Anyone know of some tutorials on modelling a detailed human body without ngons?

[Tantramancer]

I started off in the CG art business many years ago as a 2D animator/concept artist, which as technology advanced through the 90's led me into doing texture art. Modeling was something I only dabbled at occasionally since it was outside my area of specialty, but I never seriously pursued it until the last 3 years or so. I've been trying to focus on it as much as I can in between texturing and illustration assignments as time allows.

It's been hard to do on my own. I've found various tutorials out there on the web but nothing so much as what I've gotten from finally investing some cash in a handful of videos. I was struggling with the same problem of how to retain an all quad structure and achieve a decent organic form with a good flow of muscles, etc. The most useful video set I've come across showing how to get a good organic flow to muscles and stuff while maintaining an all quad structure is: http://www.freedomofteach.com/products/prod_category.php?sect=products&pid=cat_anatomy

Someone else on another forum recommended I buy it. I think it was money very well spent. I've done the exercise a few times now both in Max and Silo separately (the instructor on the video uses Maya) and recently I loaned those videos to a friend of mine here in town who is doing the exercise in Lightwave. What he shows on the video can easily be adapted to just about any modeling package. I'm not crazy about the image reference he uses and the muscles are too well defined and doll-like at times, the video quality itself can make it real hard to pick out details once he starts getting a really complex mesh going and the human figure he walks you through only really ends up being around 80-90% complete (he leaves you to have to figure out the rest yourelf) but it's the techniques shown on the video that are important to help you go off and do your own models. It's had a big influence on my own modeling workflow and now I never have a problem maintaining all quads anymore.

The important thing I got from that video set for keeping a model all quads while achieving a good organic flow to muscles is using a spin edges feature which is available to most 3D packages, either inherently or as a plugin. Once I saw how useful and powerful such a seemingly minor tool can be for organic modeling it changed my whole modeling workflow overnight. The video's instructor uses a MELscript in Maya to spin edges. When I attempted it in Max I used the spin edges feature in the Polyboost plugin. For my own workflow I prefer Silo these days for the base modeling which has a spin edges feature built in, then I export that to Zbrush for detailing and texturing. My friend, who is doing this in Lightwave says that program has a spin edges feature built in also. I'm not a Lightwave user so don't ask me how to find it or use it in that program as I wouldn't have the slightest idea.

You can try some experiments using spin edges and figure it out for yourself eventually but investing some money in that video set could save you some time and there's other useful advice and tips on the video. I can't give it a perfect score as there were some things that really annoyed me, but it is still well worth the money and shows a modeling workflow that is particularly relevant to what you are asking here about maintaining all quads while achieving a good organic flow.

[no_clue33]

Hey thanks a lot tantra! I actually bought an anatomy model from there about a week ago and saw that dvd but since it was done in maya I didn't realise it was an all quad mesh. I will definitely be buying it now :). The model I bought from there is awesome btw.

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