Hand Topology HELP

8bitboy

Hi, I am eagerly in need of help with my hand topology. I've been redoing these hands for the past 2 months because of bad support for deformations, especially the thumb. This problem is persistent among my rigs, I've been trying to focus on anatomy, but I can't sufficiently blend the thumb with the bottom base of the hand. So, I am trying to model the hand in a relaxed pose. I am scared that the result of this will be worse. Thanks for any pointers and input in advance. I always do highly appreciate it. 

oglu

the pink one is looking good...

skankerzero

I always model my hands in a relaxed pose. The theory is that you should model all joints at 50 percent from either extent. This of course is not a practice used on all joints, but it certainly helps deformation. Putting your hands in a relaxed pose by default also helps avoid the 'mocap hands' look. That's when you have flat hands in the rig but the animators don't have time to animate them. The result is hand paddles that waggle about during animations.

Right off the bat though, your anatomy is off (4 fingers aside).
Specifically look at the webbing between the fingers. I don't know the context of this model so maybe this is the ideal anatomy, but when compared to human anatomy, it's off.



You can see how the end of the 'webbing' (blue line) goes out to about halfway of the first finger bone. Observe this on your own hand. Notice how the webbing starts at the bottom of your fingers and slops up to the knuckle. The example you posted above is missing this. 
This is a huge detail that keep your fingers looking natural and not like sausages attached to your hand.

As far as the topology goes, you have way more than enough geometry there to bend the thumb properly. At this point I would say the issue is with your weighting.
As I don't have context as to what target you're shooting for with this model, I can't really give feedback on the joint topology.

8bitboy

Thanks for the helpful feed back Shankerzero, my hands are being used for a FPS rig(4 fingers  intended). I will look into weighting, though I manually have to weight the vertexes in Max. So that might be the problem. The main issue I am having I assume is the thumbs bone placement. I want it to be positioned in a way where it won't clip into the remaining hand. 

skankerzero

**moved to appropriate forum**