Thinking
Outside the Box:
3DS Tutorial #1: CyberGuy
|
Vol.
2, Issue 13
February 23, 2000
|
The yin
to Divide’s yang is Turn. Activate edge Turn and turn the edges
you just created like so…
Now we
can do a little vertex manipulation. First we’ll use Vertex/Weld/Selected.
Change your Weld Thresh to 10. Select these two vertices and
hit selected…
You may
wonder why I divided the edge and welded the vertices instead
of simply lowering them. It’s pure convenience. Plenty of times
I find myself dividing-turning-dividing-turning until I get the
proper edge length I need to form a shape. By dividing the edge
and welding the vertices I keep the vertices along the plane of
the edge of the mesh. It’s basically a cheap way of moving vertices
and has nothing to do with edges, really. It’s just a type of
modeling I’ve grown to like and sometimes I do push the vertices
in a case like this to break out of the routine of dividing-turning-welding.
Now lets
tweak the shape of the shoulder by scaling the vertices along
the bottom edge. Select the two vertices along the bottom edge
of the shoulder. Right-click over the object and choose Scale
from the transforms.
We want
to do a Non-Uniform Scale so change to that type…
Make sure
the Y axis is active and scale the two vertices by 150%.
Next we’ll
work on the upper arm. First we need to do some edge dividing…
…then
some vertex welding…
…and turn
an edge.
See the
pattern here? Divide…weld…turn. Live it, learn it, love it.
Let’s finish up by scaling the vertices of the inner top part
of the upper arm by 130%.
Now move
down to the wrist and weld the vertices at the bottom of the forearm…
…and the
top of the hand …
Turn the
edges of the forearm and hand since they’re pretty deformed from
the merges…
…and scale
the wrist are in along the Y axis to make the area look…more wrist-like.
So that
almost finishes up the arm but now is the time to discuss a little
modeling/design philosophy. In low-poly modeling the limitations
of making cool models in the least amount of faces possible embeds
an approach of minimalism deep inside your brain. One manifestation
for me is the use of progressively smaller cross sections for
limbs.
-
Paul Steed is a 3D artist for id Software.
