25.09.2007
N-Sided QUIDAM 1.5 Review
Every animated production started with concept and then various stages like modeling, texturing, lighting etc. Modeling is the process of pure creation and sometimes this process gets tedious and time consuming because you have to keep various things in mind while modeling or have to create various models in short span of time for any project. No character modeling is complete without showing feelings; expressions on the face of the models and all these processes take several weeks. But now N-Sided brings QUIDAM 1.5 which reinvents character modeling to make it natural, productive and to let you sign your own creations.
Before starting the review of Quidam 1.5 we were very excited with the features and the fact is that we were not at all disappointed :-) because of its ease of use and the final output quality. But it has some Cons too regarding which we will talk side by side in this review. Character creation in Quidam is divided into 6 stages (studios) like a) Combination Studio b) Proportion Studio c) Sculpture Studio d) Posing Studio e) Texture Studio f) Lighting and Render Studio.
When starting a new file, QUIDAM gives you the choice of a base character, or new starting point, from a variety of types: men, women, cartoons and creatures.
a) Combination Studio - Once your base is selected, QUIDAM presents you the Combination Studio and here you can vary your character by swapping out body parts, clothing and accessories. Here you can also import your props and modify them using new Props manipulator in v1.5
b) Proportion Studio – Here you can determine the aspect of your character. By shrinking or growing the models you can churn out multiple characters within few minutes. Those artists creating a architectural visualization images can place Quidam models with emotions in place of dummy or alpha images, this will give new heights to their work.
c) Sculpture Studio – Here you can push, pull, deform the mesh and make every character unique using the jelly brushes. Jelly brushes works in a continuous stroke operation while other brushes was click based and that’s why Jelly brushes gives natural feeling of sculpting. But here’s the drawback that you can’t add much detail in the models like in Zbrush, Mudbox which limits your creativity.
Quidam also comes with some plug-ins which needs to buy separately and one is Low Poly Access Plug-in (LPA). This plug-in is aimed at all the advanced users, notably to professionals of real time 3D and video games. It adds to QUIDAM the possibility to visualize, edit and export the elementary structure (Low Poly) of each produced model. It completes QUIDAM with various advanced tools (offset, smoothing...) and also allows to adjust the Low Poly model to resemble its high resolution subdivided counterpart. If this plug-in is installed then you can see in the Sculpture Studio.
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