I know this is the poser forum.  The other ones don't get read much and Im working towards Poser goals (does that count : p).

So I got Hex during the sale and thought I might go ahead and try to use it.  Since it is strictly a modeling app, I thought it might do things better/easier.  Initially I am very NOT thrilled.  I know a good bit of it is preference, and another good bit is skill.  Some of these obstacles however I cant see overcoming if it is just the way it is.

When I open a box primitive in Carrara I get a view something like this:

edges - verts on each side easily distinguishable.

Now Hex:

This Hex picture is rather simple but imagine further tesselation - It is literally impossible for me to navigate see through 3D space.  

This is a part where skill comes in - maybe I just don't know how to make it not see through.
Is there a way?

Then Tesselation.  What the heck Hexagon!!!!  If I want to do it I have to select the face, then select the tool from a drop down- over and over for each face I want to tesselate.  In carrara it is click tesselate and click faces til done..

I'm not sure if I am clearly asking for advice here or just moaning about my frustration - take it either way.  If anyone has advice or opinions I'd love to hear them. 

I couldn't get Hexagon figured out either. After a day or so with it I went running back to Lightwave.

There's a little toggle along the bottom of your screen that toggles see-through on and off.
fifth one from the right hand side (camera looking icon is no. 1)
if you hover over it it says "Activates transparent view of sub selection" and it's set to transparent by default.   (sowwy, can't do a screen capture at the moment)

Yeah, tessalation you have to do by hand on a cube. kind of a pain, but for some reason I seldom start making things with a tessalated cube.
Another approach is to start with a grid, then extrude it vertically.

Usually there's several ways to model something... ;)

Point one: Bottom Panel, to the right - "Transparent display of sub-selection" is where you can turn the transparency on/off (Page 275 in the handbook)
Point two: Upon creation of the cube but before validating it you can set the tesselation level in the Properties box (Page 82 in the handbook)

pdf handbooks are virtually useless to me.  
I open it up and immediately revert back to my 7th grade self in social studies class - ie I have absolutely zero ability to retain the information presented.  Oddly Im a huge RL book reader, and retain all that information fine... Im not sure what the difference is.

I attempted to go through the video tutorials but they go ridiculously fast and I dont have a snowballs chance of keeping up.  Heck I cant even see what she clicks before she goes to something else.

Quote - I couldn't get Hexagon figured out either. After a day or so with it I went running back to Lightwave.

Might like Modo made buy LW'ers or C4D has a LW UI or Silo.

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

wow, that tessalation thing took me a while to find, they put it down under the soft selection. 
I kept looking above, and not past the soft selection.
I did think it was odd to not have tessalation level selection.

Luckily I don't use tessalated cubes often!

JJrolland - modelling does take a fair amount of practice and getting used to... Most video tutorials for new software are not for beginning modellers. I know when I first started, they had my head spinning. now, they seem to go so slooow... 
so what I'm trying to say is, give yourself time to absorb things :)

Oh I definately know it is going to take time.  Right now I'm just picking the programs ( I had thought I was definately going with Carrara for modeling until the sale).  My truest goal is to simply learn and hopefully start adding to the content available for poor naked apollo.

This is just how I learn best - by doing.  I come up with ideas of what I'd like to do then I just work towards that goal.  Usually many efforts go out the window on the way - but I like to keep the idea of if I learn one new thing every day I am going in the right direction.

As far as resources outside myself - although many people like to point towards   after sitting here at my computer all day long I enjoy the human interaction of asking on the forums.  I did go look for a Real book on modeling - Borders = none, Barnes and Nobles = none.  I didn't check online - one day I might but I hate waiting for shipping.

Well, when it comes to pure modelling, eventually your skills and demands will exceed what cararra is capable of. When it comes to modelling Hexagon can do more then Cararra (so can other modellers people suggested).
It's probably the best to stay with what's more intuitive and copfortable till you get better at modelling, and start exceeding the limits of what you're comfortable with.

As for learning materials, many book for Maya, Max, Zbrush etc contain a chapter or two on subdivision modelling. I thumb through them pretty often. Also, a numer of books on character animation tend to cover that topic.

in the meantime... I tend to like tutorials at http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials . I always look at tuts for other applications too, aside from what I'm using, on the off chance I pick up a trick I can use for my app as well. Plus, learning something new never hurts.  :)

The big thing that Hex offers that I was wanting is the ability to have the model Apollo there in the scene while I model around him.  Apparently there is nothing I can do in Carrara to freeze him and keep myself from selecting him while I try to model.  That's not so bad in big parts, but with the details it gets frustrating.

Just stick with it. Don't expect immediate results. Keep practicing and building stuff as you have time and after a few months you will feel far more sure of your skills.

If you just learn one thing per session you are doing well.

Hex is a decent modeler - all of them have their short comings.

Having said that, the current deal on Carrera does look rather tempting!

what I've tried (with varying degrees of success) is probably the most convoluted way of modeling there is. Instead of importing the whole Apollo, import the object parts you want to 'cover' in your modeling. It cuts waaay down on the number of Polys you have to deal with (don't know from Hex, I'm still using Wings..;), and there's less 'Apollo' to get in the way. When you're done, just delete the 'body parts', and save your object (note- you're probably aware of the scaling differences between Poser models and modelers, but in case anyone out there in the studio audience is considering this..;)

Just a thought. Everyone develops a modeling style over time.

Attached Link: T59 Cloth workshop

It also is a good tutorial for beginners, which is who I wrote it for. It also tells you how to export your  figures to and from poser and hex and also the proper scaling numbers needed.

99% of the time manuals sux there wrote buy third parties that don't even know how to 3D.

LW's 7 manual made a good dogs toy thou.

Loved where Posers go we don't cover INJ's or Mats so go ask at Rennderosity Forms.

But read the dang things anyway.

Modeling easy after ya get it.

get a cube add loops move the vertices till it looks like something.

http://www.3dtotal.com/

Has a lot of tutorials.even if there not for ya app ya can still follow them I learned how to model in TrueSpace buy following fab 5 app's tutorials.

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

beryld
Yes your tut was another one of the reasons for wanting to try to work with Hex.  I had it bookmarked when the sale started and that was a big selling factor for me.  Trying to use tuts written for one program in another program hasn't worked out too well for me.

You can change some basic lighting in hex, to make the preview look different (spheres along the bottom). Also, after a while you'll start turning the transparency on and off. Helps with modelling.
You can also color your material, or assign a texture map to it.

I think first things would be, is figure out why it is so dark. What light and mesh display are you using and did you change anything in the properties in Edit > Preference editor.

Did you follow my tutorial on the figure manikin and rid yourself of the materials and replace with the 2 colors? It all seem very dark. Or did you use the ambient occlusion for the image.

I wouldn't worry about UVMapping and texturing until you get the basic modeling setup and then there is a good UVmapping tutorial at PoserPros.

The transperant view does not work with the object selected. It works when you select face,egde and points. Look at the top of your screen and you will see the icons, above loop / rings / Betw.

BTW - I think those shorts look pretty good for your first try.

Im following your tut right now Berydl = D  
I've had some kinks along the way - the materials tab was mean to me and apparently you have to enlarge it.  I closed out and restarted - redeleted parts on my Apollo manequin about 8 or so times trying to figure out what I was messing up and why his materials weren't showing in that box.  After enlarging the window !howdy do! there they are :/

So now I am in the process of coloring his parts in - renaming - what not.  

Was kinda hard to decide what parts I wanted to keep and which I wanted to delete.  

Starting to think the subject line for this thread is not very correct LOL

Yeah, they could have made those tabs a little easier to see and use. It took me a week or so to discover them and what they were for. Then I had to learn a whole new world when they opened. LOL.

I don't keep the fingers and toes or any parts of the head such as eyes, teeth if they are separate groups. For the main figure and save it as a hex file for future use. You can alway make new versions of just the hands and feet when you feel the need to make hand and foot wear.

When I have time, I create another figure into a manikin and save it in my manikin folder. I have about 20 figures converted to use in hex, not counting special groups.

The new coloring makes it easy to know where your group seams are for designing your clothing and when you create conforming figures.

Quote - Here he is all colored in and itemized.  Boy that sure does take longer than you would think doesn't it?

heh, tell me about it!

Im following the tut bren linked up a bit in this thread.  I get to steps 4 and 5 where basically I have created an edge on a cube around the middle.  Then I have used extrude to pull down for the length of the legs.  Then I am suppose to delete the top face of the cube and the bottom faces of the legs.  Thats where my problem happens.

(I deleted my original and restarted to see if problem recreated so you will notice no symatry (sic) in this.

When I delete the top faces I lose the whole portion that extruded and out pops this flat plane behind my pants.

First pic is me selecting a top face, second pic is after I hit delete.

Well I can do it with fast extrude - just not the regular extrude surface (icon that was shown in the tut)  maybe there is some difference in versions.

Nope - 
I went on to the next step and it mentions this lightning bolt.  So I thought I would try my test again and click the bolt this time - bingo!

I don't know what tut bren refered to but it looks like you did not delete or disolve the 2 edges in the middle of the top first. Delete them and then delete the top face. It needs to be one whole face on the top to get the hole, whole. Sorry for the bad pun.

Now the materials, from how it looks, you have all those mateials named. I can't see the image very well, to small. But, you should only have had 2 materials listed. If you look at my tutorial, you will see that I named them blue and pink and just assigned them to the proper groups and deleted all the extras. You would call them Green and red? But the brighter colors like what I used, shows up better when modeling. It does not have to be the same colors as mine, just use lighter colors..

The Hexagon 2 tutorials are identical to the tutorials from the first version and, inevitably, don't reflect any of the changes made in between.

Quote - beryld
Yes your tut was another one of the reasons for wanting to try to work with Hex.  I had it bookmarked when the sale started and that was a big selling factor for me.  Trying to use tuts written for one program in another program hasn't worked out too well for me.

After you have mastered Hex it will be easy to follow any polygon modeling tutorial from any app :)

RorrKonn
http://www.Atomic-3D.com

beryld - I also made my beginning in Hex with your tut. But one thing i never figured out is, when i export my model from P6, P6 never let me check the box "Include body part names in polygon groups". I mean, i clicked in it, but no check. What could be the problem?

I don't have P6 installed on my new computer, yet, so I'm guessing that it is one of those boxes that does not check unless something else is first.

I need to install P6 so I will do that sometime this evening and let you know when I can see it. The P7 export box is a bit different so I can't use that for a reference.

Well, I just installed P6 and the damn thing is doing it to me now. Worked fine in my old computer. Will have to try the different Sr's and see if that helps, the only problem is, I can't find my Sr2. I have it on a disk somewhere but I can't find it.

My progress so far:

Looking good.

I know it worked in my old computer because that is what I wrote the tutorial with.I have never had this problem with any version of poser 4/5/6/7. I will re install P6 later, workinfg on an animation right now, and see if it was just one of those Poser gremlins that showed up to give me a hard time. I would have thought they would wait for tomorrow, Friday the 13. LOL.

Just can't trust those gremlins.