I'm James Taylor, welcome to my Maya 2016 female body modeling tutorial. I'll start
with my image planes already in place, and I'll create a cylinder for the torso. And
this will have 14 subdivisions on the axis, and 4 for the height. I'll rotate it
ever so slightly, just to center that main centerline. I'll adjust it quickly to
match my reference. Then I create a cylinder for the arm, and this one is going to
have six for both the subdivisions on the axis and height. I'll create
the leg last, and this one has eight subdivisions on the axis and six for the
height. I position and scale all of these to generally match my reference
and then I'm going to go into vertex mode on my torso, and I start working with entire
rows of verts. I match them up to my reference, and I am only able
to get so close here, we're not going to be able to get it perfect, so we're not trying
to get a perfect match. We don't want to add any more subdivisions yet. So my
rows will sit on the clavicles, on the rib cage, on the waist, on the hips, and then the
bottom of the pelvis. Then I switch over to my side view, and adjust entire rows
again this time. I'm also rotating them slightly, and this will match the
curvature of the spine just a little bit better. Then I'm gonna create the neck by
selecting the faces at the top of the body and extruding them out once. I
pull that up and shrink it a little bit. This will be the base of the neck, and
then I extrude one more time to create the neck itself. I spend a little bit of
time adjusting the verts in this region, just create a little bit better anatomy,
and then I'll repeat this same process on my arms. I start on the arm in the
front view. I use edge rings, I select entire rows of edges and
reposition them in the front view to match my reference. You'll see I capture
some of the shape of the hand, and then at the top of the arm, where the shoulder
goes, you'll see that I leave it with a gap in there. That's because I
will extrude the shoulder out from the torso. In the side view, I rotate the arm
to match my image reference here, and then I'll use my scale tool to
fill those rows out, to add
a little bit more volume. And because I've rotated the object, and I'm using local
transforms, that'll make the scaling process easier. When I'm done I'll just
move it back and scale back into its original position, and then I'll grab the
verts on the forearm, I move the pivot point by holding D, and then I'll just rotate it to
give it a little bit of a natural curve. The last thing I do before moving on
to the legs is just deleting those top cap faces. Then I'll do the same basic
process with the legs: so I'm working on entire rows of either verts or edges
going to position them in the front view first because my front view is my
dominant reference. And I match my shapes up as best as I can.
At the bottom of the leg, I match that to the top of the ankle and then I'll grab those
faces and extrude them down to create the rest of the ankle and the base of
the foot. Then it's just a matter of matching up the rest of leg. With the
top part of the leg, you'll see that I end the leg a little bit above the base of
the torso. I will connect those later. Now I'll tackle leg in the side view.
with the leg, we want to remember that it is not a straight line: the lower legs sits
significantly behind the upper leg. If we don't get this right our character will look
perpetually off balance. For the knee, I angle it just a little bit downwards and
then the top row I'll scale outwards to match the extent of the butt, and then
like the arm, I delete that top cap. Now I do want to work symmetrically, so I select
the arm and the leg and move the pivot point to the center of the body and then I'll
use Duplicate Special, and I want to go into the options here. In the options I will
make sure that Instance is checked, and the X scale is set a negative one and then
when I duplicate that, I get a mirror image versions. Now with the arm I will have to
rotate them into place to make it look perfectly symmetrical. I now have
versions of arm and a leg and I can make changes to one that will reflect on
the opposite half
Now I'm gonna work on connecting the arm of the body via the shoulder. So I turn
on my Insert Edge Loop tool and I'm going to add an edge ring right into the
middle of the upper torso. I'll expand that ring out in both the front and the
side views. And, while I'm inserting edges, I add one more edge ring into the abdomen to create
just a little bit more shape there. I tweak the edges in the abdomen and hip
area just to match my reference photo a little bit more closely.
In the shoulder region, I'll adjust these two edges, just pull them out so that they fit the
arm a little bit better. But I see I'm not working symmetrically here. So I
could try and turn on my symmetry tools, but the easiest way to handle this is
to just go to face mode, select half of the torso and delete it, and then in object
mode I just use my Duplicate Special trick again. Now because we rotated the torso in the
beginning, we need to use Modify > Freeze Transformations before we do the
Duplicate Special. Once we do that, it will work right. Now I can go back to
adjusting those edges to create the correct volume at the top of the torso. I make a
few more anatomy tweaks, and then I'm ready to start connecting thing. So if we
look at the topology in the shoulder area, we see that we have these two
parallel rows of faces that go over the top, and then we have another ring of
faces that encircles the shoulder, and also connects to the row that
underlines the breast. This will give us good deformation in the region. I'll select
these two faces to start with, and extrude them straight out over the arm.
Then I'll grab the faces underneath the extrusion and just delete them. This
is going to be a cap for the shoulder
And I'll grab these verts and snap those to the top row of the arm.
Vertex snap: just hold down the V key. I make a few tweaks in the region
based on my reference, I'll round out the shoulders a little
bit, and then I wanna go to object mode and select both the arm and the body
and will use my Mesh > Combine to make them a single mesh. Once they are combined I can
Duplicate Special again, then Merge those verts in the shoulder region.
Now I have to worry about the connection under the arm. I start by pulling this vert
down just to make a little bit of room, and make it easier for me to work with it
I select these two edges between the body and the arm, use my Bridge tool.
I want to set the divisions of the Bridge to zero, and then I'll do the same thing on the
back edges of the arm. So I've connected
under the arm, and now I'm left with his triangular-shaped hole. That triangle can
be resolved quickly by just grabbing these edges that go up and around the
top of the shoulder, and using Connect Components. That'll leave me with open verts on
those triangles, that I can then just Merge together with the verts on the arm in
that same area
I'll make a few tweaks to the resulting shape in my front and side views
And then I want to switch to Smooth Proxy Mode. So I just hit 3 on my keyboard. I'll
delete the cap faces at the bottom of the torso and at
the top of the neck. And we'll see that once I smooth my mesh, it's going to
change the volume of the character very significantly. So I have to go through
and readjust my mesh to match my reference again. And since we're working
smoothed from now on, we don't really care what it's going to look like in unsmoothed
mode. So don't worry about that! I want to remember to make the same changes
in the side view. We need double check all of our reference to make sure that
we haven't lost volume in key areas. While I'm doing this I use this as a
chance to fix some of the anatomy and other areas on the character. So I've
narrowed the clavicles, and I'm gonna add another set of subdivisions right in the
middle of the neck, using my Insert Edge Loop tool, just so I can create
more of an elegant curve to the neck. And with the neck we must remember that is
lower in the front than it is on the back. I'll pull those clavicles up against
that lower neck, to create that natural clavicle shape. And then I can
move on to connecting the leg and the body. With the butt on the back we
see that it's mostly a grid of faces. But there's also this row that curves up and
around. And if we look on the front, we've got this diagonal structure in the pelvis.
Both of these are important for getting proper defamation. I'll start off
by grabbing these two edges on the bottom of the torso,
and Bridging them together. Then I select the two edges on that resulting
bridge and connect them to create an extra subdivision. I'll do that a
couple more times, and then move these new edges down and around to create kind of a
ring at the bottom of the body. With those new edges, I also grabbed the verts
and adjust them based on my reference. On the front of the body, this ring is going
to be much wider to create the shape of the pelvis there. In the back it's going
to be much narrower, this is going to be the start of the shape of the butt. Now
we're at the point where I want to Combine the leg to the rest of the body
So I select them both and do a Mesh > Combine, then adjust my pivot point to center it, and I Duplicate
Special again. Then I pull that top row on the leg down a little bit to make
a little bit of space, and we should see some topology agreement between the body and the
leg here. I want to position my verts to make sure that I get that straight line
match, then I can adjust some of the points on the back of the torso to
create a little bit of roundness looking at it from above, to help define the
shape of the butt. I select the top two back-most edges on the leg, and I'll pull them down
that's going to create the space that we need to fit the butt into. On the front
of the pelvis, I grab this edge ring and then connect above that to add another rows
right about it I had a little bit around this in this area and then I'll make a
few more tweaks mostly from the side you can open up this whole region so
creating moralist circular opening around this time in the torso and now
I'm sad to start connecting like a body by selecting these two edges and
bringing them together and then I'll grab these two friends here and I'll
merge them to center just the verse in this area to go smooth things out and
look under the body and these two variants and merge those together as
well now that area is well defined with quads
so I can start to fill in the rest of the connections and I'll grab these two
edges in bridge and then the next to set of edges and bridge those as well and
then i cant weekend Adam in this area but I run into an issue that i'm gonna
need to use my crease tool to fix so the crease to I can select hurts or edges
and then middle mouse tracked crease those and then what that does is it
makes those areas hold their shape better when we have the smooth proxy
turned on here I'm using it to create more of a corner between the legs and
pelvis get more a sharp transition their heels a little bit more natural a spin
around to the back here and I'll grab these two set of edges to on the top and
the two on the bottom of the butt in bridge those together and then added
division to that either via the bridge door using Kinect components or
something like that and now I can pull that set of edges out a little bit more
the curvature of the but in that area I'll start closing up the whole on the
inside of the butt by grabbing these two very tier and just collapsing those
murdering those votes to the center that will leave me with a triangle on the
inside when I'll do it so grab these three edges and use Kinect components to
add another set of subdivisions there and then I can relate these two edges
and bridge across and fill up that area with a quiet and we're all set for this
outside a whole I'm just like that bottom edge and use extruded had just
pulled out a little bit can emerge these bottom two firsts together and then I'll
grab these two very emerged those together creating that kind of right
angle corner that we need to create the proper topology but
what we're left with is a simple quiet that we can just see their fill hole or
bridged thanks
and now at apology on the boat is good and we can focus on anatomy so many
switch over to the neck now and we can see that these faces on the shoulder go
straight up and over but then we get these diagonal rows in the chest area
and restructure this so that I get rid of those diagnosed and I have straighter
topology so I just the anatomy very slightly and then I'll select this ring
of faces that goes around the neck is basically the transition between the
neck and body once those are deleted
I'm gonna go to edge mode and I'm gonna delete some of the edges on the neck
because I don't need all those rose controlled delete is that shortcut that
we want to use here and basically all remove every other edge row so cutting
the number of faces in the neck by half now all pull the clavicle and the body
down and flatten it out a little bit and then I'll start bridging by grabbing
these two edges on the front of the neck and then the next to a line and then
I'll just go around and I'll see that I get nice quiet is pretty much everywhere
except for that triangle on the back there
fortunately getting rid of that is going to be pretty easy I just select these
two edges on the back and collapse them together and so will lose a little bit
of geometric detail in that region
fortunately that part of the body doesn't require it so at this point I'm
going to add the breast and the breast will be a poly sphere fair rotates the
cap is facing us a place it just generally in the location and I'm going
to reduce the number of subdivisions to try and match the topology in the body
pretty generally in that region so it should be pretty low res rotated out
slightly and then I wanna reshape it so I grabbed the edge at the top and not
pull it up and it's best to do this since moved my thoughts to lead the back
half because we're not gonna need it in that top rope will come all the way up
to the clavicle and then you'll see that I just the verdicts on the bottom of the
breast I want it had a sense of weight here
and that's really important to capturing a natural shape once I'm happy with the
shape overall I want to turn on my multi cut tool and use it to cut a
corresponding whole body so I just cut around on the torso generally matching
the shape of the press as it sits on the chest to lead the faces on the interior
that perimeter then I just cut out I had a couple more points on the outside
edges here and then I can worry about connecting the breast and body together
so I grabbed the torso and rest and I'll combine those two objects together and
then I want to start emerging vertices and I would emerge from the torso to the
breast I don't want to move the shape of the breast a whole lot because I want to
keep that natural smooth shape that we've created in some cases I will need
to change the shape of the breast to match the body a little bit better what
I do in this case is a cut in New edges using my multi cutter my insert tool so
that those new edges on the body and then I'll match the body to those new
point but I'm not going to move the shape of the breast if I can help
once things are merged together and smooth we can evaluate the shape and
will see that we get this weird shadow up right near the arms we need to adjust
apology here we use my multi cut cut another row under the breast starting at
the army area cannot delete the existing edge from under the breasts then I just
got around that helps smooth some of that area and then I can take these new
variants and just spread them out a little bit and that will smooth some of
that regional get rid of some of the shadow to address the shadow up near the
shoulder I'm gonna grab they said Shearer and use my flips in edge tool
and just flip it so that it changes directions until the same thing on that
edge there and how we're getting a more natural transition feels like the
pectoralis in their tying into the shoulder and now the breast ties into
the chest a lot better since it's hard to get at the underarm area to make some
fixes and then grabbed my arm and just rotated out slightly so that I have
better access under the arm and now I want to I just the anatomy in this
entire region so we'll see I spend my camera around a lot I'm looking at the
breast from every angle to make sure that the shape is correct and making
changes once I'm done
move the arm back into the arms down position for the next step so I'm gonna
happen hands and feet and I've been ported existing hands and feet his
seeming and impede I created for the bodybuilder model and a making edits to
them so that they better get my character so just in the voluminous
feeding it to the reference so when we're building our characters or
generally not starting over every time we make a new character we want to reuse
assets whenever we can get away with it because the topology is very similar
between these two models they blend together nicely and without apology is
done and I can start to worry about it
in this case I'm comparing the model that we just completed the gray one with
the finished tweaked an enemy polished version which is in pain we can see that
there are differences they have a day overall impact on our viewers so for
example the neck and clavicle region are a lot more defined the breast and the
deltoids have a much more natural shape the back in the butt are shaped a little
bit more correctly we have much sharper definition to it hip and help this
region and this is the level of policy that we expect to see on a professional
level so my extended cut tutorial goes a lot more in depth into creating these
data meet weeks three times as long as this one I also spent a lot more time
elaborating on creating proper topology for the model similarly can go to my
site to download the actual model or the image plane references I used and that's
it for the body next to be the head modeling deal