Rahkis Andel wrote:
The entire cg industry moved away from vert pushing to a sculpting based workflow all in the course of like one year -- probably starting around when you stopped a few years back. There is a reason for that -- the old way was slow and unnatural. I suggest you throw everything you know out the window, download 2.68 and start catching up with the times (CGCookie is a good place to start). In the end, your work will greatly benefit from doing so. You don't need a tablet to sculpt.
I'm totally comfortable with a sculpting workflow and have a tablet (though i'm probably rusty). It's just I'm used to getting my topology and edge loops in place (usually I sketch a rough mesh on photos of a subject), and then use that as a basis to sculpt.
With my avatar here, i just haven't gotten to the sculpting stage. I realize that I could work with something less than optimal and then retopo that once it's sculpted, but then I'd likely have to build two meshes instead of one (one to sculpt on, one for the retopo). It's just the way i'm used to.
That being said, I used to have a lot of fun with 3d coat's voxel sculpting where you didn't have to worry about topology at all. The app also had some really well done retopo tools and the normal map baking was at the time better than Blender. Like blender, however, I haven't used it in years so I couldn't tell you how good it is anymore.
In the future I may very well use a pure high to low workflow. The new Dynamic Topology sculpting in Blender seems very cool. Once it matures some more I look forward to using it but right now i'm not sure how I feel about the "detail size" being defined in screen space. I'd rather it use world/object space so no matter what zoom i'm at, it's creating the same level of detail. That's closer to how 3d coat's voxels worked, although it's not entirely comparable. RIght now it seems it would be very easy to accidentally zoom out, make a modification, and erase any carefully sculpted high frequency detail. Have you used this feature?
Rahkis Andel wrote:
I would also reconsider starting out with a commercial full mesh avatar, furry or otherwise. There is a reason why there are so few on the market and it's not due to lack of talent. It's due to lack of interest.
Interesting. What would be the most popular/profitable types of items in second life, then? I'll probably continue making a full mesh avatar just because I like a challenge, but if that's not where the money is, i'll definately keep in mind other stuff in the future.
Ps: I don't at all take offense from your suggestions. Even if we disagree on workflow or whatever, I still appreciate your input and you've been very helpful.