Any advice gratefully received!! I am experienced in using Photoshop, Poser and Vue Infinite but need to create a figure as described for a commission. I am confident I will be able to do the detailed sculpting and posing in Mudbox; the composition in Vue and post work in Photoshop but I have no experience of creating models. Any advice on how I can create a human figure with attached tenatcles? Is it possible to combione different models? I have Maya - although haven't used it much. Please help. best JR

Here is a video tut on box modeling. It's made using Silo but the principles should apply to most modelling software. http://nevercenter.com/silo/tutorials/glen_minotaur/

Thanks for all the advice. Very helpful. Its made me re-think. I am wondering if I can model the whole figure in Mudbox. Anyone on here have experience with this software (considering its often budled with Maya)? There isn't a mudbox forum. My question is can I pull out (sculpt) tentacles from the side of a Mudbox mesh base model figure? Is there a problem given that this stretches out the mesh? will will this create problems later on?

Thanks in advance for any advice

Well it might do with regard to UVs. Everything should have a base mesh. I'm not that familiar with mudbox though sculpt in general should be used sparingly, so to speak.

I can't comment on mudbox as I use 3dcoat 3d-coat.com if you mod the mesh as opposed to just stretching/distorting existing verticies then you will have to retexture/uvmap/paint it. 

You could do the whole figure from scratch or start with a base and mod from there.  Of course then you would need to rig it if you wanted to do more then the pose created in the sculpting/modeling software. 

I know some will do some basic box modeling then pull it into a sculpting app, where some will do the whole thing.  Typically then you retopo it in there depending on where you want to send it to and do with it. Retopo is for creating back to a mesh object from the sculpt itself.

I would have to look but there is a nice full workflow creation of a lizard from scratch on the 3dcoat page, its called fullpipeline and the applink demos there for integration with a lot of other apps.

added to the first paragraph - Or create a displacement map I should have added then you can use the existing uv/texture map

Thanks again for the advice - so is this a possible workflow?

1.Sculpt in Mudbox,

1. Export med/high res to Maya and Retopologize,

2. Unwrap new Retop mesh,

3. Import mesh back to Mudbox,

4. Open up retopo'ed and unwrapped mesh in a new Mudbox scene - and continue sculpting/painting?

On a different note.......DONT put to many bones in your tentacles.  I had four skinny tentacles on my char with like 12 bones in each, it was so bad to animate that my guy nerer made it in his own video  (at  http://vimeo.com/24575842)