Character Modeling

This section explores how to apply the A:M modeling tools for making characters that not only look good, but also that animate well. It is easy enough to make a good-looking model, but care must be given to the layout of the splines if you want a model to deform well during animation.

We begin by looking at how density affects deformation and cover techniques for creating optimal joint density. We talk about the layout of splines and how they can affect your ability to animate, discussing techniques for splining to achieve muscle tone and other character features. This knowledge is then applied toward the creation of a character.

All the project files referenced throughout this chapter can be found in the class folder on the network. Copy each project into your porfolio in the AM_ch5 folder.

By the time you finish, you will have a character designed and modeled for your final game, an understanding of some common pitfalls of character modeling, and some solutions to help you overcome them.

Activity for your porfolio (when finished with this exercise, save it into your porfolio in the AM_ch5 folder*):

Few things have as direct ail impact on the animate able properties of a model than the density of its splines. This is most evident in a character's joints.

As an example, open the Spline_Density_01 project from the network. This project has two models and two actions that could be a character's knee or arm; one is too dense, and one is of a lower, more manageable, density. The control points in both models were auto assigned and CP weights calculated. Looking at the action for each model (see Figures 5.1 through 5.4) the bunching and overlapping in the denser model is evident. Bone and constraint techniques can be used to fix these problems, but the best solution is to avoid the issue in the first place.

There are times-fine details, muscle tone, and other nuances-when heavy spline counts are needed (see Figure 5.5). This trade-off must be made very carefully. Open the Spline_Density_02 project in A:M and look at the "Legs to Compare" model. When building in density, it is important to use as few cross sections or rings as possible, especially at the joints of the character. Adding even one more spline ring at the knee joint can make animating the mesh problematic. Whenever possible, the bias of control points should be adjusted to avoid the addition of splines. Knowing this, you can build any style of character from the most cartoony to one bulging with r;ealism, and you can do it with the appropriate level of density.

FIGURE 5.3 The bunching and overlapping mesh is a direct result of the modeling.

Before you get into modeling is a good time to introduce the concept of the Morgue. In traditional animation studios, the Morgue is a flat file storage of reference material, either photos or drawings, from projects that are long-completed or preliminary exercises. The concept is that if anything can be of even a little bit of use later on, then it should be saved and reused if possible. With 3D, this concept can save a lot of time and effort. If you model a hand at some point, and you are happy with the spline layout and the basic animatability of the hand, then you should be able to use that hand over and over again. The most effective way of doing this is to set up a library specifically for the task.

Open the Library panel and from the pull-down select My Library. This will force A:M to place your Morgue in your personal library, keeping its data separate from the data from the A:M data files. Create a new folder on the Model tab and name it Morgue. Inside this folder you can break down your model parts however you like. For example, you can break them down by the type of part-a folder for character parts, a folder for machine parts, a folder for set pieces, a folder for props, and so on(see Figure 5.6). After you add files to this Morgue, you will find that A:M has created a file called My Library.lbr in the Libraries folder (in the same directory as A:M itself). If you rename this file Morgue.lbr, you will find that it is now listed in the pull-down list as Morgue. This will allow you to isolate just the files for the Morgue (and frees up My Library for the creation of a new library, perhaps for a project). As you progress through the tutorials in this chapter, you are instructed to put parts into your Morgue; and later when you build a character, we will look at how a fully stocked Morgue can really speed the process of creating new models. This mentality of reusability is at the core of A:M.

FIGURE 5.6 Organize your Morgue as you see fit.
As an example, you might choose to organize by part.

Like most limbs, legs are simple tubes. They can be shaped and tweaked to create any desired shape. The most basic example of a leg remains a tube (see Figure 5.7). Most of the time, this is fine for cartoon characters and even for pants on more detailed characters. Making this leg is as simple as lathing.

First, draw a seven-point spline with the Add tool. This will be the basis for the lathe. Place two of the points at the top of the spline, three in the middle, and two at the bottom (see Figure 5.8). Since this leg will remain a basic tube, you can reduce the lathe settings to produce a lower resolution.

Open the Options panel by selecting Options from the Tools menu. Click the Modeling tab and note the lathe cross sections option in the Modeling mode group (see Figure 5.9). This number sets the density of splines that the Lathe tool will produce. In most cases, a setting of 8 is fine, but for your simple leg, it could be more density than you need. Change the setting to 4, and click OK.

Back in the model window, select any point along the spline and click the Lathe button (or use the L keyboard shmtcut). The resulting tube makes a fine leg. Note the extra density at each end and the knee.

The splines at the knee will ensure that the leg maintains its volume when animated, while the extra splines at the top and bottom prepare the splines to be stitched into a hip or ankle respectively. Go ahead and save this model to your network folder (start a directory for your library of models not associated with any given project) and then add it to your Morgue.

FIGURE 5.9 The cross sections option controls the density of the Lathe tool.

Most humanoid legs begin from this point. Legs that are more detailed are merely a further step along this process.

A slightly more complex leg might indicate the thigh and calf muscles and have some variation at the knees to indicate the location and direction of that joint. For this variation, your starting point is the same. A simple seven-point spline, but a more detailed lathe setting of 6 will give you the splines needed to shape the leg. Open the Options panel from the menu or use the shortcut (Cmd+P on the Mac; Ctrl+P on a PC). The Modeling tab should still be forward. If it isn't, click it to bring it forward. Change the lathe settings to 6 and click OK. Back in the Modeling window, click any control point and lathe the spline (see Figure 5.lD).

Start by selecting the spline ring that defines the wide part of the thigh muscles. This ring will define the muscle masses on either side of the thigh, which are offset at an angle higher on the outside of the leg than on the inside. Bring up the rotate manipulator (R) and hold down the 2 on the keyboard while rotating the selection around the z-axis. This will skew the ring into position, while keeping the shape consistent in the y-axis. The same can be done to the top ring of splines. Pull out the CPs on the side of the thigh until you have a shape similar to Figure 5.11

The same technique can be applied to the calf splines. Skew them the same direction as the thigh. If they are too close to the ankle, they may also need to be translated up and scaled a bit (Figure 5.12).

Now, it's just a matter of tweaking the shape of the knee splines. From the front view, this is a presentable leg, but from the side view (see Figure 5.13) there is still a lot of work to be done. The majority of it is just pulling and pushing CPs until the shapes look right (see Figure 5.14). There are no hard and fast rules for what works and what doesn't at this stage; your own skill and aesthetic taste must guide you. When you are satisfied with the overall shape and proportions of the leg save it out and into your Morgue.

The legs you have looked at so far are simple, lack a lot of definition, and require little or no tweaking of CP bias to make them work. The last leg that you work on has more defined muscles (see Figure 5.15) and will need bias adjustments to form the muscles without resorting to excessive splinage.

Start with a l0-point spline roughly shaped like a leg (see Figure 5.16), and lathe it with a setting of 6. This will provide most of the density that you will need and allows you to decide where you need to stitch in more. It is almost always better to start out with less density and work your way into the details of a model. Like the previous leg, start by shaping the front view to define the muscle tone. It may help to hide the splines on the back of the leg while doing this, or to work in Shaded mode.

Once the rough shape is there, it is time to think about where to add density to bring out the details. Focus on the front of the leg, and see how the main thigh masses will need additional splines if you are to pull them out from the leg.

Rotate the leg to a position where you can see what is going on. For each spline ring, stitch in a CP, starting at the top of the leg and working your way down. Do this for each side of the knee (see Figure 5.17). These two splines add enough den. sity on the front of the legs, but the sides and the back will also need attention if they are to hold up. One additional spline down the leg in the left view will help flatten the front-to-back transition (see Figure 5.18). Again, rotate the view so you can clearly see where you are working, and stitch in the new spline.

Looking at the back view of the leg, you will need additional splines to assist with shaping the calf muscles. One additional spline down the middle of the leg should do the job. Add in the spline and do the needed shaping of the mesh (see Figure 5.19).

With this spline, your leg's density is in good shape. With the density in place, you start the process of sculpting the shapes. In this way, the A:M modeling tools are very appealing to the artistic mindset. Creating a surface is a matter of just grabbing a point and moving it until the shape is correct. There is certainly no rush if you are after quality, but speed comes with time. The best advice this book or anyone can offer you as you learn the tools is to take your time with them. The focus for the shaping portion is to get the splines to flow as close as you can to the actual muscles that you are trying to emulate. The flow of the splines is very im. portant. Look at Figure 5.20, and see how the splines have been adjusted.

In some cases, this might be enough, but take it one step further and develop the muscle masses using bias. Almost every muscle on this leg could use some form of bias adjustment to make the muscle tone stand out. It would be very dry and not to the point to list each point and indicate exact bias values to duplicate the results of the example. Instead, we look at one muscle mass and explain the process.

Hide the back of the leg. You will be working with the muscle mass above the knee. Starting with the two CPs directly above the knee (see Figure 5.21), look at the magnitude.

This area needs to be more flat than not, which means that the magnitude values need to be relatively tame. If the magnitudes are much over 150, lower them. In order to pull the shape of the muscles off the surface of the rest of the leg, the gamma needs to be adjusted to lift the splines (or push them down as the case may be). Again, because this is a relatively flat area, a gamma of 40 or 50 degrees will probably do the job. Hold down the Shift key and adjust the bias until you are happy with the shape of the muscle mass (see Figure 5.22).

Move up to the next CPs along these splines (see Figure 5.23). This is one of the more prominent muscles on the thigh, so it will need to be pulled up from the thigh a good deal.

FIGURE 5.21 Start your
adjustments at these two points.

FIGURE 5.22 After adjusting
the magnitude and gamma of the
points the muscle has started to
come up off the knee.

FIGURE 5.23 These points are
next to be adjusted

Start with the gamma this time. Adjust the gamma on each side of the muscle and pay attention to the way the splines move. Change views to bird's-eye and watch the direction the gamma adjusts the flow of the spline. Be sure that itcomes up out of the leg rather than pushing it back into it. Depending on your mesh, a gamma value of 60 or 70 degrees might do the job (see Figure 5.24).

The extra density you added earlier to the leg will keep these adjustments from wreaking havoc with the sides of the leg. You could (and indeed might want to, at some point on the leg) peak the points you are working with and adjust the bias in and out of the point individually to create the best curve on both sides of the CP.

The muscle has likely not pulled far enough from the thigh with only the use of gamma, so your next step is to increase the magnitude. The muscle should be larger in the center of the leg than it is on the inside of it, so keep that in mind and give the CP toward the inside of the leg a higher magnitude. On the example leg, a magnitude of 250 on the inside and 130 on the outside works out well.

This process continues up the leg to the next set of control points, but on a lesser scale as the muscle should be flattening out to tie into the hips here. Remember, the hips will likely need to be animated later, so to avoid problems only adjust the magnitude on the next couple of rings. Your leg might now resemble Figure 5.25.

FIGURE 5.24 After adjusting the gamma
on the second set of points,
the muscle is pulled up off the leg.

FIGURE 5.25 The thigh has more
definition to it after careful bias adjustment.

This is simply repeated for each muscle grouping on the leg. As you work, you will likely have to adjust the bias for the muscles you have already worked on to make the model work as a whole. Since space here is limited and you still need to cover many more techniques, it is left to you as an exercise to finish this leg. If you need help, examine the muscled leg model on the network. This leg is still quite dense and will require some tricks to make it animate smoothly, but using bias instead of adding splines reduces the amount of work that it will take. Once you have finished the leg, save it into your Morgue and move on to other body parts.

These same techniques work for all appendages. The detail needed dictates the density of the splines, but in any event, the density should be kept as low as possible.

*(Save your work in your AM_ch5 folder)

SPLINE LAYOUT

The shape of the model, in part, dictates the layout of splines across its surface. There is a wide range of spline solutions that will achieve the same basic surface. Some spline solutions will create better results than others, but there are very few rules as to what makes one layout better than another. Nevertheless, there are a number of successful layouts that solve particular problems elegantly.

Faces can be quite a challenge to model accurately, while remaining easy to animate. Yet, this is usually one of the first things the beginning user of A:M attempts to model. While there are as many methods for modeling the face and head as there are A:M users, a common solution that works well is the concentric mask paradigm.

The concentric mask paradigm is based on the layout of the features of the face and how they need to be animated, a consideration that is part of what makes it such a popular solution. Look at Figure 5.26. This simplified illustration of a face has a series of rings laid over it: one starts from the mouth, one from the eye, and one encompasses the whole face. This is the basic idea behind the concentric mask paradigm. The holes in the face mesh are the basis for the layout of the splines. This arrangement also makes sense when you examine the layout of the muscles in the face (see Figure 5.27).

FIGURE 5.26 Concentric rings mimic the
muscles in the face and aid in animation..

FIGURE 5.27 When building models,
referring to real anatomy can be a big help.

MODELING THE FACE

Before attempting to model a photorealistic version of your neighbor, it is a good idea to start on something simple. Figure 5.28 shows the model that you should end up with at the end of this tutorial. As you can see, it is very simple (little more than a mask), but it shows all the techniques that are used in modeling faces.
Open a new model and get started. Where you begin the model is a matter of preference, but with the concentric mask paradigm, it makes sense to start from either the mouth or the eyes and work outward.
The mouth can quickly be started with the Lathe tool. Draw a six-point spline in the front view as in Figure 5.29. This shape will be lathed to form the mouth and part of the face. Set the lathe cross sections to 8 (shift-click the Lathe button to access the lathe settings), select any point on the spline, and lathe it.

FIGURE 5.28 You will be building this simple face.

FIGURE 5.29 Lathing this spline forms all
the geometry needed for the mouth.

Select the entire shape and bring up the Rotate Manipulator (shortcut key R). Rotate the shape 90 degrees in the x-axis (it may be easiest to do this by typing directly into the Manipulator Properties box or the Properties panel). Turn on the Mirror Mode toggle and pull the corners of one side of the shape out. Be careful that you select only one-half of the model when in mirrored mode, as it can give unexpected results otherwise. As you manipulate the points in the model. you should see the points on the opposite side follow. This is because the surface was created with the Lathe tool on the default axis, which places the points symmetrically. Switch to a side view and pull the same corner back in the z-axis. It should already look a lot like a mouth (see Figure 5.30).
Now it is a simple matter of pushing the lips into shape (see Figure 5.31). Once you have the lips in good shape, turn the Mirror mode tool off.

It is important to always turn off Mirror mode when you are finished working with it because it can cause trouble when selecting areas that span both halves of the model.

The eye begins the same way as the mouth. Draw a four-point spline (see Figure 5.32) and lathe it with eight cross sections. Rotate this 90 degrees in the x-axis, and move it into position on one side of the face. In the same way that the mouth was shaped, merely tweak the rings until they resemble an eye socket (see Figure 5.33).

Move the eye into a position relative to the mouth and roll up your sleeves for a real challenge. Switch to a side view and start by drawing the profile of the nose (see Figure 5.34). Switch to the front view and make sure that the spline you drew is at zero in the x-axis.

Select the entire spline for the nose and extrude it. This will, by default put the extrusion -10 pixels in the y-axis. Move the new group up (using Shift+(1) will move the selection 10 pixels up on the screen) and to the left to start building the nose mesh. Now extrude it a second time. This time the extrusion should automatically be placed to the left the same distance and direction you manually placed the first (see Figure 5.35).

Shape these three splines to look roughly like the bridge and tip of a nose. There are no formulas to follow and no shortcuts to take at this step. Once you have a decent shape, it is time to start working on the nostril (see Figure 5.36).

The nostril is simply a hole that goes up into the nose. Our mesh at this point is solid, and any further extrusions would also be solid. The most elegant solution for making a hole is to create a loop similar to a cursive "In in which all the points run along the same spline. How this spline gets plotted into the nose is very important. First clear out some of the splines under the nose to make connections easier and clearer. Imagine this as the nose on your face. Trace a line down the bridge of your nose, across the tip, and down to your nostril. When you reach the nostril, trace the outside edge of the nostril: first going down toward the mouth, out to the side of the nose, then back around and across the bottom of the nose to the opposite nostril, where the same path back up the bridge of the nose is mirrored. Now look at our spline nose again. Figure 5.37 shows this path traced onto the nose you are modeling. Notice the traced line crosses over itself and describes a loop around the nostril. Arrows have been drawn in to indicate the flow of the spline.

With the plan for your spline in place, you still need to decide how to implement it. Right now, the spline from the bridge of the nose runs down and toward the mouth. You want it to curve back in. In order to do this, break the spline across that patch (see Figure 5.38).

FIGURE 5.38 Start by breaking the spline
you need to loop around the nostril.

This sets you up to stitch in the nostril loop. Activate the Add tool and continue the spline from the bridge of the nose by clicking the end point of that spline. Now stitch the loop in place using Figure 5.39 as a guide.

Now you have a loop but you also have some splines that run across and close off parts of the nostril. Simply break those splines to make the inside of the loop a hole in the surface (see Figure 5.40). This hole can later be extruded back into the head.

Now tie the nostril into the splines that continue down the center of the nose. When you are finished you will have something similar to Figure 5.41. Notice that you have a hole here, due to the fact that you have two areas where separate concentric rings will meet. The bottom spline will be a concentric ring around the mouth. When two concentric rings meet, there will be an area that can only be closed by a five-point patch. This is true of almost every joint on a character's body and certainly in several places on the face. Go ahead and close the five-point areas now with the Five-Point Patch tool (see Figure 5.42).

The nostrils form fleshy wings on the sides of the nose. The most elegant way to create these are with concentric loops emanating from the nostril that encompasses both halves of the nose (even though you are modeling just one-half of the nose, you need to consider the spline continuity across the entire surface). Stitch in a new spline and shape it to form the wings, as in Figure 5.43.

To finish the nose, simply select the points that make up the nostril and extrude them. While it is still selected, nudge the extrusion back and inside the head. When you are satisfied with the shape of the nose, it is time to tie all the various parts of the mask together. If it is not already, position and scale the nose so that it fits in place with the mouth and eye you modeled earlier. Start by stitching together any obvious connections (see Figure 5.44).

How you proceed is a matter of preference. You may prefer to lay down the spline ring that will encompass the entire face and work the other parts out to meet it, or you might prefer to flesh out the connections and build out until you can connect the outer ring. Both are valid methods. For this example, proceed with the former. Draw a spline around the entire face area starting and stopping on the centerline (see Figure 5.45).

Now stitch the obvious spline connections from the existing face out to this spline (see Figure 5.46). At this point you should have a fairly clear idea of what areas in the mask area will need more splines in order to model the surfaces of the face. The cheek will need an additional spline or two, and you need to build some rings down from the nose under the mouth (these will help you animate later). The brow line will also need a couple of splines to give it definition. At this point, however, the process is one of adding a spline and sculpting the shapes of the face.

Use the spline layout in Figure 5.47 as a guide, and Figure 5.48 as a reference to the shapes you are trying to build.

FIGURE 5.47 Use this as a guide for stitching in the necessary splines for your face.

From here, a simple copy/flip/attach will give you the finished mask. Start by selecting and deleting the half of the mouth that is not part of the finished half of the mask. Be careful not to delete the center spline. This will leave behind splines that join the top lip and the bottom lip. Go through each spline and break that stray connection. The result should look like Figure 5.49.

Now center and align the middle spline of the face on the 0 point of the x-axis. Click any part of the spline at the top of the face and press the, (comma) key to select that spline. Notice that the selection is just the top half. The portion of the centerline from the bottom lip down is not selected because that is not a connected spline. Without deselecting anything, hold down the Shift key and click anywhere along the lower half of the center spline. Note that the bounding box should expand to include the point you clicked nearest, as the Shift key has added to your selection. Now press the, (comma) key again and notice that the selection automatically adds the remainder of the spline. Bring up the Scale Manipulator with the S keyboard shortcut (or click the Scale Mode button). If the Manipulator Properties Widget is not showing, toggle it on. Directly in the Manipulator Properties Widget set the x pivot to 0, then scale the selection down to o in the xaxis. This will place the selected spline exactly on the axis. Without deselecting anything, press the / (backslash) key. This will select the entire connected set of splines (in your case the entire model). With this selection made, simply bring up the contextual menu for the group (right-click or control-click inside the bounding box for the selection) and choose Copy/Flip/Attach from the menu. The result should be a full mask, as in Figure 5.50.

If your first attempt doesn't look like the example, don't panic. Modeling faces takes time and patience. If you stick with it and practice your splining, you will get the hang of it in no time at all. Once you have a face that you like, save it and add it to your Morgue.*

Faces lead to heads, heads lead to bodies, and bodies lead to frustration when you are trying to figure out how to model shoulders that will animate.

There are two basic approaches to shoulders: bring the arm rings into the shoulders, and take the chest splines out onto the arms.

Let's look at both and how they are modeled, as well as the pros and cons of each.

The ring into torso shoulder (see Figure 5.51) is primarily used on clothing and very simple characters where muscle tone is not needed. The major benefit to this method of building shoulders is the ease of creating it. The T-tube you built in Chapter 2 has all the basic techniques that are used to build this shoulder. Rigging and animating this style of shoulder is also a relatively simple affair.

However, the lack of detail and the way the mesh runs makes this shoulder unsuitable for musculature. If your character design requires accurate anatomy or super heroic proportions, a more complex shoulder might be needed.

For the arm, draw a four-point spline horizontally on one side of the y-axis and lathe a horizontal tube (see Figure 5.52). Remember to adjust your pivot. If you want to add thickness to this model, do it here before you lathe the tube.

The neck and abdomen are also simple lathe shapes. You could lathe them as a unit, but the amount of work that will be done to them makes it easier to lathe them separately now and stitch them together later (see figure 5.53).

Much like the two tubes covered in Chapter 2, the most straightforward connections are made first. The top three splines on the arm tie easily to the neck, and the bottom three tie to the abdomen (see Figure 5.54).

The centerline between the neck and abdomen pieces can be attached. With the center point of the arm easily connecting to the centerline, leave two fivepoint holes in the torso (see Figure 5.55).

FIGURE 5.55 Connecting the neck and abdomen
sections leaves five-point holes.

FIGURE 5.56 The additional density will head
off many problems when animating.

From this point, it is simply a matter of shaping the mesh to your needs. It could be shaped to be used as a short-sleeved shirt, or with a little bias tweaking, it could make a fairly simple torso. Either way, use the same procedures you used on the face mask and the flour sack to copy/flip/attach your half to make a whole torso. When you are pleased with its shape and layout, save it into your Morgue. It might even be a good idea to develop the shapes a bit and make two variations for your Morgue.

The muscle into arm shoulder is more complicated to model but more accurate (see Figure 5.57). The benefit of this layout is the detail that it gives to a character and the accurate muscle tone that it affords.

The downside of more complex spline layouts is the difficulty in modeling. In order to get the same amount of ease in animation and setup, much more care must be given to the layout of the splines.

At its most basic level, the muscle into arm layout is the same as the ring layout already discussed (see Figure 5.58). But here the rings run with the underlying muscle structure rather than parallel to one another.

The basic starting point for this shoulder is the same as before: three lathed tubes. The arm and neck tubes are the same as before, but for the abdomen, all that is needed is a single ring. So, lathe a two-point spline for the abdomen and delete the top ring. You should now have a starting point similar to the previous example (see Figure 5.59).

Rather than simply make the obvious connections and proceed to shape the mesh as you did before, some consideration needs to be given to routing the splines to achieve muscle tone and maintain animateablilty. The splines need to flow from the deltoid into the pectoral muscle, with enough detail to cut the pectoral out of the shape of the torso.

At the same time, the splines need to retain their flexibility. If you are not careful, this can lead to some heavy splinage.

Let's approach it one connection at a time. The middle of the arm top and bottom can connect straight to the neck and abdomen rings. You can also connect the centerline points, front and back, from the abdomen to the neck. This gives you a wire cage in which to work (see Figure 5.60).

While you work on the front, hide the back half of the model. You need at least two splines to build the definition of the pectoral muscles, and those splines need to run into the deltoid muscle. Select and extrude the two points on the arm tube center and down that are not connected. This makes a ribbon of splines out from the arm that we can shape into the pectorals. Add two points to the spline on the centerline, and connect the pectoral ribbon to them. You should now have something like Figure 5.6l.

Before moving on, take time to sculpt what you have into a more finished shape. This may require that you pull the center spline on the front of the arm shape down, easing its transition into the pectoral. This move, unfortunately, also flattens the shape of the arm and makes the shoulder joint questionable for animation (see Figure 5.62).

To counter this, the last unattached spline on the arm tube needs to be pulled forward and down. This spline would otherwise have connected to the neck, but that would disturb the muscles, so continue it to the centerline instead. After another round of shaping, you will have something similar to Figure 5.63.

While this is better, it lacks definition in the neck area. The pectoral is also a little flat. These symptoms tell you that the model needs more definition. Dragging that definition all the way into the arm can make other problems when modeling the elbows and hands. So, look to hooks to add definition without continuing the density. The spline on the side of the neck can continue down the torso and hook into the ring that forms the top of the deltoid. This may cause issues when animating but can be fixed with a minimal amount of effort, so the trade-off works. A third spline to define the front of the pectoral muscle would be easy enough to stitch into the mesh. You can hook this new spline into the deltoid with no worry about animation problems. You may as well connect the remaining pectoral spline up into the neck and down to the abdomen to fill out the torso. After a little more tweaking, you should have something similar to Figure 5.64.

You have two five-point areas left on the front of the mesh that you could close up, but before you do, look to see if there are any outstanding problems with shape or animateability. Looking to the serratus muscle, under the arm at the side of the body as it goes back, the taper into the abdomen is too flat to be convincing and a five-point patch this large here will almost certainly lead to trouble when you set this torso up for animation. Additional density is needed again.

You have the option of running a spline around the torso; that would work, but before you do that, look to see if the added density can aid the shape anywhere else in the model. The pectoral could use additional shaping at the bottom, and at the same time, the remaining five-point patch on the neck could be made smaller. All three of these tasks can be handled with the addition of one spline. Think about its placement for a moment. In order to bisect both the five-point patches and add definition to the pectoral, the most likely way to add in your new spline is diagonally up from the side of the torso to the neck. This has been indicated in Figure 5.65.

Following your guide, stitch in a spline. After closing the five-point areas that remain-and minor additional tweaking-you should have something similar to Figure 5.66.

Now that the front of the mesh is in good order, unhide the back. You will want to be able to see the front as you work on the back of the mesh to get proportions correct and to maintain your spline continuity. You don't, however, want the front getting in your way, so select the back half of the model and lock the cps by clicking the Lock button. Begin by shaping the mesh that is already in place to more closely match the front of the model.

The back is simpler in many respects, as it is made of larger muscle masses than the chest. This allows a simpler geometry overall to achieve good effect. The latissimus dorsi and trapezius muscles predominate the back. The latissimus dorsi (lats) muscle forms the "wing" shape under the arm and the trapezius covers from the back of the neck to the deltoid muscles, tapering down to the spine. The spline on the arm that would easily route up into the neck then, in this case, will serve better defining the trapezius muscle. Continue it across to the middle of the back. The same can be done for the other two splines on the arm. With a little shaping, you will have something similar to Figure 5.67.

FIGURE 5.67 The initial stages of the back
roughs in the basic muscle structures.

This leaves broad areas of flat mesh across the back, but more density is needed to pull out the shapes. We can continue the spline on the side of the torso up and to the neck, similar to the way it was stitched in on the chest (see Figure 5.68). This continues the spline nicely, gives density where it is needed, and will help when you are trying to animate the torso as it twists.

The two main issues with this back now lay in the lack of definition on the lats and the large six-point hole next to the spine. There are no tools to close a six-point hole, so additional splines will be needed. You can break the six-point hole up into a four-point patch and a five-point hole that can be closed easily. At the same time, though, you should be looking to address the definition issue with the lats. Never add splines without first considering all the purposes they may serve. After closing up the five-point patches and doing some tweaking you should have something similar to Figure 5.69.

The mesh at this stage is decent, would even animate well, but it could use some further definition in the deltoid muscle. The easiest way to accomplish this is to simply extrude the ring that leads down toward the arm. Keep it close to the deltoid and scale it down a little bit, just to cut some definition into the arm (see Figure 5.70).

Extrude the arm a couple more times just to give the start of an arm. Unlock the mesh. The splining is now complete, and all that remains is to shape the mesh until you are happy with the forms. Then copy/flip/attach it to complete the torso model.

If your model doesn't look like Figure 5.71, don't worry. It takes time and practice to model, and shoulders are the most difficult area of a character to get right. Shoulders are complex, but once mastered, there is nothing you can't take on. Once you are happy with your shoulder, save it into your Morgue.* After all that work, you will most certainly want to use it again.

Modeling a full character is merely an application of all the various methods that you have learned from modeling pieces. In fact, characters are often started from pieces of other characters or particularly good modeling experiments. Never throw away your work. You never know when you will need a piece of mesh. Also, look to the library that came with A:M. Some of the characters on there may have just the perfect body part that you need. Half the point of working with digital 3D models is the reusability of the meshes. With that in mind, you are going to model a complete character. You will use all available resources to speed the process along.

Based on this sketch, you can create an entire character. The process of building a character normally starts with creating rotoscope images from the character sketch. If you have difficulty with spline layout or if you feel that there might be some problem needing a special solution, then you might want to sketch out a rough spline layout as well. When drawing rotoscopes, it is important that they match proportionately in both the front and side views and that the features of the character line up properly. Graph paper can aid in this process.

Rotoscopes for Captain Splines have been included in the network folder. Begin modeling by creating a model and adding the rotoscopes for the front and side views.

Even though the basic structure is quite different, the mask you have modeled and stored in our Morgue is actually the perfect start for the character's face.
Open the mask model. From the library, select all the points in the model and copy and paste them into the Captain's model window. You will need to position and scale the points to roughly match the rotoscopes of the character (see Figure 5.73).

Once the mask is in place, turn on Mirror mode and adjust the points to match the shapes defined by the rotoscopes (see Figure 5.74). Be sure to work back and forth from a side view to the front view. Without adding a single spline you should be able to come very close. In some cases, you might need to add points or adjust the spline layout of the mask. Either way, be sure to save your new version of the mask to your Morgue. This new version might be closer to a character you design in the future. Building up a library of subtle variations makes a Morgue more useful.

The Captain wears high-tech, space-age clothing that keeps him warm even at the highest altitudes, but they are loose around his body and you will want them to move dynamically when the character moves. To this end, you will be modeling the arms and legs as if Captain were wearing a set of long underwear. A full unibody model will be needed when you fashion the clothing that you want him to wear. It will give the structure that the simulated cloth will hang on and interact with. For your needs, bring in the simple torso and semirealistic leg Morgued earlier, open each, and copy and paste them into the model. After you have the pieces positioned and scaled, you might have something similar to Figure 5.75.

FIGURE 5.75 All the Morgued parts that will
make up the foundation for your character.

Now simply start looking for the obvious connections from the face mask. The chin easily splines into the front of the neck, and the spline from the corner of the mouth fits particularly well into the side of the neck. Go ahead and add any density needed to the neck (see Figure 5.76) to define the jaw line. Once the straight connections are in place, start to sculpt the neck shapes.

A spline ring can run from the neck hole up and around the top of the head. This forms the ring that the forehead can tie into (see Figure 5.77).

Tie any splines from the face mask back into the forehead spline. From a side view, continue the centerline of the face back and shape out the cranium. While the Captain does wear a helmet, you will want a basic skull in place to indicate the proportions of the head later. You can tie this spline into the back of the neck hole (see Figure 5.78).

Continue to stitch the splines from the face mask back into the cranium, being sure to shape them into a nice round shape as you go. Soon you will have a full head and neck stitched into your torso, as in Figure 5.79.

Go over the mesh now, and be on the lookout for weak transitions-for example, along the jaw. If necessary, an additional ring can be added to the mask to harden the edge of the jaw (see Figure 5.80). These details are what allow you to give the character form later.

Before you go too much further, look at the features you have in place and the rotoscopes you are trying to match. The splines are all there; all you need to do is move them to match the drawing you have. Work from the front and side views of the model. Be sure to move your shapes into place as units first. The eyes need to line up before you shape them, the mouth needs to be in the right place, and so on. Once the features are roughly positioned, shape them one at a time until they match the features of the rotoscope as closely as possible (see Figure 5.81).

The face still needs the details that make it a face: eyes, teeth, and tongue. At this point, it becomes easier to model the details separate from the face as a whole. It also allows you to easily save out these parts to your Morgue and reuse them in other models later.

There are a number of directions you can go in modeling the details in a character's face. Which one you choose is dependent on the design of the character itself. All eyes are typically the same in their construction: three spheroid shapes nested inside one another. The major differences come in the details that you can include. Scientifically accurate corneas and iris muscles are fine for characters that might need them, but for the Captain we will take a more stylized approach.

In a new Model window, make a simple lathed sphere. This will be the basis for the entire eye. Select the entire sphere and'change the name of the group untitled in the PWS to pupil by selecting the name either in the properties panel or the PWS and pressing the F2 key. Copy and paste this sphere. Move it back on center (up 10 pixels in y with Shift+t) and scale it up about 120% to cover the first sphere. Notice that a group called pupil2 has been added to your PWS. This, the second sphere, will be the whites/iris layer, so rename it white. Copy and paste this layer and again move it back to center and scale it up 120%. This layer will be the cornea for the eye, so go ahead and rename the white2 group in the PWS to cornea. You should now have a set of three nested spheres similar to Figure 5.82.

Before you do much manipulation to these spheres, make a group that will allow you to move them all at once for positioning in the head. In the PWS, shiftclick the first and last named group, and notice that every group in between is also selected. This ability to multiselect in the PWS becomes very important later. To make a noncontinuous selection of items, you can Command-click on the Mac or Ctrl-click on the Pc. Notice that a new "untitled" group containing all the points in the eye is added to the PWS. Rename this group whole eye, and continue with your modeling.

The iris will need to open and close in reaction to light and to give your character some life. At the same time, the cornea will need to be unbroken, or there will be some obvious artifacts. The most logical place for the iris to open is at the pole of the sphere you lathed, which is technically a hole anyway. In order for the iris to function properly, move the pole of that sphere to face forward. Select the named group for the iris, and hide the CPs in the model to let you focus on just the mesh you need. First, rotate the eye 90 degrees in the x-axis so that the poles point forward (see Figure 5.83).

Select the pole splines on the front of the sphere and scale the opening up in the x- and y-axes. How much you need to scale depends on how tight you lathed the original sphere to the pivot; for the example, 500% did the trick. This makes a very large opening in the front of the eye (see Figure 5.84).

To let the light play across the iris more interestingly, simply translate the selection back into the eye to make a dish-shaped iris. The issue with this is that it distorts the shape of the eye and will further distort it every time you animate the iris dilating. To counter, there needs to be an additional spline ring at the edge of the iris.

You could add points, adjust them, and try to maintain the curvature of the eye, but that would be more work than necessary. Instead, you can use the spline that already exists at the edge of the iris to maintain the curvature while adding detail. Select the spline that makes the edge of the iris. Copy and paste it into the model and scale it down slightly. This makes a spline ring that is unattached to the rest of the eye, but retains the magnitude adjustments to make it the proper curvature. In order to attach this ring to the eye, you will need points along the cross sections of the eye. You could set them up with the Add tool, but there is a keyboard shortcut that will insert a point along a spline that will do the job easier. Select any of the splines that you need to add a point to, so that the green "selection" leg is on the inside of the iris area, and then simply press the Y key to insert a new CPo Do this for each of the cross section's splines. With these new control points in place, you will want to weld them to the ring you made earlier. Select any of the added points from the cross section and drag it so that it is aligned with the point on the ring that we want to weld it to. Without releasing the mouse button, right-click (PC) or press the - (tilde) key on your keyboard. The point you were dragging now attaches to the point you held it over. The result of this operation should look similar to Figure 5.85.

Before you continue, add the new CPs that were created on the eye model to the whites group. Select the whites group in the PWS and use the backslash (I) key to select all attached CPs. Since the group was selected, A:M assumes that you want to add the points to that group. Unhide the mesh and select the whole eye group.

While it is still selected, again use the group connected tool (/) to add the new points to the group. Select the cornea group, invert the selection with the period key, and hide the cornea with the Shift+H keyboard command. Notice the pupil shape penetrates through the iris mesh. To make the pupil only hide the back of the whites and enforce the black area in the eye, simply delete the front portion of the mesh and break the remaining splines to make an empty semisphere (see Figure 5.86).

Unhide the whole mesh, move the whole eye to position, and scale it to fit the eye socket. Copy and paste a second eye for the other half of the head (see Figure 5.87).

At this point, you may be concerned that you cannot see the iris and pupil because the cornea is opaque. We will take care of that when texturing the model so don't worry about that right now. Save this eye out to your Morgue,* and then copy and paste the mesh into the Captain's Model window. Undoubtedly you will need to adjust the position and scale of the eye to fit inside the Captain's eye socket. When you are finished, you should have something similar to Figure 5.88.

Eyes without eyelids are disturbing and would be uncomfortably dry for the Captain, so model him a set. Select the last spline ring of the eye socket and the cornea of the eye and hide the rest of the model. Add some splines to the eye socket that will allow us to open and close the eyes without disturbing the overall shape of them. This is simply accomplished by extruding the last spline ring of the socket and shaping to fit over the cornea. You will need a couple extrusions to aid with animation and to allow you to curve the splines around the surface of the cornea. Start by selecting the spline ring for the socket and locking the mesh. Now you can adjust the socket and any new splines (such as our soon-to-beextruded extrusions) without disturbing or accidentally changing the cornea. Extrude the eye socket spline three times. Each time scale the new extrusion downso that it fits inside the original. You won't be leaving the splines there but this will keep them out of the way. You should have something like Figure 5.89.

Now shape the lids to form over the eye and meet in a closed position. This is a simple matter of pulling the points of the lids so that they meet in the center, ease back into the socket, and cover without intersecting the cornea. You should have something similar to Figure 5.90.

Teeth, as with eyes, can be highly detailed models of orthodontic perfection, or they can be simplified and stylized. The choice of which method to use should be dictated by your character's design. The Captain's design dictates simple teeth, but even so there are still several options: You can model individual teeth, not a full set but enough to show some detail; you can model the entire set of teeth as one object with that tinsel-town gleam to them; or you could choose a method somewhere in between. For the Captain, either method could work but the individual teeth will give him something to grit later on. He is, after all, no pretty boy.

Each tooth is a simple lathe shape. Since you won't be animating them at all, it makes sense to lathe them at four cross sections to keep down the number of patches. In a new Model window, draw the out line of one tooth and lathe it at 4. Scale it down in the z-axis to flatten it out a bit. After some tweaking, you should have something similar to Figure 5.91.

In order to place the teeth properly, you need to see inside the character's jaw. Select the entire lower jaw and hide the rest of the head. Copy the tooth from its Model window and paste it into the Captain model. While it is still selected, lock the rest of the model so you can see the jaw and the inside of the mouth but won't accidentally change it. Position and scale the tooth. It should be fairly large but not overwhelming for the size of the mouth. When you are happy with this first tooth, copy and paste it to fill in one-half of the character's mouth (see Figure 5.92).

Select all the teeth and duplicate them via copy and paste. Bring up the new group's contextual menu and choose x-axis from the flip heading. This will invert the mesh along that axis. Translate the teeth over to fill in the other side of the mouth. Now duplicate the entire set of teeth by copying and pasting; this time choose y-axis to flip the entire set of lower teeth into a set of upper teeth (see Figure 5.93).

While you have them all by themselves, copy and paste the whole set of teeth into a new Model window and save them out to your Morgue.*

Before unhiding the rest of the head, let's model the tongue. The tongue, like the teeth, is a simple lathe shape. Simply lathe the profile of the tongue with four cross sections and shape it to suit. Place it in the mouth, and you should have something similar to Figure 5.94.

Arms, not including hands, are also very simple. Just select the last ring of the shoulder and extrude it to just above the elbow shape and scale this ring as needed. Extrude again and position the spline where the elbow will bend one more time just below the elbow and finally to the wrist. This should leave you with something like Figure 5.95.

If you were modeling a bare arm and needed the hands to mesh perfectly you might approach things a little differently, perhaps modeling the hand first and lathing an arm to suit the density of the more complex appendage. But for the Captain, his hands will be inside gloves and a direct spline connection to the arms will not be needed.

Make a new model to build the hands in, remembering that you will probably be able to recycle this body part for other characters later.

The fingers are a good place to start, as they are simple and will help determine the splinage needed to build the meat of the hand. The Captain will need a relatively simple hand, a variation on the three-finger cartoon hand. Start with a seven-point horizontal spline and lathe it with a cross section of 8. You can reduce the geometry later if you need to. This is one of the few cases where it is better to start off a little dense than to have to stitch splines into all the fingers to maintain continuity. Close one end of this tube in a similar fashion to the perfect sphere you modeled in Section 2. Push these points up to flatten out the top of the tube slightly. Adjust the splines until you have a basic finger shape, as in Figure 5.96.

Select the finger and copy it. Paste a copy, move it to position for the second finger, and paste again for the third. Select the middle finger, and scale it up in the x-axis. Then do the same for the first finger, making it slightly shorter than the middle finger. Paste a third copy of the finger and move it into position to be the thumb. Since the thumb has fewer joints than the fingers, delete the last spline ring from the base of the thumb. You should have something like Figure 5.97.

Now it is time to start stitching the fingers together. Start with the webbing between the fingers; this can be done easily with the three points on the side of each finger. Simply joining them with a spline across the web would let the movements of one finger affect the shape of another when animating. In order to isolate the fingers from the CPs on the splines of its neighbor, a stable center needs to be established. Connect the points on the three adjacent CPs with threepoint splines, leaving three CPs floating between each finger. Stitch a spline in between each finger to close up the patches (see Figure 5.98).
Next, tie the fingers together into a single hand. For this, you need to draw a 16-point spline loop and stitch all the fingers into it. The thumb and first finger can use the end of the loop as the webbing between them, much the same as the fingers did. This will make many five-point patches across the fingers that will need to be closed. When you are finished, you should have something like Figure 5.99.

Start looking for ways to trim down the splines at this point. For now, you can extrude the points from the fingers out into the palm. Don't include the thumb in this extrusion or you will wind up with some ambiguous patches that could cause creasing. Instead, extrude the three points on the outside of the thumb separately. The shape of the hand, and the way that the thumb in particular needs to animate, means we stop at least one spline from continuing to the wrist. The spline from the first finger can be connected to the extrusion from the thumb giving flexibility at that joint (see Figure 5.100).

Extrude the palm and thumb splines separately again and stitch them together as a wrist. As you can see, this creates a large five-point patch area on the top of the hand. This close to the wrist you can expect a five-pointer of that size to behave poorly during animation; so consider some alternative splining to move it back toward the thumb or to make it much smaller.

Bisecting the pad of the hand and moving the spline from the first extrusion of the fingers to the side of the hand solves this problem nicely. Break the splines on both sides of the hand that connect the first extrusion into the thumb splines. These can then move toward the side of the hand under the thumb; stitch in the splines needed to attach this area. The spline from the top of the thumb can then be extended down the hand and tie into the wrist, which pushes the five-point area nicely out of the danger area (see Figure 5.101).

This closes up the mesh, but the wrist is way too dense with splines. Extrude the wrist out one more time, and look for some opportunities to reduce the geometry with hooks. With the hook layout in Figure 5.102 you can reduce the wrist down to a much more reasonable seven points. Be sure to look at the hand_v3.mdl in the A:M library to see how it was done. As a challenge, try to reduce the wrist to six points without losing animation ability. With a little tweaking of the shapes, the hand is finished and ready to be saved to your Morgue.*

Copy and paste the finished hand into the Captain's Model window. Position and scale it to match the character's proportions. Now that you have the basic hand, you can add the details that will make it specific to this character. Looking at the concept drawing of the Captain, the fingers and the top of the hand are protected with thick plates that are attached to the gloves. For these, it is a simple matter of importing your beveled cube from the Morgue and scaling it down to fit the part. There is no need to attach the splines to the glove underneath as the bones you add later will do that job for you.
The leg that you imported needs to be joined with a simple pelvis, which then needs to stitch into your character's torso. It is easy to think of the legs and pelvis as a variation on the method you used to make fingers earlier.

The two splines that run down the inside of the leg will be used to model the webbing across to the opposite leg. Select the two points at the top of the inside of the leg and extrude. Translate them over to the centerline of the model. This spline has now become the centerline of the pelvis (see Figure 5.103).

The remaining four control points on the leg will form the outside edge of the hip. While you are here, extrude the rest of the leg up and build the five-point patch that will finish off the leg-to-hip transition (see Figure 5.104).

Extrude the whole hip up one more time to the waist and the hips are done (see Figure 5.105). Shape them to form the basic shape of the legs. You don't have to define any muscles here, but the shape needs to approximate the masses of the muscles. The most important area is actually the crotch. Build it so that there are no intersecting areas. If one leg passes into another then the cloth simulation is likely to become very confused. We take a closer look at these areas when you set up the clothing solutions later, but a good base will save you work down the road.

The Captain has a fondness for steel-toe boots, which, like all of his design, are stylized to a certain degree. Start with the sole by lathing a four-point spline like the one in Figure 5.106 with a cross section of 8. This can then be molded into a foot shape, which is easily closed on the bottom.

The spline arrangement shown in Figure 5.107 allows the bottom of the sole to be closed off with the addition of two splines (see Figure 5.108).

Toes for these boots are nothing more than a quarter of a sphere. You have two options: lathe a new sphere in the boot model and delete the unwanted portions, or copy and paste one-quarter of a sphere from your Morgue. Both methods will result in something similar to Figure 5.109.

Place the quarter-sphere in the toe of the foot shape and adust the splines to your liking.

The main portion of the boot is started from the top of the ankle. Draw an 11point spline in a rough circle with the splines open toward the toe (see Figure 5.110). Make the opening tight, and double the splines back inside the circle. This will give some thickness to the edge. Extrude this twice, and shape it as you go to start the sides (see Figure 5.111).

The top of the boot needs to run along the area the foot would be in and finish up at the toe, while the sides need to run down and around the heel area. To do this efficiently requires that you "split" your extrusion at the point where the leg of the boot meets the ankle. This means that you make two separate extrusions with only partial selections of the spline ring. For the top of the foot, select just the points at the front of the leg around the split. These eight points will be extruded three times down to the toe of the boot. Adjust the position and scale of each extrusion before moving on to the next. The back of the boot will be the three points at the rear of the leg. (Note that we do not select any of the points included in the first set of extrusions. Doing so would cause creasing, as it would create an extra spline at the point where the extrusions met.) Simply extrude this set twice to form the back of the heel. Finish the sides of the foot, extruding the top area (both left and right) down twice to meet the sale of the boot. Stitch and fill the gap between the heel and foot with a five-point patch, as in Figure 5.112.

For your boots, you will use thick leather straps in place of laces. These straps are built by extruding a four-point spline loop over the top of the foot (see Figure 5.113) . You could model the stitching and very specific details in the boots spline by spline, but for the most part those types of things are more easily accomplished with texturing. That alternative is covered in Chapter 12.

You moved quickly there and should already be comfortable with all these techniques from the previous exercises. If you are confused at all, watch the demonstration video for modeling this character. For now, copy and paste the boot into the Captain model, position it at the base of the leg, scale it to fit, and finally, save the original boot model into your Morgue.*

If your modeling and sense of proportion were perfect all the time, you could duplicate the leg and arm to the opposite side of the character and be finished. But proportions often stray, and adjusting the character after both sides have been created is generally more work than making adjustments to just one side. However, it is also difficult to gauge the proportions of the figure without both halves of it in place. To counter this, use a special technique that involves the use of the choreography. If you have portions of your model on both halves of the character, hide the second half, or delete it and create a new choreography.

Drop the half version of your model into the choreography twice. To make certain they are aligned exactly, drop the model onto the choreography item in the PWS rather than into the Choreography window. This stacks both instances of the character exactly on top of each other in the workspace window. Select either shortcut to the character and open the transform disclosure triangle on the Properties panel. In the x-scale, transform property type -100%. This should flip your character, giving you an approximate full version (see Figure 5.114). While you have the shortcut still selected, change the mode to modeling. Now any changes you make on either shortcut will be reflected on the other side of the character. This allows you to gauge the proportions of a character and make adjustments as needed. Once you are satisfied with the proportions of the character go back to the modeling window for a copy/flip/attach.

FIGURE 5.114 Scaling a second instance of the
model to -100 in a chor lets you get a feel for the
completed model without committing to a full model.

Congratulations! You have completed the basic structure for a character. In the process, you have learned all the most important aspects of modeling in A:M. Armed with this knowledge you should be able to design and create characters of your own. But this is not the same character that was in the concept drawing, That character wore a helmet, body armor, and pants, and you will need to add those elements to this character before you can call him complete. Go ahead and get the helmet modeled, and then look at what you need to accomplish for the costume on this character.

Modeling the helmet starts with the skull of the character. Select the area of the head that will be covered by the helmet and copy and paste it. Simply scale this group up around the Captain's head to make the basic shell for your helmet, as in Figure 5.115 (name your group helmet while you still have it selected). Now lock the rest of the model so that you can work exclusively with the helmet.

As a starting point this is pretty good, but you need to make the outer rim of this shape a single continuous spline loop. The easiest way to do this is to break and reconnect the splines that make up the front and back of the helmet (the back of the skull and the forehead line on the original head). Look at Figure 5.116. Break the splines as indicated by the circle.

Now connect the two front and rear splines to make a continuous loop. Once that is accomplished, simply stitch in the rest of the splines from the helmet. Now you can work with the helmet edge, extruding it out and shaping it as needed. Extrude once and pull the points forward at the front and down at the back and along the sides to fill out the rest of the helmet's shape, without covering the face of the character. You will need to do some adjusting of the existing splines to make the shapes work correctly, but it shouldn't take too much. To add thickness and hide the interior of the helmet, extrude again and scale in toward the skull. Extrude one final time, and tuck it under and against the head, making it a nice tight fit for Captain. The radio antenna, visor, and other elements of the helmet are what are commonly referred to as nurnies: those little bits that make a shape look detailed and complex. For your needs, just look at the shapes and put them into place. The base of the radio antenna is a simple cube. Import your beveled cube from the Morgue, and scale and position it. Just jam it inside the helmet; there is no need to attach it or worry about clean connections. The antenna itself is a simple lathe shape. If you have a cylinder in your Morgue (hint: look in the library that came on the A:M install disc from Hash, Ine.) you can import it, and scale and position it to fit the bill (see Figure 5.117).

The visor is quickly made by copying and pasting the front spline of the helmet's leading edge. This is scaled up and out to form the bottom of the visor, then simply extruding it to make the visor. You can add thickness to the visor in the same way that you did for the helmet by selecting all the points along the outside edges and extruding them. If you expect to see close-up on this visor at any point, you might want to completely spline the back side of the glass. But since it will be mirrored instead of clear and will have no need for complete accuracy, this should be enough. To hide the corners of the visor (which are just dead-ended splines) place a cylinder at each side of the helmet, which makes it look hin_he result will look very similar to Figure 5.118. Some of the finer details (seams in the plastic, for example) will be added later with textures.

Right now, the look of Captain isn't likely to inspire confidence in any damsels in distress. He's in his longjohns and combat boots. Sure he's got that helmet there, but that's not very inspiring. What Captain needs is a set of body armor and some pants. But if you look at the concept drawings, portions of the uniform that he wears are not rigid. In fact, they are cloth. The armpits, the underside of the arm braces, the joints in the torso are all cloth areas that you will likely want to deform when you animate the character. In order to have this work later (when you learn about dynamic cloth), you will need to set up the geometry to give you the look you are after. This starts with the geometry already in place. The body you have modeled is called a "Deflector" (more on this in Chapter 13), and in order for it to do its job properly you need to tell A:M which side of this surface is "out." Patches represent hollow objects with two distinct sides. One of these sides is the front of the patch and the other is the back. In may instances, it doesn't matter which side is which. A:M will render both without difficulties, and both will accept materials and decals later without many issues unless the material you are working with is "Normals Aware." You may recall normals is touched on in Chapter 2 in only the most passing way (a warning to avoid internal patches). As discussed, you can toggle the visibility of normals in a model with the ShifH 1 keyboard combination. This shows you the model's normals, which indicates a rendering patch, but it also indicates which side of that patch is front. When a material or dynamic effect is said to be normals aware, it simply means that it takes some form of useful information from the direction the normal is facing on a surface. In the case of cloth, it says "stay outside of me," and in order for it to work correctly you need to ensure that all the surfaces of your character have their surfaces pointing outward. For the most part, A:M does a good job of keeping normals facing the right way, but in the course of your splining, you will undoubtedly make some patches that cause a normal to face inward. You could scour all the patches of the character with a finetooth comb and seek out and fix the few normals that are not in line, but it would be easier to let A:M do that. Simply right-click (PC), Command-click (Mac) the name of the model in the PWS and from the contextual menu choose "refind normals". This will align all the normals on your model in one direction or the other, and more often than not it will point them outward. There are some things to watch out for, specifically five-point patches and hooks, which can sometimes have their normals reversed from the rest of the model. But knowing this helps you find them and fix them. Refind the normals in the Captain now. Zoom into the face on one of the five-point patches and rotate the view so you can see which direction the normal on that patch is facing. If it is in line with the rest of the surface, then move on to the next five-point patch. If it is not, flip it so that it is. First, select just that patch. You could select each point or draw a group around the five points that make up the patch, but it is much simpler to use the Patch Select tool (ShifHP), which allows you to select a patch just by clicking inside of it. Once the patch is selected, flip the offending normal by using the F keyboard shortcut (remember F for flip). Go over all the five-point patches and hooks on your character and flip them to the correct side.

Once the model's normals are in line, it is ready to start clothing. You can hide the normals with the ShifH 1 key if you like, or you can leave them visible while you work. Before moving on to the actual costume, create a group that you can assign a deflector material to later. Simply group the points in the model you have so far, and rename the untitled group to "deflector" or something similar.

Now you can move on to the costume. Start with the portions of the costume that will be rigid. Building these sections show us where to set up dynamic groups and give you the chance to set up your "attach" groups before the mesh gets too complex. (Properly setting up your groups is arguably the most important part of the process.)

With the exception of the breastplate and gauntlets, most of the armored portions of the costumes are simply beveled squares (not cubes, as you want to use these to stitch cloth into). Start with a single eight-pointcspiine loop in a square, as in Figure 5.119.

Now patch up the interior of this patch to form a surface. Then select the outside spline, and extrude it and position to give the armor some depth. Once you have the single plate built, simply copy, paste, move, and scale to cover the shoulders, arms, and back of the character. You might end up with something that looks like Figure 5.120.

The gauntlets cover the forearms of the character and are roughly cylindrical. Simply draw the cross section of the shape, including points for thickness, and lathe around the forearm. This shape can then be copied and flipped to the opposite side of the character leaving you with something similar to Figure 5.121.

The breastplate is slightly more complex than the rest of the armor pieces, but you have the perfect starting point already in the model. In much the same way you created the helmet from the skull of the character, you can copy and paste the chest area of the character's torso to give you a foundation to work from. The breastplate is a more mechanical. sculpted version of the character's own chest. Start by simply peaking the points that define the lower edges of the pectoral muscles. Then shaping the outside edges to fit inside the other parts of the armor, you might have something similar to. Figure 5.122. A simple extrusian gives the edge a little depth, and the breastplate is finished.

Befare yau stitch the plates tagether, set up the plates as a group so. that yau can exclude them from the simulatian later. Simply group all the plates tagether and name the group "armacattach". Naw yau just need to. fill in the gaps between the armar plates. This is ane af the rare instances where denser meshes can be cansidered better. With a little extra density, yau can expect to. see more realistic simulatian af the falds and shears far yaur clath. Start by cannecting the abviaus jaints between each plate, then stitch in splines to. add density between each plate. Laak at Figures 5.123,5.124,5.125, and 5.126 to. see this in pragress.

Once the plates are stitched together, make one more group for your character: the Sim-Cloth group. It needs to hold all the dynamic parts of the cloth and all the "attached" group. Select all the work you just did into a single group including the plates, and name this group "torso_simcloth".

Now the Captain just needs some pants. Pants are a simple extension of the legs, and a copy and paste will get you most of the way. Copy the legs from the waist down to the ankles and paste them into the model. Scale this up and position it so that it covers the legs, but doesn't touch any part of them. This is particularly important in the crotch area.

The crotch is a danger zone (as are armpits) for cloth in that you have two opposing deflectors that get really, really close to one another. If the cloth is pushed into a position where it cannot stay outside both deflectors, it enters what is known as an "insolvable" state. This can and will cause the cloth to behave in an erratic fashion. In addition to ensuring that the cloth doesn't sit inside the mesh or get crushed, prepare it so that it can figure out where it stands before it comes into contact with a surface. To this end, the cloth will need to be a minimal distance from all surfaces that it can collide with. Look at Figure 5.127 to see an example of properly set-up cloth. In order to make these pants fully functional, you need to get them named into a group and set up an attachment point. Name the whole set of pants "pants_simgroup" and the topmost waistband spline "pants_attach".

Now you just need to hide the seam of the pants to the upper body. For this, Captian wears a belt. This is a simple lathe shape with a beveled cube belt buckle. Once in place, you should have a character that more or less resembles Figure 5.128.

Modeling characters is a challenging aspect of AM, especially characters that animate well. The techniques learned for modeling here also happen to apply to almost every aspect of modeling in A:M.

The density of splines and the layout of those splines more directly affect the quality of your work than any other factor. A well-modeled character is easier to animate, texture, rig, and often renders better than poorly modeled characters. The time spent now improving your modeling skills will help bolster the quality of your work as a whole.

The character modeled in this chapter teaches the importance of reusing parts. A Morgue-or collection of pieces-of experiments and good splinesmanship will give you a foundation from which you will be able to build more and more complex models quickly and easily. Save all your models and experiments.
Finally, we looked at some interesting solutions to some common challenges. While the modeling was not revolutionary the ideas behind the techniques are effective and battle tested in real-life productions. Use these as a springboard for finding your own creative solutions to the challenges you face.

FIGURE 5.10 A simple lathed tube can be shaped to build definition.	FIGURE 5.11 The thigh masses are pulled out after skewing the spline rings.
FIGURE 5.12 Adjusting the calf in the same manner as the thigh brings us closer to the desired results.	FIGURE 5.13 From the side view things are still a bit flat.
FIGURE 5.14 After tweaking the shape, it resembles a leg.

FIGURE 5.17 Stitch in two splines down the front of the leg.	FIGURE 5.18 Additional splines need to be added to the side of the leg
FIGURE 5.19 The back of the leg also needs a little more density.	FIGURE 5.20 The splines should flow along with the surface.

FIGURE 5.104 The legs can extrude up into the hips.	FIGURE 5.105 The completed leg and hip.
FIGURE 5.106 Lathe this spline to start the sole.	FIGURE 5.107 Arranging the lathed points to make a foot shape.

FIGURE 5.123 The cloth in progress.	FIGURE 5.124 The cloth in progress.
FIGURE 5.125 The cloth in progress.	FIGURE 5.126 The cloth in progress.


FIGURE 5.58 Even though the modeling looks very dissimilar, the muscle layout is based on rings as well.


FIGURE 5.85 The added spline to the iris will stop the eye from deforming as you animate the pupil.

Animation: Master Character Modeling for Games