Character Modelling questions? Help needed, [Pics]

Sandti

Hello! Okay, so I'm very new to character modelling. I am in the second year at uni doing games art and I need some help with my character.

Basically I have a number of questions that I need to ask as I don't really know where to go from here.
1. First, I don't know how to join the hand to the arm because there are so many more edges. I don't know whethere I should remake the hand as an extension of the arm or somehow join the hand to the arm stump.

2. Secondly I am going to exporting this into mudbox to work on, shall I attach the hair to the head to sculpt it as well as the plate across the front.

3. Thirdly how can I make the flowy bangs at the front hair?

Thank you for your time, I hope you can help me, anything you can tell me to help me would be great. Thank you !!

ArchieVision

Well, I am no expert at character modeling. But from what I have seen from modeling characters. the hand is usually extruded from the arm and is not a separate piece. This is done for skinning and animation, if I remember correctly.

I will let one of the Pro's here give you more pointers and a better answer that I ever could.

WickedProject

What kinda of tools are you working with? software?

Sandti

3ds Max and Mudbox

Fuse

I think if you are just starting out, I'd avoid stylized and exaggerated characters. I would also avoid using mudbox and zbrush until you get a good grasp of polygon distribution and flow.

Biting off a bit more than you can chew too early can make it pretty difficult.

Visioneer

I would honestly suggest that you sculpt your character in Mudbox (or ZBrush, which I prefer) first, then retopologize it in 3DS Max (fairly simple process, but can be a bit time consuming for a first timer). Also, to do the flowing bangs, there are a couple ways you can do it.

1.) Create a plane, apply a twist modifier to it, convert it to an editable poly, attach it to the hair, and weld the vertices together.

2.) Create a patch grid, modify the vertices to match the hairflow, attach, and weld verticies together.

Both those two methods require the use of a double-sided texture. There are several other ways to complete this task, but those are the first two that popped into my head.

To connect the hands to the forearms will require you to create some clever cuts, the use of tris, and pulling multiple points into one, or making a quad into a tri. Also, watch the direction of your invisible edges (if you switch to edge editing mode, you can turn your invisible edges to better match the "muscular and anatomical flow")

If you have any further questions, or need a screenshare session, send me a PM. Good luck!

Ace-Angel

I don't recommend that. He needs to study the basic topology of models through box/plane modeling first before tackling any real sculpting.

Yes, it is easier to sculpt and retopo, but if you lack the understand of how things loop where and how they flow to one area to the next, or where to put up poles, then the result will be sub-par at best.