Edge loops
	This is taken from 2 posts made by DigitalCritters on spiraloid with a quote from Ingmar Spit EVERYONE: Listen closely to what Ingmar said in his last post: quote: -------------------------------------------- "What helped a bit is trying to imitate the edgeloop technique a bit (i can't say i master it). It made me look a bit different at my mesh, more in "contours" of different regions. A bit like the sketching technique discussed earlier where you fill in your sketch by following the shape of the muscles. I hope i make sense here." -------------------------------------------- You not only make sense here Ingmar, you nailed the main purpose of the sketching phase. When you're drawing, you are really drawing individual muscles: from the origin of connection to their termination. You are thinking this even if you don't realize it. This is what we MUST do in our modeling phase if we're going to get accurate anatomy. Extrusions cannot do it all for us. They are great for this volume phase, but we are going to have to roll up the sleeves and pretty much terminate any of the polys that do not fall in line with the anatomical contours (and that is most of them). The volume phase gives you a chunk of marble to start with. Next is the chiseling to nail down our edge loops, we are going to have to forcefully cut those muscles in. We must think of the beginning and end points for every muscle and depict them accurately turning around the volume in 3d space. And as the sketching phase confirmed, there aren't many contours in the body that benefit from the initial extrusions alone. The human form has so many diagonals, twists, and turns.
	Let's all think about building 'arcs' and curvy contours into our models as we work in the form stage. Take those faces and rotate them in 3 dimensions. Get the rows of faces out of the 'orthagonal 90 degrees' and into the multi-dimensional, twisting rows that they really are. It is the only chance we have of getting it right. Watch Bay Raitt's time-lapse modeling movie again, and study how often he is angling, turning, and rotating the faces to indicate not only the form of the surface, but also the direction of the edge loops (which defines the contours of our muscles). This can be done by simply moving a single vertex sometimes. Ok, so now it's my turn to post something of my progress. For me and my mood lately, I needed to dive into the head first to get into this character, so that's what I did. Next, I will volume out the rest of the body with extrusions as everyone else here has done. But for this guy to feel 'alive' to me, I needed to get his face worked on. I've mentioned this in a previous post, but I'll say it again here. Never allow yourself to become slave to any singular process. You are *artists* and the artist in you will sometimes crave a new approach to the same means. Why not start modeling your character from the feet first? Go with it, don't fight it. Or you will burn out in time. I think the exploration of new approaches to sculpting is what will free you from making similar mistakes repeatedly. It will bring new construction ideas to the surface. Ok, off the soapbox. Just remember: make the process work for your style, and enjoy yourself, whatever you do. Hey y'all, I want to reply to your latest posts, but it's early in the a.m. here, I'm tired, and I wanted to post these images I promised ya. Looking good guys! So, as I was saying in my last note, the extrusions we're making are great for blocking out volume. The problem is, when we take a bunch of quads and extrude them out (like a cylinder), we're really creating a grid network, mostly full of squares: not LOOPS! (contours around muscles). Can we make loops out of these faces? Sure, to an extent. But mostly this grid structure is problematic. For the simple sake of review, please keep in mind the following while modeling: The top image (grid) does not represent what we think of in terms of an edge loop--There is no definite closed 'circuit' with adjacent verticies here. This structure also does little to benefit animation of the mesh. We want our edges to radiate out and surround our forms (such as the eyes, the mouth, the deltoid). The loops in the second image shown above simply animate more naturally, as these muscles would in reality. It is hard to pull muscles out of a grid. Your models will end up looking 'lumpy' and 'separated', not cohesively woven together, as muscles really are. This just means there are places on our figures that we're going to have to get the blow torch out and do some restructuring to our 'grid formations'. NOTE: Don't get me wrong. There are places where the "grid structure" is fine for the details we need. I'm not trying to lay down the law here. What I'm trying to illustrate is the need for reconstructing areas that require loops--cutting up the grid--and replacing it with radial loops. We gotta get our hands dirty and cut-cut-cut. I understand that this is simply review for many of you. I'm doing the following example with Maya's toolset. I'm not aware of your software, and we're not here to discuss software technicalities, but here's the gist. Merely an example: Note that there are six terminating quads in the center of this example, and the center vert is 6-sided: this design could be scandalous (or helpful) depending on your particular needs. However, the main idea here is that you can cut diagonals and loops by force, wherever needed. I hope this helps. Please stay flexible to your mesh's design. You control -it-, never let it boss -you- around ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hope this helps your understanding of using edge loops and modeling charaters -Wasamonkey