Modelling the Character

Before i started my modelling i looked at some tutorials to learn the basics of modelling a character again and i found this great tutorial from the "Simply Maya" website. The tutorial demonstrates how to model in low poly and smooth it afterwards in maya. Alternatively it can be taken into Zbrush and smoothed and refined there, it can even be textured in Zbrush which i am considering.

But at this point i just want to start modelling the character first in Maya and keeping the poly count as low as possible.

So as you can see in the image on the left, i have imported my image refrence of the character in maya as an image plane.

I started modelling the head using nurbs as it is more easier to manipulate and model. The neck was created seperately using a nurbs cylinder and both of the head and the neck were connected using an operation called booleans. Afterwards i just converted the head and the neck from nurbs into polygons.

The next stage here, i am modelling out the body and arm using a polygon cube and attaching it to the head. This process involves quite a lot of extruding and moving the geometry around using vertices.

The shorts are done seperately here. I used a polygon cylinder for the basic shape of the shorts. Just moving the geometry and vertices around helps get it into the shape that i want. I also had to delete some faces as i am only modelling half the model. This is because afterwards i will duplicate that half model and mirror it onto the other side. This saves time and helps to keep the model in line and accurate.


So the model is coming along nicely now and you can see that the hand and feet are now fully modelled and connected to the rest of the body. The feet and hand had to be modelled seperately but they were not extruded from the body it self.

The hand and feet were basically combined with the body and then merged with the vertices afterwards.

As i am modelling along the way i sometimes mirror the geometry to see how the other side will look. I do this so if any changes need to be made i can do it pretty much at that stage rather then going back after it is fully modelled which could cause a headache.

I'm nearly finished now. The eyes were created by simply using polygon spheres and placed in line with the eye socket. The socket itself was created by deleting some faces and using the split polygon tool to create the shape of an eye. I had to move some vertices around and merge them to get the shape right. The ears were the same process and pretty much more extruding. I had to also extrude and refine the nose as well as the mouth. All that is left now is the hair.

Here is a quick picture of what the model looks like when it is not selected or highlighted.

Ok the hair is done now. This was pretty easy as i just extruded from the head itself so nothing too complicated there.

At this point the model has been duplicated and mirrored on the other side. I combined and merged the vertices to complete the model and make it as one. A few little adjustments have been made but other then that i am really happy. Its pretty close to the original concept and i did change a few little things here and there but overall its turned out better then i expected.

So the modelling is over and i have to say i really enjoyed it. I didn't have any major problems and the tutorials that i have followed were really helpful in acheiving my end results. The whole process of modelling took about a week and a half. I could have produced the model by less then a week but i was slacking a bit and was being distracted by other projects, but hey i'll put my hands up and say no excuses. There were moments were i did get stuck like doing the eye socket and maybe a bit of the hand, but because my concept of the model was simple these hurdles were easily solvable.

Ok i guess the next process is either rigging or texturing, i haven't decided yet but it could be one of those. I'll let you know on the next post.