New character in Maya...

So, I decided to finally have a go at a humanoid character model. I've been working on this guy since yesterday. Total time is about 6 hours so far (only about 2 yesterday, and about 4 today).

He's destined to be a caveman of sorts once he's completed.

This is the reference image I found that I'm initially basing him off. Once he's completed, I'll throw on a wrap deformer to adjust his proportions a lil.

He's being poly modelled, and then converted to Sub-D.

The initial torso


With legs (as poly)


The above converted to a Sub-D


With the basic arms (and I've beefed up his legs a lil bit)


I modified his torso some, and gave him nipples.

Poly Nipples


Sub-D Nipples


I started on some hands, and discovered that I completely suck at doing hands, so through Google I discovered this tutorial...

http://www.antropus.com/english/tutomao1.htm
It's in Portuguese, but Google translates it into... well, a form of English

So, here's the first finger..




I'm going to create my own reference images for the head, when I eventually have a stab at that. I've not really done a humanoid head before, so that will be a new experience.

Eventually he'll be fully textured, rigged and animatable. I'll use the poly mesh as a wrap deformer for the Sub-D, then skin the poly mesh. That way he'll calculate quicker while I'm working on animating him. Then I'll use some influence objects to help hold some form and substance to his joints when they bend.

I'll keep you guys posted as he develops

Like I told you outside of OZZU, I still think you could take and work that first picture into an incredibly cool "alien" face. *lol

A quick update on the hands...

I took a break to get a lil something to eat, then got back working on the hands..

As poly..


As Sub-D


Now to work on the thumb

And a close-up of the webbing between the fingers..

More hand stuff... The hands are pretty much complete. I could do some more work on the palms, but they won't really be seen THAT much, so it's not that big a deal right now. I can add more detail later if I really need to.





Each hand weighs in at 1119 faces.

Beautiful work Axe! Now bone/skeleton that guy and make him walk!

Hehe, I gotta give him feet before he can walk

I need to do some (a lot) of tweaking. I'm not happy with the way his palms turned out, so I'm gonna fix those, then stick a lattice on the hand just to quickly fix the shape of that a bit. Once the hands are completely done and dusted (there won't be any faces added or removed, just shifted around a bit) I'm going to carry on working on the arms and tweaking those, get some muscle definition in here and there.

I have skinned the hand via wrap deformer - skinning the sub-d directly is just WAY too much of a resource hog and is far too slow. I've got a video of that to show you actually, so pop on MSN when you get a chance

Speaking of "deformer", Can we assume that the fact that there are only three fingers was by intent?

hehe yup, scroll right up to the top of the first post, and check out the image I'm using as a reference

Well, here's a couple of updated screenshots. I decided to take a break from modelling today, and get used to some of the skinning & animation tools in Maya, so I've been playing around with soft bind & influence objects.

This is a screenshot of a finger with the basic smooth-skinning applied...



As you can see, quite a problem with the finger getting very thin where it bends - on a full body model the same thing happens with elbows, knees, ankles, pretty much anywhere there's a bending joint like this.

This is with an influence object to help maintain the shape & volume of the model as it deforms..



As you can see, makes quite a big difference

hehe, axe, i envy you character modeling skills

looks cool, would love to see some animation

Hehe, don't envy them yet. This is the first time I've had a go at making a believable humanoid figure.

I've made some mistakes, and I know it, but I'm pretty much making this up as I go along right now, trying various techniques, see which feel comfortable, which seem to work the best for me. There's a lot of things I've done that I know I can really improve on next time. Rather than redo what I've already done though, I'm just going to carry on and finish this guy, and I'll (hopefully) be able to make less mistakes on the next one I do

really good!

what program are you using?

See the subject line of the thread?

Maya

Nice work axe, those hands are looking really good, gotta hate feet they are harder to do than hands....ive gettting back into 3d too, will have some stuff up on my site hopefully before the new year