Body topology

DimitrisLiatsos · 2004-09-21 08:21:45 UTC

Same model…after 3-4 hours of studying some topology stuff from all of u guys posts here and some observations to Steven Stahlberg’s topology around the bum area (sorry i don’t recall the anatomical term in English)

Colin_de_bink · 2004-09-21 12:32:07 UTC

Thank you for your comment mr. stalberg and I’m glad you like it thus far.
It is very “quaddy” indeed, I know you are kind of a fan and promoter of non-quad topologies. And I suppose it is handy for adding detail in places where it is needed without having to add it where it is not needed. Which is often the case for all-quad topologies.
But I guess I went for an all-quad topology out of insecurity. Not having to find out the hard way that it doesn’t work in the end. Not being able to rig it or render properly. and I don’t feel the model is less good just because it is all-quad.
Maybe if I’m more experienced in 3D I will try it your way, because I’m not against it or anything.
with the comment about the arms you are on spot, I’ve used a reference with overly stretched/tensed arms. ill look in to it.

@DimitrisLiatsos: I’m just going to wait and see what you come up with this time, I totally love the work you do on the challenges

I attached a hand wire, I feel the topology is okay I just need to change the proportions and size a bit.
oh also attached some self critique on my last image so you guys can see what is in my mind

DimitrisLiatsos · 2004-09-22 04:36:39 UTC

Hi Colin de bink nice geometry u have there. I like the clean hand mesh , i won’t say more 'cuase i am student to this also so i will stay humble to this . The only tyhing i would like to say is from my animator side , that one thing that always we have to keep in mind is setting up geometry for animation ( i know u know that) but also in a position helping skinning - enveloping - binding (call it with any term u like). So i believe before u dive into any more details u should open a bit the legs away from eachother (x-axis). My humble 2 cents.

Ok…i have worked my geometry a little more and i also have in my next pic all the steps from Nurbs --> Low Poly ->> Higher poly ->> Subd …just to show my workflow and also of course for your opinion so far for the model. I believe that what Steven said some pages back about not worrying about quads and tris and all that and first of all worry about the form u want to give and always keeping in mind the variations on human body is the most inspiring and cool rule to keep in mind…I am making this model under this idea and i really want to see where it will leed.

P.S : my female model here and most of my studies on woman body are mainly driven from the illustrations of BORIS & JULIA about super heroes. Basic shapes from a free image of FINEART.SK . I like super women …shoot me!

MasonDoran · 2004-09-22 06:00:38 UTC

yinako:

Hi people I haven’t check this thread for some time nice to see lots of new pics, I have a script here if you like to build quad only characters…for subdivision surface in Maya/Mr

save the code as “selectnonquad.mel” and source it
you need to select bunch of face on yout model first and then execute the script (selectnonquad;), it will then hilite any face thats not a quad…
    //-------------------------------------
    //By David Wen Ying 5/8/2004 4:18PM
    // Yinako_minako@hotmail.com
    // http://www.noboundrees.com/yinako/
    // Select faces on mesh then run script
    //-------------------------------------
    global proc selectnonquad(){
       if(`selectMode -q -o`){
    	  error "Need to select faces first";
       }
       $selected = `ls -sl -flatten`;
       int $i;
       select -cl;
       for( $i=0; $i < size($selected); $i++){
    	  //print ($selected[$i]+":");   
    	  string $vtx[] = `polyListComponentConversion -toVertex $selected[$i]`;
    	  $vtx = `ls -flatten $vtx`;
    	  //print (" vtx count:" + `size($vtx)` + "
");   
    	  if(size($vtx) != 4){
    		 select -add $selected[$i];
    	  }
       }
    }
    

map this to a hotkey to select any ngons…

polyCleanupArgList 3 { “0”,“2”,“0”,“0”,“1”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“0”,“1e-005”,“0”,“1e-005”,“0”,“1e-005”,“0”,“2”,“0” };

Colin_de_bink · 2004-09-22 12:23:57 UTC

thanks 2byts this one works perfectly, the other one is probably too complex for me to understand ;).
great

@DimitrisLiatsos thanks for your comment on the pose you are right about that, I guess I could have chosen a better reference model because the arms are to stretched also. anyway ill just keep on working.
your model is becoming pretty defined and muscular
I like how you went about creating the shoulder, very cool
I am wondering did you only start in nurbs and are you now working in poly or subD.
or do you just convert to subD for rendering and work in nurbs

DimitrisLiatsos · 2004-09-22 14:23:30 UTC

Hi Colin , don’t worry i said what i said about open feet just as an info …u can basically do it anytime if u go to animation with your model…up to a point…

In my model i have started shaping with a Nurb cylinder the leg and a Nurb cylinder for the upper body. I work a bit there until i find the shape i think it’s ok . Then i am trying(…hard some times) to match the Curvature Degree (Number of U -V isoparams) and connect the Upper half with the Lower , but not the inside of the Leg (It lacks corresponding number of isopams from upper surface, it stays as a patch). I convert everything to poly after more refine and stich them all together as polygon surfaces. I went to SubD in my prev post just to show how it would look if i went for render, but until that point it needs too much work. I might have many mistakes cuase i am refining in a Medium Res…and that maybe will get me to trouble.
I used mostly soft selection for details…

i hope i helped…
:bounce:

DimitrisLiatsos · 2004-09-23 07:34:25 UTC

:bounce: I may be way off…so comments would be appreciated.

bobakabob · 2004-09-23 15:40:45 UTC

DimitrisLiatsos,
Good work - the back view is excellent. But imo, the front is a little too exaggerated and intense, like the muscles are in a kind of spasm, especially around the neck area and upper thigh. Maybe try apply smoothing and make the front more subtle and relaxed

DimitrisLiatsos · 2004-09-24 06:27:44 UTC

@ bobakabob …thanks …abouth front part of model…neck is not finished at all, i haven’t worked there much yet , as for the rest of the front …maybe you are right if i was going for something normal …but my goal is something like this in the pic below…'cuase it also serves my purpose to try Steven Stahlberg’s technique to clever hide the stich of the head on the neck and not attached in order to have smaller size BlendShapes on my model.

Check the way my model is going to end up to…

I don’t know …am i way off this goal?

P.S : OF COURSE …the drawing if from a book of BORIS & JULIA artwork…not mine…:love:

DimitrisLiatsos · 2004-09-24 07:10:49 UTC

update…fixed more waist (thinner) and breast curvature

Stahlberg · 2004-09-24 08:52:41 UTC

DimitrisLiatsos, that’s a lot of work, well done. And a refreshing change of pace for the body type.
Comments: I think the ribcage is too wide, only the muscles should be bigger not the bones… and the muscles on the ribcage that you’d notice most are the serratus, which look like braidwork and sit on the top/sides, but aren’t really that huge… and then the latissimus dorsi, which is what makes the torso a lot broader on muscular people. But it doesn’t extend forward so far.
Back of the knees have a sharp horizontal crease that I think shouldn’t be there, and I think the pubic bone should probably extend a little lower.

edit: Looked a bit more. The side-view: the front of the thighs should curve more. More forward in the middle, and more back at the top.

DimitrisLiatsos · 2004-09-24 11:18:20 UTC

Hi Steven, i was afraid that i had it wrong with rib cage area, all the other things u mentioned …i really think i have to study more of my anatomy books 'cuase u are very correct. I should check on my references more…

Thanks for commenting…i will get right on it. :deal:

kaynine · 2004-09-25 15:57:57 UTC

Hi All

I’m 3/4 of the way thru doing blendshapes for my character - the Stahlberg way. Thought I’d pass on some comments…

I started with a medium-poly model (6k’s or so), and I’ve just kept on deleting vertices. Seems like this method works way better the fewer vertices you have. DimitrisLiatsos, your model looks like it’s got LOTS of poly’s - might be challenging making blendshapes for it. My lvl0 mesh is designed for deformation, not body definition (which happened on the smoothproxy).
Also, having some order in the lvl0 mesh vertices helps (ie. having them roughly quad’ish helps to more easily create the blendshapes). It also helps to have many blendshapes for different angles of the same joint. For example, the thigh. If you just do a blendshape at 90degrees X, some of the blendshape vertices get sucked inside the shape, making it very hard to get the shape right. So I’ve got a blendshape for 45degrees and 90degrees. That way the blendshape vertices don’t have to move as far.
I’ve found it much easier to do a little bit of skin-weight painting. When I need to redo blendshapes, the weights are NOT lost…simply copy the weights to a copy of the model, recreate the blendshapes, and copy the weights back. Works like a dream.
Changing geometry…This is the weakness of the workflow. Add a few vertices and you’ve got to redo ALL the blendshapes. So I’m doing the elbow, realise I’ve got too many vertices, and I’ve got to redo all my blendshapes for legs, etc. There must be a way around this (ie. cutting the model into pieces?), but I haven’t found one that works yet.
There is a mel script on highend3d which mirrors the blendshapes, so you only have to do blendshapes for half the model.

MasonDoran · 2004-09-29 03:15:02 UTC

i see a lot of nice models in this thread, and although i havent contributed much to it i wanted to point some common themes in it.

People are posting a lot of hi-poly WIPS(key word here) for feedback, but i cant help but give the advice to try and excorcise a strict poly bodget on the models.

I am a low poly modeler for Real time stuff and dont have the luxury of doing hi-res stuff. Coming from that…it is very educational to practice with 4000 triangle(2000 quad) for a realistic human. It makes you think very precisely on where the essential edge loops are needed and proper Volume…and even how to use triangles in a very clever way to create muscles n bone.

After that, its a simply matter of forcing the geometry into subds to gret rid of the triangles…and with the extra geometry you can go to town…but since the ESSENTIAL edge loops are created and Volume is correct…a lot of time is conserved.

I point this out because i often have only 2-3 days to model an entire character at 3500 tris…so speed is essential and if you practice on low poly budgets…the fundamentals of modelling are learned more easily.

AlexMateo · 2004-09-29 10:33:54 UTC

stalberg you r a monster

Shademaster · 2004-09-30 05:15:35 UTC

Great great GREAT Thread! I tried modelling a friend a little, she is my first female model (revised a zillion times), it is so hard trying to get good shapes that actually look realistic.
Great thread people!

Here is an older version of her behind:

Shademaster · 2004-09-30 05:22:20 UTC

I tried head modelling too, super hard. I have been tweaking this head for 6 months allready and still don’t know what’s wrong with her (except for the shader).
Okay I will be reading some more stuff on body and face topology!

loony · 2004-09-30 16:27:27 UTC

hey 2bytes,
i think you are talking a lot of sense there. you’re right that a lot of people are posting highpoly stuff (sometimes smoothed on top of that) that maybe don’t clearly show an efficient use of edge-looping. doesn’t help to view stuff without the wires either.
could you post some of your stuff to illustrate lowpoly stuff with good edge-looping? i’d be really interested to have a look-see.
thanks.

DimitrisLiatsos · 2004-10-01 02:48:50 UTC

Maybe u guys are correct about saying that working very low poly geometry is helpfull in order to learn where to have edge loops and give the proper volume (kaynine, 2byts, loony ). In my case i just want to say that the main force in my wip is not how to do that but how to utilize any polygon to achieve the level of detail that comes very near to realistic and at the same time keeping geometry in a clean polycount under or at least 10.000 polys. At that number it is very controlable for deformation and animation. I just Subdivide that to render just to get a smoother look. Maybe i am wrong but in any case so far i didn’s have any problem deforming and animating that kind of geometry. I just always keep in mind to have enough detail in areas i am going to deform a lot. …but then again we don’t have Game industry in my Country so it’s a little difficult to test your theory (which i think is going to be correct… )

Ok here is my progress so far…i am still working on Steven’s observations , fixed thighs and back of knees a little bit…i worked on the rib cage area and torso some also…i still am working on those …just thought to show where i am so far.

shoot me !

Dragot · 2004-10-01 19:08:16 UTC

Yo ShadeMaster that shader looks great, what shader did you use and how did you texture her?