Body topology

#581

hmm steven
this one is more tiddy and neat…i some how like ur messy one a some of ur vertices seems to be very specific on what they do…the same vertices are in this one as well but dunno seems conventional like baisc edge looping…still ver very nice… i do agree about the arms .being musculkar i think however this body does look at frail as the previous …and to me it looks like u had more subtleties in skin wwith the other…

do u find that it deforms that much better

Also in the begining of this thread u talk about some of the messyness of ur looping giving the skin a more natural look etc etc do u abandon that now? Then again i have seen some faces with very good clean typology and still achieve subtleties
Last but not least whats so bad about the T-stance i moved from 45 to the t now lol :cry: now im think i should go back…

#582

Originally posted by Ziah
Also in the begining of this thread u talk about some of the messyness of ur looping giving the skin a more natural look etc etc do u abandon that now?

Interesting, my first thought about the Stalhberg’s topology was that the non-uniform edge distribution might be a problem to get a smooth deformation.

But now you guys are telling that it might be usefull to get more realistic deformation? Its an interesting point of view for me that prefer edge loop and clean orthogonal topology to get a more predictable mesh deformation.

#583

Well, I’m feeling my way here, trial and error and trial again. I started this thread mostly to get feedback, not to tell anyone else how to do it. (But of course I don’t mind that it turned into a kind of mini-forum, and that people are using it to learn from, I think that’s cool.)
So if you ask me, I think this is my basic advice - don’t look too much at other people’s meshes, and don’t automatically follow ‘conventional’ wisdom (such as forcing 100% quads) without questioning it, but keep testing and testing until it works for you. And even when it works, never stop testing and questioning.

This is probably not going to be the last time I try for the ‘perfect’ shoulder. It is the most difficult part of the body. And just yesterday I changed some topology on her inner thigh.
(If you look back you’ll see it’s a fairly regular grid of squares along and around the leg there. I find that whenever you have that - on any limb or torso - it’d probably look more natural with some - or all - slanting 45-degree lines instead. This creates a more chaotic look, which is what I was referring to before. Which is what I did on the thigh.) I’ll keep on changing it little by little, as I see more problems cropping up.
These are not problems of deformation - I just run a Smooth-Flood script on all the joints after Binding and the deformations are nice and smooth with this topology - I mean the problem of sculpting the basic shape of the body. Of course it would be better if I had a real person - or 10 real persons - frozen in some kind of energy field, that I could spin around like I can spin my model, but hey. :slight_smile: As it is, every once in a while I see a new photo that makes me change my mind about some detail or other.

As for the stance, T works okay. 45 might be SLIGHTLY better for deformations, not sure. But one thing to keep in mind, relating to the above-mentioned difficulty of modeling something that we can’t touch in real life - the neutral pose will be your modeling pose, and if it’s too weird (that is, not a pose you see in a lot of photos) then the job becomes that much harder. The T pose is something you can get a lot of reference for online, which makes it a little easier. Well that’s imo anyway, what do you guys think?

#584

This is still a WIP in need of a lot of tweaking but I redid the collar bone-shoulder area. In moving polys around it got a little messy, so I welcome any advice here on the topology I’ve got so far. As Steven mentioned, the shoulder is the hardest area to get just right.
I used 45 degree stance on an earlier model and it was much easier for deformations on the shoulder area. I’m going with the T stance on this one to see if I can get satisfactory results.


#585

Just to show what I did to the thigh. I could have left it the old way for a chubbier person, but I want a bit of muscle definition all over.

bodyscreen24.jpg634x585

#586

i like that alot steven, very nice. Hopefully ill be done with my reel soon and i can experiment more in my topology.

Steven, i have a question about a foot rig, The setup i know by heart isnt very stable in terms of extending in 45 degree angles without doing alittle wigging, could u possibly help me out with some info about it.

basicly my rig, is 3 Ik’s ankle, ball, and toe, centered on ball of foot, and key drivven foot roll. is there a better way !?

#587

I used to have a link to something called the Detached Foot rig method, but it’s gone now. Anybody else have it? I like it, it’s rock-solid on the floor. But the other animators I work with like to rig with the traditional way you mentioned, and it seems to work okay too.

#588

Originally posted by Stahlberg
I used to have a link to something called the Detached Foot rig method, but it’s gone now. Anybody else have it? I like it, it’s rock-solid on the floor. But the other animators I work with like to rig with the traditional way you mentioned, and it seems to work okay too.

Here’s one:
http://www.3dcentral.com/tut2.html

Found through:
http://www.learning-maya.com/rigging.php

Cheers!
/ Daniel

#589

Thanks!

#590

Thanx Steve

great lookijng thigh…You wnated to learn but ultimatlley became a resource for learning thats ironic isn’t it?

Yes i know about tweaking …i think as 3d artist we all know about tweaking…specailly when u take a look at another reference lol

The shoulder area …i do agree with you on that it being a hard part (loop wise) for me its more working on the curvature and still getting the depth of the pit as the to say

Would it be fair to say that with the T-stance for armpits u would get that nice fold/pinch of skin around that area when the hands are down in 45/acting stance…the 45 degree stance supposedly has evolved to that as its most neutral and its the typical acting stance so i read…i still think The T is easier to rig (my opinion)

By the way guys there no shame in it i came home recently and saw my sisters vicotira secrets magazine …great great great great reference books if ur going for that body type or not some of the elabarote poses are also great for deformations etc

#591

steven ur a lifesaver, i saw this tutorial link before but, mis interpreted what it meant by detatched foot.

#592

hey kryboy are ur two chracters going to fight each other???

#593

yes, ziah they will be fighting eachother.

steven, is there any way to speed up the interation of the Sub-D mesh connected to the mesh or do u just do it all in polys and have an alternative layer thats sub-d to turn on during rendering.

#594

I don’t use SubD’s at all now, except for quick visual feedback during modeling (easiest way to go back and forth from cage to tweakable smooth and back).
In the rig I use Smooth Proxy, much faster. I can even scroll the timeline with the highres model visible. (Unless I put the subdivisions up too high, but 1’s enough for animation, I’d say 2 for final rendering, unless it’s a closeup.)

#595

thx, steven for the input, that is alot faster, i really hope someday Sub-D will radicly increase its interaction speed, it does alot of magic in the rendering department. mentalray does much better job with shadows, and shading it seems from previous testing with Sub-D over poly.

thx much, and i really got myself a nice foot rig going on based of that detached foot, much more predictable.

#596

you guys would love Lightwave (metanurb) subdivision surfaces.
In the modelinging stage - just hit TAB to constantly go between poly mesh and subds and then tak into layout and u can dial display to what u want and render to what u want.

Limation: all tris and/or quads. No n-gons

#597

Originally posted by Julez4001
Limation: all tris and/or quads. No n-gons

It’s also fast because it does not keep the tangency between patches at all.

#598

Originally posted by Julez4001
[B]you guys would love Lightwave (metanurb) subdivision surfaces.
In the modelinging stage - just hit TAB to constantly go between poly mesh and subds and then tak into layout and u can dial display to what u want and render to what u want.

Limation: all tris and/or quads. No n-gons [/B]

I used to be a Lightwave user.

I prefer Maya. For that functionality you mention I use a script from highend3d.com… zzTogglesubd.mel and I have assigned it to my “” key… I also use something like spinquads, attached to CTRL “”

I use a bunch of other Lightwave like melscripts attached to hotkeys as well, but I get all the other Maya tools too.

For this back and forth functionality I highly recomend the zzTogglesubd.mel script… and mapping it to a key. It deletes history, and keeps your naming correct too.

#599

nice, plugin.

Steven, so basicly when you are finnised modeling, you create a wrap for a lowpoly cage that drives the smoothproxy, and have your blendshapes influance the wrap ?

I imagine a direct attachment from wrap to smooth mesh would be unworkable, im assuming that a bind to a low cage, that has a smooth proxy would avoid the calulation of the verts in the wrap deformer and resulting in something workable.

I could be wrong, i havent tested that yet.

keep me posted im in the binding process now, I used weight alot, but only for cartoon style work during animation training.
And I have never liked them.

#600

Does anyone know how to get the weights on the skin to mirror to the other side? I have a character that is weighted on one side and I want to copy the wieghts to the opposite side.
Cheers