[Anchuvi]

Hi all and welcome to this Open Tutorial - This is a thread currently running on CGTalk, but as I am using Silo I thought I would mirror it here too

Throughout this thread I will be sharing my process for creating my next piece of artwork but rather than this being a standard work in progress thread, or a tutorial, where you follow each step I post, I though you could all work along side me. By doing this we can help each other as we share and discover new techniques. Hopefully in the end we will all learn something.

Its going to be a bit of an experiment, but if your interested in joining please subscribe to this thread, or the feed on my blog and feel free to chirp in with comments or even upload your own versions of the work, and ideas on how to improve the process.

So what will we be doing?

Well, late last year I posted a thread allowing early subscribers to choose what image we will recreate. The result was The Tug of Danger by Dean Yeagle.

This will be quite a good piece to redo in 3D as it has many elements we can cover. As well as modeling and texturing we can also look at skin, hair, fur, grass and other elements of the environment.

Its important to add here that we are not going to do an exact copy, line for line, colour for colour. Instead we will use this as a base concept to work from. Yes, we will try and keep true to Deans work, especially Mandy, but the environment will probably change slightly.

What software will you need to use?

Well I am using Silo, Maya (8.5) and Photoshop (CS3) but feel free to use 3D Studio, XSI or whichever you like. I will post steps in an open, non-app specific way but when we come to hair and shaders, which will be Maya specific, it would be good for you to post other ways to achieve similar results in your chosen package.

You can find trial versions of the software here -

Silo - http://www.nevercenter.com/download/
Maya - http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servle...3112&id=7635018
Photoshop - http://www.adobe.com/go/tryphotoshop

What will I be sharing?

As this is a tutorial I will be more than happy to upload models and shaders etc. as I go along, as well as lots of images. I will be using the final render in my portfolio, and converting this thread into a proper tutorial but I will only include my own posts, so don't worry

How frequently will I be posting?

I can`t commit to uploading updates on a daily basis, it may even be a few days between posts depending on how busy I am...but the beauty of this thread will be that you can all upload your work for the community to comment on. I will however check in once a day, and leave feedback where possible.

So, sign up, subscribe or just pop back from time to time...I will post the first step shortly

[Anchuvi]

So where do we begin? Well, before embarking on any major project its a good idea to spend some time researching and gathering reference. Lets have a look at our image...

Well, for starters we will need to search out some more images of Mandy and her dog. Below are some links to a few sites I found...feel free to post more if you find them.

http://www.cagedbeagle.com/
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~mcfadden/...wallpapers.htm
http://gallery.bellefree.com/dabeagle
http://www.comicartcommunity.com/gal...php?cat_id=143
http://cilm.estoreadvanced.biz/index...parent=24&pg=1

We don't need to go mad, in the end we only need to see her from a certain angle but it helps to know how she would look from other perspectives. If we were to create a series of Mandy images then I would recommend hunting out a model sheet, or good orthographic views to work from.


The sketches are a great place to start but we want to go further with our 3D work. So, if your not confident with cloth you could search out some good images of clothing, trying to match Mandy`s pose so we can refer to the creases and folds in the fabric.

Next we can turn to the environment and start searching for some rocks, grass and trees. We can do a simple Google search for cliffs so we have more to work with than the simple one in the drawing. I chose the following, but feel free to move in your own direction.

I like this cliff because it has some nice defined rocks, plus more shrubs etc. to help break up the surface.

So, spend some time now building up a library for you to refer to before we move onto the modeling. Feel free to share your finds with the rest of us

In the next post we will look into Subdivision Surfaces before we move onto modeling.

[Anchuvi]

Before we dive in and begin creating our scene it’s probably a good idea to take a step back and look at what we will be working with. I love to mode with Subdivision Surfaces, or limit surfaces, a method which has been around for a while now and is widely used for creating high-end 3D models.

As it stands, working on a highly detailed model comprised of many millions of polygons is a nightmare, not only for the hardware but also for general manipulation. Subdivision Surfaces give the us the freedom to work on a low-resolution model, known as a cage, base, or control mesh, safe in the knowledge that a simple button or key press can produce a smoother, higher-resolution model, which in turn can be worked further by manipulating the control mesh.

You can see the control mesh on the left, below. This is the rougher, more angular model that is built initially.

Next to this is the model converted to a subdivision surface. Notice how nice and smooth it is. You can also see the wireframe from the base mesh traced across its surface, showing its origins.

Finally the subdivision surface model has been converted back into polygons. When comparing this to the previous model you can see how much denser the mesh is, meaning it would be more difficult to edit or manipulate.

Here’s the Science Bit

So how do they work? Well, in laymen’s terms, all that happens is the surface of the control mesh is subdivided—hence the name. New vertices and faces are added with their position calculated using the original vertex positions and one of two refinement schemes (see below).

The two schemes, “Approximation” and “Interpolation,” differ in that the latter will try to retain the original shape of the mesh, whereas approximation will result in a smoother surface at the cost of the original shape.

Popular applications like Maya, 3D Studio Max, Silo, and Softimage XSI rely on an approximation algorithm called Catmull–Clark, created by Edwin Catmull and Jim Clark in 1978. The creation of the algorithm landed Edwin—the current president of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios—an Academy Award in 2006 for Technical Achievement.

Memory

Working with subdivision surfaces gets better. Even when you’ve converted the model into a subdivision surface, you can still work on the control mesh, viewing any modifications you make in real time as they move up the chain and affect the smoother model (see Figure below).

Now thats out of the way we can move on and start building Mandy.

[Anchuvi]

We are going to start with the main character in the scene, Mandy, but rather than create her from scratch it makes sense to recycle an old model if you have one. There are tons of modeling tutorials around the web, and in books, some of which are linked below -

http://www.ant-online.co.uk/Tutorials/characterMod.html
http://www.3dtotal.com/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.asp
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/tutorials/mayafeet/mayafeet1.asp
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Characte...21048072&sr=8-1

Sorry for the blatant plug ;p If anyone has any better links, please post them.

Don't worry, I don't expect you to beaver away on your own base model. To give you a head start I am uploading my own stylized female base model for you to use. Please don't download and use this directly in your other work though

Stylised Female Base Model

We can approach this two ways.

1. Using the base mesh we can start to rework her figure and features until she matches Mandy, then pose her.
2. We can head straight in and pose this model, then rework just the areas we need to for this image.

As mentioned earlier, if we wanted to create a series of Mandy images it would be better to work on her in the t-pose before posing etc. As this is a still image, it would save time to pose her first, so we don't spend ages working on areas which will not be seen.

But what about UV`s! I hear you shout...Well, yes, normally you would finish the t-posed model, then UV her before posing her at the end. This is different though, our model can get away without having UV`s as we will be using a custom shader, most likely an sss shader (subsurface scattering shader). We can then add subtle skin tones, and her pale buttocks in Photoshop after, saving us more setup time.

If this were a realistic character I would suggest adding UV`s early on so you can have full control over her skin by using various maps to get the effect spot on

The base model I provided does have some basic UV`s, just in case

Enough waffle, lets make a start...

Take the base mesh into your application and start to pose her however you see fit. You could edit the mesh directly or incorporate a skeleton to help with the pose. Me, I find it easier to throw in a quick skeleton. This not only makes posing easier, it also helps retain her proportions.

With the skeleton in I then bring in the concept art as an image plane to help me match the pose, you can see this below.

You may need to adjust the length of her limbs, her spine or the size of her head to fit the image.


There is no need to pose the fingers and toes at this stage as they will be removed later to be replaced by gloves and boots. In fact, you can delete the hands now if you like...We will keep the legs etc. though as later down the line we may decide to dress her differently.


As this is a quick pose you will notice lots of problem areas for us to fix, so we will look at those next.

[Anchuvi]

We now have our rough pose so its time to start and fix the broken areas, as well as work in more definition.

Looking at the image your probably thinking that we can delete the legs and chest as it is covered anyway. Well you could, or you could leave them to use as reference for when you build the clothing. For us, we will rework the body as a whole...consider it a modeling excersise, more of a practice

So, lets look a the shoulders first. As you can see below we first delete the polygons forming the nasty twist. With this done we can restitch the arm to the shoulder, giving a smoother result which will make it easier for us to work with.

If it makes things easier you could detach the head for now.

With both arms fixed we can now work in some of the muscles and make the whole area look more natural.

I had a look around for some reference to work from, this is all I could find -

If anyone has anything better please upload it

ALSO! With this being a SubD model its important to try and reatain as many quads as possible...

[Anchuvi]

Now we need to spend some time refining and reshaping the shoulder areas. Its important to make sure the arms are streight and not bowed like in the first image below.

You can also start to work on the clavicle and armpit too...

We still need to work on the shouder muscles a bit more before we move on. Her breasts are also too large and we need to follow the muscle up and around the deltoid.

[Anchuvi]

Ok, so spent a little time working on the shoulder muscles so they flow more naturaly, especially up from her chest.

I think we will leave her shoulders for now and move down to her hips and legs.

[Anchuvi]

Just a quickie post...Here is some more reference of the shoulder area...

We can see from this that there is still some work to do on our model, but we can always come back to it later...

[Anchuvi]

Moving onto the legs now we can start and remove some of the awful creases, and fill out her butt cheeks

Reference -

Silo`s "Smooth" tool comes in handy here. Selecing the faces around the crease and smoothing the area pulls the polys apart allowing you to go in and edit it easier.

The whole body still needs some tweaks, and we need to sort out the ankles but feel free to work as much, or as little on this as you like. Ultimatly she will be covered so any work we do now will be lost...we are doing this purely as a modeling excersise.

I will post a final body image when I have finished tweaking but after that we will move onto her head.

[Anchuvi]

I have now more or less completed her body, and I decided to delete the hands and feet as we don`t need them anyway.

I will probably come back to her again later but for now its time to move onto her head.

Before we start the head its a good idea to compile a reference page, like the one below. This has all the main views of Mandy so we have an idea of what she looks like from all angles.

I decided to scrap the posed head. Going back to the original, unposed head will make it much easier to work on while we get the look of Mandy nailed down. So bringing in the original model, delete the body and prepare the scene by importing and positioning the image planes.

Now we can rework the base head to fit Mandy, and reverting back tot he unposed model means for now, we can just concentrate on half of her head.

[Anchuvi]

I have started working on the head, tweaking the existing model so it looks more like Mandy.

Its difficult to get an exact likeness when working from sketches, as they rarely match up meaning the side is different from the front, especially if the faces have expressions. I was glad then to find the following set of images.

Having an actual 3D model to work from is great So here is where I am now...

[Anchuvi]

Now we have our main head built we can think about her facial expression. Again, we can add this easily using the reflection/mirror tool so we only need to work on one side of her head.

I also added in a set of teeth I built for an earlier project. I will upload these, as well as the current model when we have completed the next stage and re-attached her head

[Anchuvi]

A small update here, but once we are happy with her head and expression we can reattach her head.

This doeasn`t mean the body is final, we can come back to her and tweak it if we need to. For now though we will move onto clothing.

I will upload this model a.s.a.p

[Anchuvi]

Ok all, here is the model I promised earlier - Mandy Posed

I should be able to make a start on the clothing in a day or so as I just completed work my debut novel "Sleeper: The Awakening"

So that has freed up a little bit of time...

Will post soon!

[Anchuvi]

Time to make a start on her clothing.

As always its important to gather reference on folds and wrinkles before you start.

I have decided to make my first deviation from the concept and instead of Mandy wearing trousers she is going to wear shorts, mainly so we can see more of the leg geometry.

We start with a simple cylinder and position it around her thigh, duplicating it for the other leg.

With these in position we can start to stitch them together and work in more of the upper parts of the shorts, the area which is pulled down.

With the main bulk of the geometry in we can now build in some of the creased and folds.

While doing this also add in the edges of the cloth, and any other details like seams. These small touches make all the difference.

Make sure the pulled area actually looks like its holding some tension, keep it as streight as possible.

We will move onto adding the belt next before doing any final tweaks and details, then we will tackle her shirt.

As usual, any comments are welcome and be sure to follow me on Twitter for more updates and tips - www.twitter.com/Ant_Ward

[Anchuvi]

As you can see below I`ve done some more work on her shorts, including adding some more creases to her inner thigh.

With the main bulk of the fabric done we can turn to the belt and belt loops. For the belt simply start with a cube, position and scale this to roughly belt shape then extrude the edges, moving around her shorts from one side to the next.

For the seam down her leg I duplicated a face loop down the thigh then split it into two. Selecting the new split I then created a bevel, which in effect made the new geometry have three divisions.

I then deleted the outer face loops so I was just left with a slim strip of polys, these I then extracted outwards to create the relief of the seam.

I did it this way to keep the seam running parallel with her shorts.

We will come back to the shorts later, so next we will turn to her shirt.

[Anchuvi]

There are a few ways we can tackle her shirt...

1. As we did with her shorts we could construct it from cylinders, then stitch it togeather.
2. Using a cube as a base we could construct the shirt the Box Modelling way.

For me there is only one way which will ultimatly save time too. We already have the shirt geometry in the scene, so why start from scratch?

1. Following the image below, first duplicate the main body model.
2. Next delete the areas we don`t need, so the head, neck and lower body. Just leave the area around the shirt.
3. At the moment this mesh is too complicated to use, so we need to optimize it and try and build in as many horizontal loops as we can. These will ultimatly help use when we create our creases and folds.

We have a basic model, but when you make your other models visible again you will see that the mesh intersects, or is hidden by Mandy.

A quick way to fix this is to select the vertices of the shirt and move them along their normals. This will scale them outwards, relative to each other rather than as a whole.

In Maya you can select this under the Move Tool attibutes, in Silo just select Local Move.

There we have the basic shirt model, so next we can start to add some details.

[Anchuvi]

Now we have the basic shirt we can start to build in some details, like folds and creases to give the fabric weight. As you can see we are simply cutting and adjusting the model, no sculpiting!

Click Here for a larger version so you can see the wireframes.

We still have a way to go with the shirt, and then we need to add her cuffs, but lets break and see how she is looking as a whole.

Not bad so far, what do you think? Having the break from the shorts has made me realise that we need some smaller creases adding to the legs, so we will add those once the shirt is done.

This is the last update this week, so have a good weekend, keep the comment coming and see you all next week

[Anchuvi]

I decided to rework the folds in her shirt, making them look more like the natural S shapes which are formed under the weight of her sleeves...Hopefull it looks better.

These next steps can be ignored, but I fancied giving her some hair just so she looks more complete. I will eventually try and tame Maya hair, but for now I will slap on some polygon hair.

As you can see I started with a basic cylinder, then positioned it to follow the flow of her hair. With this in place I then started to tweak the shape to closer fit her ponytails.

Unfortunatly my lunch hour is over so I will pick up with her hair, hopefully tomorrow

[Anchuvi]

Managed to squeeze some more time onto Mandy and her hair, so here is the next update.

Once we have the base hair model in place we need to adjust it so its roughly hair shaped. At first this is a flat representation.

When happy with that we can start to add some basic details, hinting at the flow of the hair. This was quite easy as the base hair model already followed the flow, so we just needed to subdivide the poly rings and adjust to create the subtle waves.

With the main base hair done now we can add extra waves to give it more depth and life.

In addition to this I decided to slap some basic colours onto her, so we can see the different elements clearer. These are just quick colours but adding these hilites some more areas we need to look at, one of them being her eyelashes.

Finally here is a close up of the model so far, so you can see the wireframe...I`m affraid its quite a large image...sorry