Lily's Topography

Earlier, I have modeled objects that were never animated. However, this time I had to model a human. It was of utmost importance to maintain the topography so that the when Lilly or George are animating them there are no inappropriate deformations.

So, I saw several tutorials on Digital Tutors that would help me through with this.

Hair- I saw a tutorial of Maya Hair that seemed quite fascinating. I did give it a try. So, I started modelling with a NURBS sphere for the hair shape. Somehow, I was not getting around to even developing a basic shape. Then, Kieran showed me how he had modelled hair from polygon in his undergraduate project. That sort of helped. I started with a polygon sphere and then changed its shape bit by bit. The major changes for the hair were its pony-tail and the band that ties it. The pony-tail that I had modelled earlier was rigid-looking and the band was a separated piece of polygon. The ridges in the hair-shape were also deep so I had to reduce that. Now, the pony-tail looks fluffier and realistic.

Earmuffs- The ear-muffs were a last-minute addition. I used a NURBS sphere to model it first but later on moved to the most reliable method of modelling- polygon. It was modelled really quickly but looks smashing nevertheless.

Face- Modelling the human-face was the biggest challenge of all. If the topology was in any way not correct then the animation would not touch the audience. The eye-socket area was a challenge because the tutorial that I had initially followed was that of an alien (Haha!). Later, Lilly found me a tutorial for creating a young girl. So, following the alien tutorial I had created the eye-lids separately. Here, the eye-lids are a part of the face mesh.

Apparently, the mouth-area was the most time-consuming part. Different people had different opinion on the shape of the lips. I modelled it several times. Finally I settled on just a basic shape. Then, it was important that the lines edges from the eyes merged with the mouth area so that the deformation wouldn’t look unrealistic.

The modelling of the ears was very basic. However, it was later of no use as we added an ear-muff.

Eyes, Eye-lashes, Eyebrows- As mentioned earlier, I had referred to the Alien making tutorial, thus, the eye was modelled according to how the alien might look! I modelled a fresh pair from the other tutorial that Lilly sent me. The new eyes not only look befitting our your character but also has beautiful eye-lashes that add to her look. The eyebrows were modelled separately so that the character could be more expressive. Also the eyebrows were trimmed and tweaked to look more appropriate.

Teeth-Gum-Tongue- Following a separate tutorial this set of teeth was modelled. The width of the teeth was changed several times. The end of the tongue was made to tilt downwards,more in tandem to a real mouth.

Snood- The snood was modelled n number of times. I made the first one with NURBS Curves and then lofting them to create a wave sort of material representing the crease of the cloth. Despite it being made by the NURBS curves, it looked rigid. So, I created a second with another NURBS primitive. I was going nowhere with the NURBS modelling tools. Finally, I used a Polygon Tube to model this. All my team mates were pretty happy with the result.

Torso- For the torso it was important that the clothes be modelled on it and not independent of it. If the clothes were modelled separately then there would have been one mesh on top of the other. It would have made weight-painting and rigging difficult. The main challenge was to get the arm joint and the chest topology correct. After several attempts I got that correct. Also the crease that divides the sweater from the t-shirt was a problem. The earlier design had the sweater longer that the t-shirt. So the sweater-mesh lay over the t-shirt mesh which would have again been a problem for George. So, then it was decided that the t-shirt would be longer than the sweater.

Hands- The basic hand shape was blocked pretty much alright. The detailing of the fingers did not take much time. It was the modelling and positioning of the thumb that took a lot of tutorial help and time. The palm needed some fixing too. Most importantly to have equal number of vertex to merge it to the torso I had to join five vertices to one point. That might have posed a problem when it was given for animating. Later, Sean advised me to separate the parts of the body so that the deformation would not be weird. This also solved the problem of equal number of vertices required to merge the separate meshes.

Lower-Body and Shoes- Topology of the lower body was quite different because the hip would join at the thighs and the movement of each would be different. I also had trouble of joining the two pair of legs at thighs. The vertex of both the mesh would go beyond each other. I had to delete and join many times to get it right. Also, Sheng suggested that we Lily’s trouser might have a crease at the side to make it look like she is wearing clothes.

I had a fun time making the shoes. It was the only part that did not take much time to model. Plus, there were no changes required to it. It was perfectly made from Day 1.

Finally, I organised the entire scene details as can be seen in the image below. The Outliner was cleaned and named properly. Even, different parts of the body meshes were put into different layers.