Modeling Character- Cosmo Girl

Cosmo Girl

The hardest thing to remember is that there is no instant awesome button

In this tutorial I will show you all how to model a character, and help explain some of the basic principles and ideas behind it. The character below is who we will be creating, i have choosen her for several reasons, that will become aparent as we go along, and also because she had rotations already drawn for her. I would also like to thank Dmirty's permission to model and use his art in my tutorials, if you would like to view more of his work keep in mind he may not be a pg13 artist, but he is still a wonderful artist.

http://dmitrys.deviantart.com/

Rotations from finished product

Now the first thing we will need is the rotations of the character, a 3 quarter view doesn't hurt either. In the work force you may never know what you will be asked to model, so today lets try to make this cartoony space girl, with her extra curvey purportions. Now if you look closely some of the edges and features dont match up in certain views, so we need to fix them so that they do, I highly recomend photoshop for this. Your also looking for a large canvas size, for greater detail, I used 12X5in for her, and they were pixelated.




We can see i've activated the ruler and created lines to make sure the features match, and yes i am working on the tutorial as i am making a documentary of it. Since the arm is not drawn attached to the shoulder, i made a black dot to show were i expect the arm to be, in most cases when your given a rotation your not given the arm as well, only a whole were the arm is expected to be. The reason, lets face it, were expected to know what am arm looks like, and be able to model it from one view. The next thing were going to want to is create a new picture big enough to view one of the rotations. We'll drag the rotations into the new picture, centre her and create a guide line beneath her feet, abover her head, or were ever you prefer. Duplicate the layer and centre on the next rotation. We'll save each of the rotations as a seperate file, as in "cosmo_front" and "cosmo_prof". Remember we want to keep the file names specific, as well in the proper file herirachy so they dont become lost or mistaken for something else.


Now that we have our reference material made we can open XSI and begin modeling, but first we'll need to set up the rotations for the different view ports. Yes you can use rotoscope, but if you make the mistake of zooming in and out you will need to reset the view. I prefer the grids because you can zoom in and out, as well as hide it if you dont. There are 2 basic set ups for the guides, as you can see below, one were they interesect and one were they are seperate fom one another, each has advantages and disadvantages. The one directly below, you can view the models from all sides, and know were exactly to make the points along the edge for when you duplicate it later. The one farther below, you have a better idea of what the model looks like, but you'll have trouble viewing it from the back as well as one of the sides. I prefer the one farther below, but you can use whatever you like.

Now that we have our grids set up, we can give them the texture of the rotations we made earlier. For your best result, you'll want to make the grids the same dimensions as the canvas size we saved the rotations on. So first we'll change the view type found in the top right of each view port, we'll change them to texture decals. texture decals mean the the textures will always show up, and they will not be influenced by any light source. We'll give each grid a seperate constant material, and give them a texture. We'll put the rotation into the proper grid, and change the texture projection, to planar XZ, if that doesn't work, try the other texture projections until you find one that works.

If you have no idea what i just said, select an object give it a material, then press 7 to bring up the render tree. Click nodes, go up to texture and click that. Attach the texture to the ambient, difuse and specular of the object, or just colour if you made a constant. double click the image box on the render tree, under the Image selections, hit new and select the proper view for that gird, under the Texture projection, click new and select the planar XZ, or whatever one that works best.

Now we'll make them both a group, a group is a useful tool, as well as everything else in XSI. Well make the grids so they neither render, or you can select them. If you need to select them after they are made into the group, you can in your Scene Explorer ( press 8 ). You'll see why we did this in a moment.


Now were going to optimize the view ports and how we can use them to model something. Ordinarly when the view type is Texture decal, we cant see the reference were making the model from. So in each view were going to change how we see the selected object, since we can no longer select the rotations, they'll be fine. In the front and right view select the view type, scroll down to the near bottom and select Display Options. In the Display Options box, click on the header, select Display Mode. Now in we change the first box on the top left of each group to wireframe. Now the selected object will appear as a wire frame, while everything else will appear as texture decal, a useful feature for looking through something.



Now, this movie is pretty important, take a moment to watch it, its ok, i'll wait for you. It shows us how to model a head, the run time is 8 minutes, while in fact the actual process could have taken anywere from 30 minutes to a few hours. This is how i leanred how to model, you have a simple grid, and you continuesly duplicate it and sub-divide it until it looks like what you want.

How i learned to model, sit down watch this video and start making a head, you have 1 week before it is due. We were never told were the movie came from, or who made it, just to save ourselves a copy and start.

Now i'll take a moment to explain edge loops and proper polygone construction. Firstly each polygone should have 4 points to it, we like squares. Secondly, around any type of hole, ie. an eye or mouth, you want edge loops. Meaning that the lines around the hole make a loop, rather then the regular checker board pattern we see. You also want to make these edge loops around limp or anything comming off the body.


While you were busy watching the movie, i made a face from a grid, i've followed the reference as closely as possible, and her is what i have. Now sometimes we'll be given references without enough detail, so its up to use to model it based off what we know from human form. This may or may not be a good thing, based off your art director, if you dont have one, then your teacher. They may love the idea that you've made the model design better then what they had originaly made, or they may just hate you for going away from the model idea. In my experions, its best to let someone else find this out, and learn from there mistakes.




Sometimes its better to make a bad face, and just start over. You'll learn what you were doing wrong and how you can correct it. Its a good thing as long as the practice face doesn't take more then, ooh lets say 20 minutes.



Now you'll see one of the first advantages in choosing this model, she has no ears, only bumps were ears should be. Depending on how you make them and your level of skill, you may want to avoid them all together, but you should always try to make soemthing first, before you sneak out of doing it. You'll see i've made her cheecks a little too pronounced, she looks a bit old for my tastes, and because shes supposed to be a sex symbol, that wont do. So we'll smoeth some of the polygones out. Click Defrom and select Smooth. Smooth brings poly's closer together, it also makes a cluster around them, if you delete the cluster the poly's jump back to were they were, if you freeze it, you cant undo it. Ahh yes freezeing a model, one of the downfalls of the early artist. Everytime you move an object, a point, a line, a polygone, meaning everytime you do everything the models saves what you did in the Polygon mesh of the object. If you dont freeze these alterations of the mesh the scene will balloon in size, making a simple 800kb scene into a 4mb scene, causing lag and trouble opening and saving.



Now we can finish off the head, i've extended the lines along the sides of the face backward to make the skull, and neck. We can do several different things for the extra little bits of her face. But as you can see we have a complete face now, i duplicated symmitry and merged the 2 different mesh's together. For her micro phone i selected a few poly's of too one side of her face and used Ctrl+Shift+D, which means duplicate and extrude. I can deteremine how far the ploy's go out, if it grows or srinks, rotates, how many subdivisions, alot of nice things to make our lives easier. Its nice to model non-isometric sometimes, it makes the character more interesting and a bit more difficult.


Hair
We can make a single grid for her hair, or a hair simulation. I've chossen to use a a grid, because she is a low poly character. The next big thing is how are we going to make her hair look like hair, we can use the grid and try to model them to match her hair, or we can paint a texture on her hair so only the hair shows up, i've chossen the later of these.


Teeth
There are 2 things we can do for the teeth, well three if you want to be dificult. We can model each individual tooth in her mouth, thats a bad idea, and since i dont plan for alot of close ups on her mouth, we'll foget about it. The second we can use a grid for her front teeth and again paint a texture, and model the back teeth. This is a nice low poly choice, but i like really low poly, so im just going to use a grid and paint that.


Eyes
So theres only 2 choices for eyes, dont be disapointed theres problems with both. We can make the eyes a part of the mesh, wich i did, or we can create Spheres and do our best to place them in the eye socket and mold them to fit and rotate seemlessly. So thats hard, and more often then not doesn't work. Now one is easier to rig, and the other is easier to fit into the skull, you'll have to make the choice and learn from your mistakes.



Now that the head is made we can continue along the neck and make the body, or make the helmet, i've decided to make the helmet. Another point in chooinsg this model, she features both organic and inorganic modeling. We can start the helmet off with a sphere, cut it in half and rough out the shape with a lattice. Learn lattices now, there useful to help us rough out the shape of an object. After i've made the outter glass, i'll duplicate it, srink it and invert the poly's. For the mechanical part around the neck, i've started off with a cylander and subdivided and extruded the edges until i have the shape. For te valve in the fron, i've used another smaller cylander and merged the two objects together. Now im not going to show you every little step i take, i know you have imagintation, and you can use them, also when your merging objects make sure tey both have poly's with blue lines ( incomplete surface ), as that will make them single obects with simliar points, rather then a single object not connected through any poly's.





The body is up next, And agian we have several different choices on how to make them, they range from straight forward and simple, cheating, poinltessly complex, and intracet. Depending again on were you work, your skill and how you like to work, there are different choices for you. The first we take a simple Cube and rough out the shape, very rough, very quick but it gives you a very quick idea of what the object will look like. This is my second favourite form of modeling, weather it is organic or inorganic. The second method is somewhat lazy and backwards, were we import several different objects to give us a rough idea of what it will look like. The hard thing about this is that we will need to delete part of each object and merge then together, after all that we'll need to start cleaning up the lines. The third choice is that we import a pre-existing model and alter that so it looks like the new idea. There are pros and cons to this, we need a pre existing model that looks like what we want, we have to remove the deatails and deform the model for it to fit out rotations, sometimes this is harder then making it from the base up. The biggest advantage, is that it saves alot of time, which when you have a deadline in a day or two it comes in handy. Finaly we have my all time favourite way of modeling, from a grid. Some people like to use simple objects and mold them in to look like what they want, much like someone sculpts with marble. I prefer the opposite, building out and up, like a scuplter with clay, and clay scuplters most often make the best modeliers.

Basic Cube


Several Objects


Pre-existing model

From a grid

Now we'll start modeling the body, you can pick any pioint which youd like to start from, for this model i'ce choosen her stomach, relitively flat and smooth compared to the mountains of the north, and the vally's in the south. We'll start with a simple gird, subdivide it a few times for shape, duplicate an edge and move that edge to another side of the mesh. Much like a cube, we'll subdivide the lines between those edges and pull them out, making a more of a U shape rather then a line. Beleive it or not i've just explained my method of modeling in those few lines. We just repeat those steps until, well unitl the models done.

Were comming along nicely, dont worry about any edges you might have with light poly's on one side, and dark on the other, they usual disapear when you duplicat the symmetry and merge them together. If they dont dissapear when you've dont that, then you have defently dont something wrong. Here i built up the side of the model, including over were the arm is supposed to be, but i'll subdivide and extude the poly's along were the arm is supposed to be to create my edge loops for the arm. now the reason there 2 pictures here is to show if your going along the right track. The top is the regualr view, the second view is +ed. It shows if your going along the right path with your model idea, sure it makes the poly's nice and smooth and shiny but they also increase the triangles of the object. One +, double the triangles, two + quadrople the triangles. So it makes it nice, we cat really use it for much, other then to show us if were doing a good job or not. You shouldn't have a problem telling the two apart.

Completed the arm loops, and now i have a choice for the boobs. I know i want them to have a little jiggle, little bounce, little bit of fun. So i can continue with the checker board pattern wich will give me a decent result, or i'll make the edge loops for the boobs as well, which will be better results wise. Since i already have a mesh made, i need to clean it, and make the edge loops, but remember its always a good idea to have the loops pr-made, rather then try and correct then poly construction later.

Thats the basic idea of the body. Yes i know im starting to write less, and show less pictures, but you just have to remember its the same basic idea over and over again. If you haven't cought on to that by not, i want you to delete your scene and start modeling this character or another , from scratch. If you want to find a job TRUST ME, you'll need the practice and understanding of the building blocks, or all the other kids in the sand box are going to make fun of the baby, thats you. I mean i will say i tried to help you, show you the error of your ways, but it was no use. That reminds me, always ask everyone who you think may even have the slightest idea of whats going on for help, because your all in this together.

The leg, same idea as the body, take a few edges, duplicate them, move them to the goal of the shape. Sub-divide it a few times for shape, and then repeat the steps until you have a whole leg. Go in, start subdividing it more, adding it more details and shape. After that we need to create some edge loops for the knee, it may not fit the needs for the edge loops that i explained earlier, but we will still need them for when the model is rigged, the knee will deform correctly when we bend it.

The arm, same idea as the leg, the problem is with the hand. If you have never built a hand or have never tried to build one, do that before you listen to me and start to cheat. The hand is one of the most complex things on every model that you will have to create. Mostly you'll want to create them as a seperate object and merge them with the arm, or you can be lazy like i am, and import another model and use that hand.

I skipped a step in here, after i duplicated the body, i created edge loops for the neck, and merged the body and head together.

Now that we have that we have the body created we can duplicate symmetry and merge the 2 together. Now that we have both seperate shapes, we can start adding some of the unique features on either side of the model. For instant, her breathing tube on the right kidney arena. While it is true that we can Crtl+Shift+D to create the tube, or we can use a cylender and a line to make one, lets do that.

We take a cylander, and a curve, select the surface of the part of the cylander we want to duplicat and select Extrude along curve in the Modify Create tool bar. Dont be alarmed if the end result is the exact opposite of what you expected, you just need to adjust the scroll bars on the menu it creates.

Here you can see we modeled the braces of our cosmo girls outfit. I could have modeled them as part of the original body mesh, but i choose to make a seperate object to avoid having to alter the poly structure. It may not have fit perfectly, so i used the bolean difference, deleting the area of the straps were it touched suit, and then cleaned the lines.

Same idea for the backpack, well start with a simple object, and duplicate the surfaces and alter the lines and points until we find what were looking for. As one of my friends pointed out, soemtimes it doesn't matter if it looks like the rotation, sometimes it only matters that it looks cool. I've alos taken the libraty of connecting her hoose to the bottom cylander, and merging the 2 into one object.

Now we just unhide the helmet and make a few changes, so it does not collide with the body. Poly collision will cause problems with textures. At the this point i would create a UV map for it, with a hi rez software. since i dont have a Zbrush or Mudbox on the computer i cannot do that for you. If i had it, i would save it for the next tutorial. Below is another example of this work, with a UV map on it, as you can see we each had the same reference matterail, and we had fairly different ideas of what it should look like.

UV mapping, and model done by ~butt-sahib911 Also found on DA
http://butt-sahib911.deviantart.com/art/CosmoGirl-Modelling-Exercise-76217768

So there is the first of the character modeling, next we will texture her, followed by rigging, lighting, and animating. Hope you enjoy them, as always if you have any questions or comments or would like to suggest future subjects for tutorials feel free to email me at nik.chauvin@gmail.com

This tutorial was made using XSI6.5 http://www.softimage.com/

Photoshop CS3 http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/index.html

For an XSI community please visit http://www.xsibase.com/

For more information about Zbrush http://www.pixologic.com/home.php

For more informtation on Mud box http://www.mudbox3d.com/

If you would like to leanr more about UV mapping http://www.free3dtutorials.com/index.php?id=329

If you would like to view some of mu work on DA http://drakodafrightnin.deviantart.com/

For a good time http://cryrid.com/art/