Polishing up the Baby Model

  Good news, the basis of the baby model is completed so I was able to jump to polishing up the model more in details. Some of the features I needed to polish on the baby was well more on the head; dealing with the size of the head, the shape of the nose and mouth as well. Then there's the hands that need polishing, back, butt and lastly the positioning of the arms which I'll get to later. When given this project, one of the things the client wanted with the baby model was the model having a big head. Having this information I was able to make the head bigger through selecting all polygons on the head and scaling them up in all axis. Once doing that I shrink the top vertices of the neck a bit to make it look better

  If you were to look at my previous blog, the last image posted showed the baby's back straight. My goal with the back was to create a more realistic back; to curve it more. Essentially that's what I did and this process was long. Creating this curve from the back well... Most 3D modelers would have an idea how I did it. The idea is pretty simple however the process took some time. Basically what I did was grab a few desired vertices and move them towards the stomach and as I descended down to the next edge, I would go in more with the vertices giving that inward look for the back. Towards the middle I begun grabbing vertices and pulling them away from the stomach to create that arc look. Now as odd as it sounds, if you were to look at the butt... It's pretty flat. It should be rounded more. 

  As you can see with the picture above, I was able to succeed that. Through some observation you can definitely pin point that I added a lot more edges to the stomach to round it out more but as well as to begin working on the butt. Modeling the butt was very similar to polishing the bottom of the back. I begun pulling vertices out and then inward. After doing so I begun rounding the butt out more that that it doesn't look flat on the sides. If you were to compare this picture above with the first picture in this blog, the noses are different. In all honesty the nose's shape was bother me a lot and after accomplishing the arc on the baby's back I was thinking... Why not do the same for the nose. So similar to the back, I arc the nose to create more realism and appeal.

  Unfortunately around this time I stopped creating different versions of saved files and continue polishing with this one, so I wouldn't be able to pull up the progress of how I did certain things with the model. Fortunately because I made this baby model, I can go into details on what I did as far as processes goes. After getting the shape of the head, the neck, the back, butt and nose..My next task was positioning the arms. 

  

  The problem with the model is that it's in T Pose. Upon texturing it where practically texturing the armpits as if it was stretched. So upon moving the arms down when rigging, the texture for the arm pit's would still be stretched. Knowing this would be an issue I changed the baby's posed from T to relax, as you can see above. Now wouldn't this be a hassle to do for both arms? YES! This is where mirroring came along. I grabbed half of the models polygons from one side and deleted it. Upon deleting it, in the modifiers tab, I selected Symmetry. Symmetry is just like mirror but the difference is, it has a auto weld function that upon collapsing the stack of modifiers... It welds the symmetrical half, to the original half. With symmetry, it makes a copy of the model and then you can choose which axis the copy is in. Where I'm going at with this is, all I had to do is re position one arm and boom! I'm down with the other side! Now re positioning one arm was bad as it is. What I had to do was select a ring of polygons that would separate the arms from the shoulders and delete it. Once deleting that ring allowed me to gain access in maneuver just the arm of the model and not the arm and the model at the same time. So when I did this, I translated the arm down a bit, rotated it as desired. Once I was satisfied with the position I had to re attach it to the model. From using 3ds Max for a while now, I'm very comfortable and confident when it comes to doing crazy things. Re attaching the arm back to the body is very possible. The way I did it was selecting border. With border I selected the opening of the arm and hit Cap which creates a face in the opening. I did the same with the shoulder. After doing this I selected both new faces and hit bridge. Hitting bridge connected both the new faces together which in turn.. Connected the arm to the body.

  Having re position the arm I had a few tasks left for the baby. This came from rounding the head out more and polishing the hands. To give an idea of how I rounded the head... I begun moving vertices inward to give less of boxed head shape and more of a sphere shape.

  After accomplishing that I begun polishing the hands more. The hands to start off were just spheres in the beginning. Considering Max the baby, would grip on objects, we needed a more realistic hand.  I was able to accomplish this through very similar methods. Pushing and pulling vertices in and placing them in desire locations. I also spent a lot of time on rounding the hands out more so that they don't look like there are any sides that look squared. Thus after doing this finished the baby model! Well at least modeling it! As you can see there was a big jump from pictures as far as progress went. My teammate had textured the baby for me. After texturing was completed meant we were one step closer for integrating the baby. The last things left are Rigging, Skinning and Animating the baby. Hope you guy's enjoy the model!

Creating a Basis 3D Baby Model

  Currently I am enrolled in my senior project course and I must say, I'm really excited. This course is divided up into two eight weeks where we will be developing a product based on a project a client has given us. The project me and my group have been given is called Max Proof which will be a game where players have to baby proof an area so that Max; the baby can walk safely. The game is in isometric view and will take place in the babies home. Before the baby begins to walk in the area, players are given thirty seconds to baby proof the area.This can come from securing doors using locks, fill in holes using boards, even moving items in the scene to different locations. As a group, we are given the task to of course deliver the complete project to our client. So as a group how have we spread the work out? Well for what I can say, I was assign to create the baby model, rig and skin it, as well as create the animations for the baby. To continue this I was also assign for helping develop the inventory with one of my team members on top of doing the collision functionality in the game. For me, senior project is a big deal so I can say this 3D baby model has been the most complex model I have ever developed and I am very excited to continue to work on it. So lets dive into it!
  Having begun a few side projects before senior project I was developing a character model for a game. When I got to senior project I had three options; create the baby from scratch, use the character model I was already working on and make it into the baby or use a model I had completely finish that was just for fun. The option I went with was of course, the character model. The model I had completed for fun was a model many might be familiar with; sack boy!

  This was a very fun model to work on and I've been dying to implement this model in a game. Unfortunately because I am not a 3D modeler but a programmer there are a few bad things about the sack boy model I created. Such as cleanliness and location of polygons. When it came to the sack boy model, it was not organize as far as polygons went. I basically went nuts as you can tell. On top of this, if you look at sack boy's legs... His legs are to far from the hips and they are already bent. With that creates a lot of issues with rigging and animating because since they are already bent, we may get a lot of illegal geometry when straightening the legs in animation. Thanks to those reasons I was able to come to conclusion to go with the other model because it was very clean.

  As you can see above, this was the character model I was working on based off a tutorial I was watching. I went with this because it was way more cleaner in polygons here. A lot of the placements as well made a lot more sense. In all honesty, before I actually get started to show how I develop the baby, I just want to say I'm really excited to show how much of a transformation I made from this model above to what the results are now. So when I begun modeling the baby model using this one I develop as a template, I started off with the hands and feet first. The way I went about creating the hands and feet was through the tool called bevel. Bevel is just like extruding but with outline in it where you basically pushing or pulling a polygon out and either scaling the face more or less. When it came to the hands I selected the face that pointed forward and used Insert which created another face in the polygon and shrink it down. Having that new polygon created I bevel it out to create the thumbs. Thus ending the basis of the feet and hand.
  The next step was proceeding on the stomach...Giving the baby a belly! This honestly was the most fun part because it was pretty hilarious to work on. I mean when I first was doing this I was like wait...This guy looks pregnant, he can't look pregnant!

  Eventually though I was able to get it right. The way I went about doing the baby's belly was very simple. I selected one edge going vertical, hit Ring which selects a ring of edges that's horizontal to the one I originally selected and then hit Connect. Doing this creates a new ring of edges going horizontal that connects to the ring of edges going vertical. Having three new rings of edges, I basically started selecting vertices and bringing them out, creating that round shape belly. After doing that I selected all polygons on both legs  and scaled them down on the Z axis and stretched the legs out a bit on both the X and Y axis to created that look as if the legs are fat. I also did this for the arms as well. So with this being said, I practically had most of the basis down! Just needed a head next!

  If I were to give any detail on how I did the head, the most descriptive way I would say I accomplish this came from how I did the hands. Basically beveling things out, scaling polygons down. As you can see with the picture above, I bevel quite a bit to create the head. Before I went crazy though, I made sure to extrude first to create the neck. The next step was creating the eyes and and nose for the baby. Just like anything else, I messed around with either Insert or Outline and then extrude it. Well for the most part of the nose. One of the things I did do with the nose though was also translate some of the polygons as well as shrink them more as desired. On top of that as I got towards the nostrils, I beveled inwards to create that hole; making sure that the polygons that was going in was not overlapping any existing polygons.

  When it came to the eyes I actually did not have to do anything with Outline, Insert or Bevel. If anything I would think of it as just planning it out. My goal for the eyes were to get it at least an oval shape which I achieved through moving vertices to desire locations. You may be wondering now, how come in the picture above the other eye looks weird. The reason why I left the other eye alone was because I knew I was going to end up deleting half of the model in the future so that I can mirror it and eventually weld the two together. It sounds confusing but when I go over it later on, you'll see what I mean. The last step for creating the basis of the baby was the mouth and man I must say this was the most difficult thing to work on. It wasn't fun at all only because it gave a weird look as if his cheeks were going in. Just like how I did with everything else, I used the friendly bevel tool. With the mouth I beveled inward and eventually begun extruding by small iterations inwards. After having what I needed to work with as far as polygons I begun shaping the mouth more by moving the vertices to desire locations. Just like with the eyes, I tried going an oval shape. The difference between doing this and the eyes were well... I needed lips and I needed a hole for the mouth. After having the final part extruded out I also beveled inwards to create that hole for the mouth but as well give me more opportunity to shape the lips more. Thus finishing the basis of the entire. Model. Now keep in mind, I said basis! All of this is just a foundation of what I'm really going to work on. Still very excited to show off the baby!