear. Anyone interested PLEASE IM me, or email me at [email=arielyn211@aol.com]arielyn211@aol.com[/email]. Sounds, I can do. Textures, I can do. Prims, I can do. Sculpties are just plain evil.

Sorry....wrong forum. I am posting in the Products Wanted. How can I have been here all this time and not known that forum even existed???? :: sigh ::

I hope you didn't purchase maya just to not use it. That would be an expensive lesson.

If you can texture and model prims, honestly sculpts aren't too bad! Importing, well, sometimes that can be annoying at first, but once you get your workflow down it isn't as if you have to understand the program, you just do whatever it requires in the order it requires. No worse than learning how to create an alpha channel for transparency, really.

Which Maya did you use? I too hope that you didn't get the full version, but just were playing about with the PLE. If the latter is the case, you can't import anything from it, so that might have been your trouble (it's just a free way to practise with Maya before purchase).

Even if your mind boggles at Maya, why not try a simpler program? There are many free or less than $150 programs out there which can make most basic shapes. Rokuro can make nice lathed shapes (rather like rotating a curve in Maya), and you could learn to use it in less than an hour.

I appreciate the feedback! I did get the full version of Maya from a *cough* friend. I couldn't make heads nor tails of it! I also tried Archipelis, and I have, somewhere, Wings 3D. Archipelis sculpts ended up looking like, well...lumps! I haven't had the patience to learn Wings 3D. Any other suggestions?? I'm up for anything!

I don't really understand what "math" would be involved in creating a scuplty in Maya, I use it all the time.......no math..

I was about to say the same thing as Nyx. Exactly what math do you feel is required, Arielyn? I've been making sculpties in Maya since the very first day they hit the beta grid, and I've never had to use any math to make it work.

As for not being able to make heads or tails of Maya, did you read the instructions? Maya's actually one of the easiest programs on the planet to get started with, simply because its included documentation is so good. I'll tell you the same thing I tell every single new student I ever teach. Go through all the tutorials in the Help file, in order, and then you'll have a solid understanding of how it works. From there, it's practice, practice, practice.

Don't make the mistake of trying to define the word "easy" as "overnight success", though. It will take you some time to get the hang of it. For most people, it takes a few weeks of dedicated effort.

learning 3D design needs patience regardless of which tool you use ... Maybe you want too much within a small period of time ? Maybe better relax and (as Chosen Few allready proposed) take your time to go through the tutorials/manuals/whatever of the software, which you feel comfortable with at this moment.

Since you already have Maya, you should give it another try. I believe, that Maya is realy well documented and it sounds like beeing a very good choice, although i would have a very bad feeling when working with "software given by a friend" ...

I agree maya is easy, it's making the thing look like what you want that is hard for us artisticly impaired people.

I haven't tried Maya, but I tried Blender and MOI and felt the same. My engineer husband had little problem with MOI and managed to get things made in Blender, but I was miserable with both. So . . . I heart ZBRUSH. Love it. Vlad's Shiny Life videos are a great way to learn Zbrush. It does take some time, but the sculpting makes a lot more sense to me than the other 2 programs.

If you just need 1 sculpty, I'd try the Help Wanted forum, you might find someone in there. Also, Xstreet has a lot of premade sculpties with full perms for sale.

I'd really recommend the video tutorials at www.vtc.com. They were a ton of help to me as I seem to learn better through seeing things done rather than just reading the included tutorials. It's $30/month, and you can watch tutorials on many many programs. I just paid for one month and watched as many as I could manage. I'm not sure where the math part is coming in either... I royally suck at math, but that hasn't been an issue.