Slowely but surely

due to the rushing around for the last couple of days I have neglected this part of my a study a little so I decided to sit down and play around a little, a couple of things bugged me about the upper body such as the chest area, the abdomen, the back and glutes so I sit and tweak them a little. The chest area just looked odd shaped so I attempted to move them around to give the area a more natural look but whilst trying to avoid that "fake" issue that people seem to fall so easily into these days. I am happy with the shape more or less but I don't want to go into to much detail at the moment due to the ultimate goal being keeping the mesh low and baking on a normal and displacement map that will hold all the detail. The abdomen also looks more natural and follows a more realistic flow, before it just looked too flat and box like where as now it has a more toned and natural look.


Other areas I still need to work on are the arms and legs as they still look unnatural and angular in shape but that is for the next little session.

A few more tweaks.....

Ok it's nearly two in the morning and I am shattered so I will keep this one brief, I modeled a basic foot onto the mesh and in doing so added a few more edges. From this point onwards I set about tweaking and more tweaking to get the body shape fairly close to the reference images. So far I am happy with it but there is a little more to do before I go crazy in Mud. I need to give the feet, hands and arms a little more shape plus model in a basic hair shape. I was going to use Shave and Haircut to add hair but as this is for games I don't think it is necessary as doing hair within Maya is more art orientated than games orientated, anyway I digress. Here is the model so far;

Two steps forward, one step back!!

I decided to go back a little on the female model due to there just being too many edge loops going on, this made the work very difficult and quite time consuming as it's a constant play with the verts to get things into the right position. I discovered a little short cut that allows me to focus on cleaner topology too, so I went back and deleted some edges, removed the ear and deleted all those unwanted verts before spending some time making sure the topology was running smooth.



Now that this is all sorted I can move onto finishing the foot but as you can see the topology is looking better and the time spent making sure that it all flows nicely will make the sculpt in Mudbox a little easier, swifter and fun :)

Easy ear

I have decided to flit back to the model that I was doing in Maya for a little bit, it's nearly there now and I am aware that this could have been finished some time ago but other areas or research needed attention too!

Anyway I have made the ear in low poly separately and then attached it to the main model, the attaching was the hardest part requiring me to delete faces and add edges. I do have a slight problem with the ear model in that I have one five sided poly at the beginning of the Antihelix but this does not worry me too much as when the model in sub divided ready for sculpting it was change this area to four sided polys.

I'll come back to this later!

I added a little bit more detail into the head, chest and back and so far it is looking ok, the main problem areas for me at the moment are complex areas such as the hands and feet but I think this is down to insufficient reference material so I think I need to scout some out before I go much further otherwise it will only frustrate me.

2,000,000 polys!!!

I have ramped up the polys and set about putting in detail, the poly count is just over 2,000,000 and I know a few of you will gasp at the prospect and go "why?" but there is a reason, in order to do a suitable displacement map or normal map it is necessary to use high poly counts as you are only going to make maps out of the mesh and bake them to the low poly model in Maya giving the viewer that the low poly model has more detail than it actually has. This process is common place within the industry and is used in next gen games.

A little learning

I have spent a little time thinking about how the muscle system works on the face and by doing so I can now see how the head is made up in order to create it's shape. As you can see I followed the same process as before by starting low and adding more detail as I sub divided, by adding in muscles on the face I can see the male face coming through and I can picture in my head how the skin would sit on top to give a person their features.





I intend to work the model further moving down to do the legs etc but I do believe that by doing this it will not only benefit my modeling but also my character illustrations.

For now I shall put it here....

I was not sure where to put this one as it incorporates a learning of both Mudbox and Anatomy, the idea came from the fact that I need to get a greater understanding of how the muscle system connect and improve my Mudbox workflow, so I decided to combine them.

Here we have the generic human mesh that is available in Mudbox, I am in the process of building my own mesh (a female one) but I thought this mesh would be handy to sculpt the muscular system into and allow me to play with all the features available to me in this powerful piece of software.I start on a low sub division level and start to rough out the shape of the upper body paying close attention to my reference material (Anatomy for Artists) that has all the of the muscles listed next to the illustration. The reason for starting like this is the that it is more efficient to bulk out on lower sub division levels and it is easier to add detail on the higher levels due to the amount of polys available as we go higher.


As I work into the model I increase the sub division and add a new layer each time, layers work much the same way as in a 2D piece of software. They allow you to sculpt the model and not effect the layers beneath, the only thing to remember here is that once a layer in created on a certain sub division to cannot be worked on at any level and becomes locked when you swap between levels as you work so it is important to name your layers and keep them organised!!!

Above is the same principle applied to the back, the beauty of me doing this sculpt is that it is making me take the time to understand how all the system connects and how its interacts with each other. Plus it is developing my further understanding of Mudbox and it's features, the software itself is amazingly powerful and feels like it is designed for artists and not technical thinkers, whilst I do like 3D modeling in Maya I know that it's here in this piece of software that I will truly be able to shine.

A little break from all that modeling....

More playing with Mudbox, this time I decided to just play around with the different sculpting tools that are available and how to use them, the easiest way of describing how to use them is to compare them against more traditional forms of sculpting like that done in clay. You work in pretty much the same way either adding or removing clay and them smoothing it over to give you the desired shape, there are some advantages in using this software over traditional mediums. One is the obvious lack of mess that you get using digital software, another would be the different material effects that can be implied quickly and easily to each model but the biggest is the labour saving ability to use masks to create texture without having to spend time painstakingly applying the texture as you would with clay. One obvious disadvantage and one that i miss both in 2D and in 3D is the tactile feel that you get when interacting with the subject matter, on another note this is the reason I prefer doing my initial thumbnail sketched in pen on paper.

Finishing the head

I quickly finish the head and tweak the verts to make sure that they will connect easily with the body, I do this to help maintain the topology of the model overall and to stop any potential problems along the way. Once the head is attached I then tweak the verts some more on the body to help maintain good edge loops, it is better to maintain a logical approach now otherwise problems will occur later.

The next step is to make the figures and attach them to the hand, I model the small finger first and then duplicate it, I will then adjust each finger to match the shape and size of them to help maintain an individual look and a more organic look.

Modeling the head cont.....

I continue to model the head spending considerable time making sure I keen the edge loops running well and making sure the topology is closely maintained. I swith between a smoothed and un-smoothed model to help point out the troubled areas and adjust the verts indipendintlty as I go being patient and logical.

Once I am happy that the topology is more or less placed correctly according to the flow of the face the ten decide to add the skull in once again taking my time to make sure all the verts are in the right location.

One thing that I have learned so far from doing this is not to add too many loops in too early and this makes the modeling slightly harder, so in future models I would probably do far less and then add them add the end accordingly.

Patch modeling a human head!

I had never modeled a human head so i have decided to take my time with it and to make sure I get all the correct edge loops placed before I start going crazy with the edge loop tool, a good solid topology foundation for the modeling of the head is essential for making the edge flows consistent which will make the further work needed easier.

As I am modeling the face I take time to check it's symmetry and edge loops are correctly placed, by being organic with the modeling it helps maintain a more organic look to the model. By giving it a quick subdivide I initially realised I had star appearing so i re-cut the topology down the nose carefully to eliminate this problem. I do take care doing this making sure the edge loops still flow.

Starting to take shape

I continue to add topology to the model still making sure I pay attention to the flow of the muscles of the body, before I move on I want to make sure that the model edge loops are working well so I Sub-Divide it...
After Sub_dividing the model I notice a few errors with the way the hips and upper thighs work, I will need to pay some attention to these areas but for the time being I decide to hold fire as I feel it is time to add the head and finish the hands. The reason for doing this is prevent myself from going to far on the body so that it would become difficult to sew the head on.

Bite sized chunks!!

I have made a start on the female nude model study, the aims of this study is give myself a better understanding of not just Maya but also the female form and topology. My first step was to spend time gathering reference material and then making sure the references all matched in size and were all on a level in Photoshop before taking them into Maya, the reason for this is to make life easier when positioning them in the image planes!! I also set up a correct project folder and placed the images into there to make sure all things are organised (this will make life a lot easier for me later).













Here we have the image planes set up with the reference, I position the reference into the scene in such away that they do not interfere with the modeling.












And so a start is made, I am moving at a slow pace at the moment in order to try and maintain the form, I have decided not to box model the head but do this by patch modeling at the end as I am interested to try this method.


So far so good, just need to do the basic shape of the hand and then I can consider upping the poly count :)