My Subd Vitruvian Man Wip

[james-thompson--2]

This started as a mere sketch of a hand, trying to get the hang of the polygona/subD workflow using the 1 and 3 keys to switch back and forth between views. I extended the arm out from the hand, duplicated it and flipped it across the axis and used a poly cylinder to form the torso. By the time the arms, torso and head were done I could see some proportions problems were cropping up so I downloaded and created an image plane of Leonardo's Vitruvian Man to get my proportions straightened out. They were already for the most part correct but I tweaked them out and embarked on the legs. I've never gotten that far. The feet are an adventure. I played around a bit with Maya Simple Skin shader and some two point lighting. I'm not totally happy with the head...I've done better. The ears serve their purpose for now but I think I'm going to have to cut them out and start over. They emerge from a 9 edge hole...lots of wrestling with my edge loops there.

The more I studied the figure the more I came to the conclusion that the areas that satisfied me the most were the areas that were topologized properly according to the established aesthetics of subdivision polygonal modeling. The most dissatisfying area was the torso which required having the edge loops follow the lines of the muscles of the groin and the shape of the ribcage. For those of you new to the concepts of subD modeling it's like a game; you must have all 4 sided polygons...no triangles and no polygons with more than 4 sides, no nGons as they say. Poles are important too apparently, though there's some quarrel over this. I'll give you the best website I've found that discusses this and also provides the three tricks to create flowing edge loops following the desired lines of your model without creating nGons.

http://maxrovat.sns.hu/subdiv/subdivmodeling.htm

That episode put a lot of confidence in me; next I'll rework the shoulders and triceps and biceps and forearm muscles on similar principles.

[joojaa]

I must say that while thers definite attempt to avoid box modelling syndrome. Its definitely part of the problem. So yes you have edge loops but not around the loops you should have them, it affects your model all over.

[james-thompson--2]

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

OK, so I toiled all day trying to create edge loops following the line of the muscles and bones and got this, finally, without any nGons or triangle polys....but it ain't elegant, that's for sure. Any examples of edge looping on the body like this I could follow, Joojaa?

There's a lot to chew on here;

http://www.subdivisionmodeling.com/forums/...hread.php?t=907

Oh and Joojaa (or anyone else who knows) is there any way to "spin quads" in Maya? I know you can do it in Lightwave and Modo. It'd be great if you could do it in Maya too.

[joojaa]

QUOTE(Cadmium77 @ 01/01/09, 11:37 PM) [snapback]297985[/snapback]
without any nGons or triangle polys....but it ain't elegant, that's for sure.

Your hung up on this all quad thing. Your problem is taht you should stop thinking all quads. You shoudl start thinking no poles. After all a trangle and a 5 sided face can always be split up to all quads and maya can automatically do that for you. This is not the problem, the problem is that cheese shapes create a pole and poles create the problem.

SO whoever said no n-gons was simplifying the problem a bit. So it doesn't help if you have all quads but lots of poles. The rpoblem is that you WILL end up having some poles but right now your doing a lot fo poles everywhere.

Biggest problem si that you cant easily resplit the model you have so you ended up with even worse problem than you tarted with. This is a symptom of your box modeling need to start the model with your main loops in mind then let the secondary points naturally flow with these loops. So this is what you do, you make your model live and build a new polygon model with create polygon tool on TOP of what you have. Its more efficient way to get out of the pickle. Otherwise you end up with a rubics cube where you keep pushing teh problem about.

QUOTE
Any examples of edge looping on the body like this I could follow, Joojaa?

well ill have to search right now im a bit busy but i think i remember a thread that demonstrates the effect well.. damn the pictures have been taken down so its not much use for you

QUOTE
is there any way to "spin quads" in Maya?

go to the downloads section and serach.

[james-thompson--2]

QUOTE(Joojaa @ 01/02/09, 02:44 AM) [snapback]298013[/snapback]
Your hung up on this all quad thing. Your problem is taht you should stop thinking all quads. You shoudl start thinking no poles. After all a trangle and a 5 sided face can always be split up to all quads and maya can automatically do that for you. This is not the problem, the problem is that cheese shapes create a pole and poles create the problem.

SO whoever said no n-gons was simplifying the problem a bit. So it doesn't help if you have all quads but lots of poles. The rpoblem is that you WILL end up having some poles but right now your doing a lot fo poles everywhere.

Biggest problem si that you cant easily resplit the model you have so you ended up with even worse problem than you tarted with. This is a symptom of your box modeling need to start the model with your main loops in mind then let the secondary points naturally flow with these loops. So this is what you do, you make your model live and build a new polygon model with create polygon tool on TOP of what you have. Its more efficient way to get out of the pickle. Otherwise you end up with a rubics cube where you keep pushing teh problem about.

That sounds great.

Damn I wish there was a really good tutorial out there on subD modelling for humans and animal forms. There's some great stuff on cars but nothing on organic forms where edge looping on sectors of the body is so important to the outcome.

Anybody got any other links to resources on sub D modeling other than
http://www.subdivisionmodeling.com/forums/
??

[joojaa]

QUOTE(Cadmium77 @ 01/02/09, 05:08 PM) [snapback]298024[/snapback]
Damn I wish there was a really good tutorial out there on subD modelling for humans and animal forms.

Thing is tutorials will not teach you to do the work, if i show you how to do something. and you repeat than you will find out that. Remeber one thing tough POLYGON modeling is exactly same thing as subdiv modeling so you can expand the search

sometimes that's not the ideal way

You what know about what happens when you dont follow theese steps

you wouldnt have the experience of how to plan it and this is all that counts without this skill you are not a modeler or anything, no it does not come out of good tutorials it just shows some persons workflow for one task. You need to master any scenario.

But yes theres a few good video tutorials from gnomon on this. Thing is making a full human body glitch free is something that sounds so much like work that its not usually something you do for free. Anyway the photorealistic human modelling video is good. But i dont think you will learn to make good humans by watching it. But by doing the msitakes he did before he came there.

Anyway theres not one way of doing it theres just guidelines and no tutorial can teach you all the why's and why not's. I mean tutorials are NOT primary learning tools. They are primary tools for checking whether you understood the theory or not. And this si NOT the same thing. So if you lean everything form tutorials you learned 1/2 of what you should have learned. So a tutorial can show making something simpler than a human to show off the point. Eventually you must know how to extrapolate ideas into reality. Since nobodys going to have the tutorial you need when on the job. If they did then they would buy the model form the tutorial maker.

heres one that shows the basic idea:

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/tutorials/mo...torial-303.html

The loop is first rest comes later. tough to be honest he neglects back of the head a bit but thst ok its nonfunctional area. So yes its half ugly but decent, dont worry about teh exttra 4sided faces they can allways be subdivided away as long as you dont dwell on them.

If you want to look on the discussion of loop modelling look for spiraloid in google.

http://maxrovat.sns.hu/subdiv/

Anyway you can not just decide to do box models than loop up in later stage you need to get the loops flowing very eraly to get the rest flowing along them

[james-thompson--2]

QUOTE(Joojaa @ 01/02/09, 09:52 AM) [snapback]298031[/snapback]
Thing is tutorials will not teach you to do the work, if i show you how to do something. and you repeat than you will find out that. Remeber one thing tough POLYGON modeling is exactly same thing as subdiv modeling so you can expand the search

sometimes that's not the ideal way

You what know about what happens when you dont follow theese steps

you wouldnt have the experience of how to plan it and this is all that counts without this skill you are not a modeler or anything, no it does not come out of good tutorials it just shows some persons workflow for one task. You need to master any scenario.

But yes theres a few good video tutorials from gnomon on this. Thing is making a full human body glitch free is something that sounds so much like work that its not usually something you do for free. Anyway the photorealistic human modelling video is good. But i dont think you will learn to make good humans by watching it. But by doing the msitakes he did before he came there.

Anyway theres not one way of doing it theres just guidelines and no tutorial can teach you all the why's and why not's. I mean tutorials are NOT primary learning tools. They are primary tools for checking whether you understood the theory or not. And this si NOT the same thing. So if you lean everything form tutorials you learned 1/2 of what you should have learned. So a tutorial can show making something simpler than a human to show off the point. Eventually you must know how to extrapolate ideas into reality. Since nobodys going to have the tutorial you need when on the job. If they did then they would buy the model form the tutorial maker.

heres one that shows the basic idea:

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/tutorials/mo...torial-303.html

The loop is first rest comes later. tough to be honest he neglects back of the head a bit but thst ok its nonfunctional area. So yes its half ugly but decent, dont worry about teh exttra 4sided faces they can allways be subdivided away as long as you dont dwell on them.

If you want to look on the discussion of loop modelling look for spiraloid in google.

http://maxrovat.sns.hu/subdiv/

Anyway you can not just decide to do box models than loop up in later stage you need to get the loops flowing very eraly to get the rest flowing along them

OK, good criticism.

But I've taken your previous advice and undertaken another retopologizing attempt.

Learn something new every day. Retopologizing with Create Polygon Tool. Let's see how this works out.

[joojaa]

i found a good image showing the concept in works.

http://maxrovat.sns.hu/subdiv/edge\_loop.jpg

Anyway its not uncommon for me to build the model out of slightly shaped ovels just to combine them so i can build the topo on that. Or box medel than retopo on that.

[joojaa]

Oh and you could be bolder in your general shape let the shapes cross about themselves creating loops that go tough loops naturally so while you curve up let one edge go from somewhere else trough that loop perpendiculart.

So split out from the armpit and let it loop somewhere. like neck back etc. Dont make the base mesh too dense start of very coarse you can allways add more later.

TIP: think of the upper back muscles nd biceps plus shoulders like a poncho thats wrapped over he upper body. And follow its edges and flow oit radially on them.

[james-thompson--2]

Thanks a lot Joojaa. You've always been a huge font good advice. You never fail.

I'd already found this one;

I knew I'd have to think tactically in approaching this problem but I didn't know what the tactics could possibly be until I dived in there and started struggling with it.

So those are pretty much the only two pictures on the internet of an edge looped subd polygon model of a human body.

I suppose this exonerates me of my manifest ignorance of how to proceed?

All the more reason to document what I'm doing; maybe others going through the learning process will be able to derive some profit from it.

Yippie! I iz edge looping.

I'd be lying if I told you this was easy. You think you're doing well then suddenly you discover that you're frigging in the rigging. I just want to tweak it and tweak it and tweak it and tweak it...

[james-thompson--2]

This is pretty good;

http://www.vimeo.com/2158706

http://www.vimeo.com/2650080

I wasn't even looking for it and it just popped up.

[joojaa]

Well ok its a bit better. But you make a loop and then ou still follow the flont facing grid the purpose of the main loops is to force the otherpieces to actually cross eachother at a perpendicular angle forcing the second level curves to form that shape. Heres how i would do it differently.

On the back side let the back muccles actually loop down form the shoulder to form a v shape thet meets at the upper back.

The loops example you have is OKish its not perfect but no structure ever si or you wouldn't do it. You could also goo those circles in man but actually they are in real humans by tension half circles that hang from the shoulder and collarbone region So tht what i would put the loop like. Get a anatomy book and compare.

The idea is that those loops form a topography map of the model thet lets you easily spot where the shapes flow form for you to easier fix them. If you continiously force one set of crossing lines to have a specific form your making yourself blind for the main lines. Humans can easily filter out lines thet cross perpendicular but not ones that cross in a 30 degree angle. Or workse where the line stop and forks.

You will get better you make a lot of mistakes now. But when you do thsi for the 3rd time you do lot less then 6th you do less then at 10th you get your own good workflow. Etc.

[james-thompson--2]

That's a pretty cool critique. I particularly like the changes in the shoulder/pectoral muscle areal. It removes a lot of the complexity in the mesh.

I was thinking exatly the same as you on the matter of repeating my work. After I finish this retopology I can see taking this level and basing another reworking of the mesh on it again, in an attempt to develop my knowledge of anatomy and somehow bring it to terms with the SubD edge looping system.

Already with this version of retopology I can feel that the flow lines are better than the box modeled version and it's much easier to add details of inner structures with a much lower level of polygons in ZBrush as an OBJ. file.

[james-thompson--2]

When I was retopologizing the hand, I thought it would be cool to emulate a lot of other subD modelers and do an extrusion on all the knuckle joints to make a rise for the wrinkles there. Looked pretty good in Maya but when transferred into ZBrush it created some unpleasant artifacting at the corners of the extrusions that only got worse when I applied smoothing, like they were getting pinched.

The five edged poles at the wrist aren't faring much better either. Nasty little pin points sticking up ruining the otherwise untroubled mesh.

The knuckle extrusion artifacts will be easy to get rid of. I don't quite know what to do with the wrist ones though. Those poles are sort of required there right now. I can't see how to get rid of them as I reduce the number of edges leading back to the forearm at those poles.

Not too much of a problem to fix but it just goes to show that making a cool looking subD mesh doesn't always translate well into Zbrush.

[joojaa]

QUOTE(Cadmium77 @ 01/06/09, 02:35 PM) [snapback]298248[/snapback]
]
Not too much of a problem to fix but it just goes to show that making a cool looking subD mesh doesn't always translate well into Zbrush.

Data on transition between systems allways ends up having some problems

[joojaa]

QUOTE(Cadmium77 @ 01/06/09, 02:35 PM) [snapback]298248[/snapback]
]
Not too much of a problem to fix but it just goes to show that making a cool looking subD mesh doesn't always translate well into Zbrush.

Data on transition between systems allways ends up having some problems

[j008]

You may want to check out this training dvd if u dont already know about it

http://www.freedomofteach.com/products/dvd...d\_human\_anatomy

its not on subds but polygonal modeling but he converts it to subd at the end
I used it to model the silver surfer model i made although i did not follow all the tutorial
i should have lol. It covers all the major muscle groups
and shows how to us scripts to spin faces for a more organic look.

[james-thompson--2]

That's awesome Noname1. Thanks. Please post a pic of your Silver Surfer with its wireframe...