Frank, The Torso

With the character sheets more or less complete I took on the responsibility of modeling the character in Maya. I knew that with time running out we needed to take steps to completing the model ready for the rigging process that would enable us to animate the model. It was very important that we construct the character model quickly as I also realised that the animation and rendering processes would themselves take long periods of time to get right.

I first set up the scene by importing the front and side images of the character sheet that will allow me to construct the rough shape of the character. The images are a rough guideline which should help me rough out the proportions correctly. I started out by modeling the torso of the character based on the image planes. To keep the model simple and more malleable at this verts stage I tried to create the model using as few polygons as possible but would still have enough definition to produce a somewhat realistic character.

I tried to adhere to the advice that Clym mentioned before, particularly in the shoulder region. By adding five sided stars this would allow the character to move efficiently when animated. I started the construction of the torso region by creating a cube which I then manipulated by moving individual verts to create the pectoral muscles and the abdomen. I used the edge loop to to increase the sub divisions necessary for good edge flow. I continuously checked the models edge flow by adding a smooth node which would allow me to preview what the object would look like when it was smoothed. By doing this I could easily spot problem areas in the topology and address them accordingly by moving the necessary verts to produce a better image. It should be noted that when I started building the framework for the character I concentrated my efforts on creating only one side of the body. I did this to purely save time as I could mirror the existing object to create a symmetrical mesh. This not only saved huge amounts of time, but would also allow a rigging artist to easily separate the necessary areas ready for the skinning process.