3D Animation: The Eagle: take 2

So after my first attempt failed misserably I decided to approach the modelling in a different way. Richard told the class of a wesbite called www.turbosquid.com andI decided to have a look on their for some eagle images. I was really impressed with some of the eagles on their and this gave me a boost of confidence because I thought this is not going to to be impossible to do.

I started by finding an image I liked and one I thought would be easy enough to map. I saved the image and in 3D Max created a plane and in the material editor I attached a reference image so i had a guide to use when modelling. Next I created a box and in the object properties I converted it to see through so I was able to see the image in the background. This was very important because after all this is what I needed to look at whilst modelling. The next thing was to convert the it to an editable poly which would allow me to shape the box.

I needed to add more vertices to the object because I had to pull these in to create the shape. Using the edge selection I clicked on one side of the box then in the selction category I clicked on ring and then in the edit edges category I seleceted connect. I repeated this a number of times so i had enough vertices to build the shape. After this I then selected each vertice to draw out the shape of the eagle.

As you can see from the image the box has been coverted see through and there are a number of vertices on the box ready for me to begin modelling.

I deciced that I would only model one side of the eagle and then I would apply the symmetry modifyer to create the other side so it would be even and saving my time by not having to model both sides.