The Torso:
We are going to use a new technique for the torso of your character. We want to make a Spline Cage the shape of your characters torso. Go to the shape tool in the create panel, make some circles (about four will do) and scale them using non-uniform scale tool and move them up or down to create cross sections of the extremes of your torso. Therefore the circles should be found at the bottom of the torso, the top of the torso were it meets the neck, the most extreme part of the chest and the bottom of the rib cage. Line the spacing of these rings to where the extremes are found on your concept art, by using the proportion line on your concept art and the proportion line in your max file. Convert the bottom circle to and editable spine and attach the others one by one from the bottom up.
Then in your modify panel with the circles selected hit cross section and in the roll out check smooth. Now add the surface modifier with remove interior face checked and flip normal if it is needed, set the steps to 3. As shown.
Convert this to an editable mesh and kill the smoothing groups. Delete the top and bottom faces so that you have open edges at the top and bottom. Delete one side and make an instance of it (the same as the head mesh is.)
Now give the mesh a quick shape with only one side of the mesh selected (the other will copy it) and some open edges for the arms. Using soft selection of this will be a big help. You will most likely also have to do some dividing and turning, also a little optimizing as well.
This will do for a start. We will do more refining to the torso after we attach the head.
Head, Shoulders, Torso and Abs. Torso and Abs. Torso and Abs:
We will now attach the head and refine the torso. Unhide your head and line the torso up with the head. Delete the right side of the torso, select the left side of the head and attach the left side of the torso. Now weld the vertices together around the neck and refine the torso to work with the head if needs be.
For the next step we will refine the torso by adding abs, ribs and traps (neck to shoulder muscles.) We will also fix the poly flow and a little optimizing. This will be done by using technique you have already been shown.
Modeling abs not just texturing them; abs modeling and high detail modeling hasn’t been embraced by all computer game artists. This is mainly from the texturing side of the community I can see why they don’t think it is necessary. But this is where modeling for real-time games is going. I think the best way to show this is from the use of normal map that game like doom 3 will be using. A character that is using a normal maps (poly bump) will get that normal maps from a high-poly version of the character. This normal map works like a texture that also has the ability to cast shadows, make a texture map as we know them now useless. I’m not saying that there will be no use for a texture artist, but their job will change a fair bit from what it is now. Were modeling is at now with 3000-3500 polys is still very much like low poly texturing, but is moving and becoming more like high-poly texturing. Even more so as the in-game lighting gets better, making a texture with shadows/highlights will look wrong when lite by game engine lighting.
Also having the abs modeled works very well for a side shot of your character.
Can’t Play Without Arms:
To make the arms we will make a number of GeoSphere and cylinders in the shape of the arm (using FFD boxes will help you get the right shapes for the muscles). Then we will Boolean them together and optimize and refine the mesh.
Ok that got a bit messy, now we will finish off the upper body. This will include some optimizing, fixing the shape of the arm, adding hands and fixing the poly flow of the upper body.
Adding hands will be done with one of the most used and lest talked about modelling techniques. This would have to be the fastest modelling technique I know. I’m going to use a hand from one of my older models. This is a highly recommended technique, if you have made something before that will work on your current model why not use it.
This is only a quick optimize, but it will do for now. I like to make the complete model before I optimize and fix poly flow. These areas were I have fixed the flow and optimize are not final and will most like change. I find this is the best way to model because you can’t know the number of polys that you can spend in an area before you have the rest of the model complete.
I build my arms at a 45o for all my models (including high poly models.) The reason behind building them this way and not just 90o out from the shoulder is that the shoulder is on show a lot more than the arm pit (in most cases, if the models arm pit will be seen a lot then model at 90o.) Therefore make a lot more in the sense to build them this way.
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Brendan George BrendanDoord@hotmail.com
Mid-Poly Modelling
09/2002