Super Frustrating Messed-up Topology: Naked Cat
polycounter lvl 7
Hey Polycount, it's been a while since I've posted anything. Back in like first year of college I started this cat model I never finished, and I decided to revisit it and finish it, but in the process of trying to get the right shapes and forms, I completely fucked up my topology beyond belief.
My problems are twofold:
-The model has a lot of smooth curves and rounded shapes, and to get those I had to add a lot of edges to the body, but I have no where to send those edges, most of them turn into tris welded to some other edge loop and it just all around looks pretty bad, and will make animating it later a pain.
-The topology in all the joint areas (shoulders/blades, hips, armpits, knees etc) is all fucked, and I'm completely sure how to fix it for animation.
I've never really completed a decent proper character model from scratch before with 'proper' animation edge loops so I have no idea where to lay them, and I can't find any models or tutorials online that really give me a good idea of how it should be laid out, besides THIS but my problem here is that I am a very hands-on person and have a lot of trouble trying to follow edge flow without the physical model here open in front of me in max, which as far as I looked was not provided anywhere.
I've reached the point where I've been staring at this model forever now, and I've gone completely blank in terms what to do and how to fix it. Without further ado:
And honestly I'm still not super satisfied with the general anatomy of the cat either. It sorta feels like from the midsection up and midsection down are two completely different models that are unrelated to one-another. The hands will become paws later, but besides that it just doesn't match.
For retrospect, the original blockout I made too many years ago now:
My problems are twofold:
-The model has a lot of smooth curves and rounded shapes, and to get those I had to add a lot of edges to the body, but I have no where to send those edges, most of them turn into tris welded to some other edge loop and it just all around looks pretty bad, and will make animating it later a pain.
-The topology in all the joint areas (shoulders/blades, hips, armpits, knees etc) is all fucked, and I'm completely sure how to fix it for animation.
I've never really completed a decent proper character model from scratch before with 'proper' animation edge loops so I have no idea where to lay them, and I can't find any models or tutorials online that really give me a good idea of how it should be laid out, besides THIS but my problem here is that I am a very hands-on person and have a lot of trouble trying to follow edge flow without the physical model here open in front of me in max, which as far as I looked was not provided anywhere.
I've reached the point where I've been staring at this model forever now, and I've gone completely blank in terms what to do and how to fix it. Without further ado:
And honestly I'm still not super satisfied with the general anatomy of the cat either. It sorta feels like from the midsection up and midsection down are two completely different models that are unrelated to one-another. The hands will become paws later, but besides that it just doesn't match.
For retrospect, the original blockout I made too many years ago now:
Replies
I guess the cat's... got my tongue
*puts on sunglasses*
(shameless friend bump)
I cant comment too much on the topology, but i like the shapes and think this looks pretty successfully cute. Anatomy is all around solid and charming. I think you abstracted the collarbone area way too much, though. It;s an important structure in the human body and i think it needs some love. I'm not saying to cut in crazy sharp collarbones, but think a bit more about how the neck and shpoulders connect to the body
As for your concerns about the figure -> The waist on a female is situated a little bit above the navel. Above that, it subtly tapers inwards until it meets the waist. Your figure is, for the most part, lacking a waist.
http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/63078/63078,1246353206,2/stock-photo-slim-woman-body-32893786.jpg
this doesnt mean you ahve to go crazy hourglass, it can be very subtle, but that's the only thing i can see which would make you say the lower and upper body look disconnected.
Google yourself up a copty of Andrew loomis' Figure Drawing For All Its Worth. Head and hands gets posted around here a lot, but it has some excellent and confidence-building anatomy tips that will help you troubleshoot things like this.
Topology examples:
http://www.pig-brain.com/tut02/tut02_01.htm
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryTopology
Once you undertsand why these works, go back to your model and fix the joints, and the good news is you don't need to rig the model to see how they deform.
Make sure you have selected the rotate gizmo, change your reference coordinate system to screen and on the right of the rollout change to "use transform coordinate center".
When you move around the viewport, your gizmo should follow the mouse position, now you can select a limb and position your mouse where the bone's pivot point should be. Rotate and see how well it deforms.
You are right SupRore there is little to no waist right now, her torso sorta continues straight into the leg area. My problem is trying to ballance the cat to human characteristics, like I don't want her to be like Bayonetta 12 heads tall, but neither should it look like this:
I'll try and find that book/figure drawing thing though and check it out. For now I focused mainly on the upper body area today and cleaned up most of the horror-terror topogeo. There are still afew tris and edgeloops I am not satisfied with but it's a lot better then it was before.
Its midnight now but tomorrow I'm going to round the legs/hips area out a bit and make most of those nasty tri poles at the hip area run around the torso rather then converge at one point.
Still tweaking away. I'm starting to wish I have have sculpted it instead, but oh well. I'm still having a very difficult time with the hips/waist/legs/etc area, I can't get it to look natural rather then legs were just welded on haphazardly.
LOL.
Think ya might be acting too hard on yourself mate! Lookin' fine to me! (However, I'm no character artist
You're also right about the legs, I've had other people tell me they are too meaty right now as well, I'm just having trouble slimming her like you said, as it causes her legs start to look even more misplaced, but I'm working on it.
Something more like this should work, yes?
New arms and paw-like hands. Next step is going to retopo the legs and do final tweaks on the basic body shape until I am satisfied.
New legs now. I think I liked it more when it was sharper then the smooth shape it is now, the back bit needs a little work.
Ended up using a variation of 1 and 3. I think the mesh is pretty much done enough now, will move onto texturing and testing out rigs.
http://www.hippydrome.com/Sketches.html
I´d push the arms a bit closer to the torso, should make it look more natural.
Current topology. I was using that website extensively before now, especially in the shoulder area. Still some tri-ing areas in places that I haven't/don't know what to do with.
From straight on in the front do you still think I should bring the shoulders in more Slaught? By like that one edgeloop maybe?
I reduced the shoulders by one edgeloop, do you think it looks better now?
I'm starting to look at it and feel like its too soft or smooth or whatever you want to call it now, like not a toned as I want.
I think I am satisfied with her modeling now. Added muscle and rib definition to the front.
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But yeah clothes are in the pipeline. Current order of things is:
1. Model
2. Rig
3. Fix topology so rig works
4. UV
5. Texture
6. ???
7. PROFIT!!!
All of which will probably have to wait post-dominance war.
An opinion: get rid of some of alll that leg geo
She is adorable
Do you mean something like this? Also you are right the legs are like twice the poly of the rest of the body, something I meant to get rid of before now but just slipped my mind I suppose.
I forgot to draw it but by thicken the feet do you mean like taller toes?