Introduction:
In this tutorial I will cover some of the modeling techniques I use to model a human body. In this instance it is a female model. This tutorial assumes that you have a basic knowledge of the Lightwave Modeler. It should be translateable into any other package as well by using whichever tools are aplicable. I've taken screen captures of Lightwave Modeler frequently to document my progress. The thumb-nail images on this page link to the entire screen grab. This should answer any questions that the thumbnails do not.


Getting Started:
Early planning can help you save time and avoid endless editing. I've scanned some images I drew to use as background images in modeler. For those of you who wish to use them I have included them here. Make sure that your front and back view image are symetrical on the y axis so that you can use the mirror tool to create the other half of your geometry. Make sure also that your side view and front/back view are aligned as closely as possible. I choose to model to scale and have sized these images to 5'8". I find that working to scale aids later in surfacing.


Smooth-Shifting out a Breast:
I've begun to create the breast here by creating a surface that I will Smooth-Shift out into a breast. There are 6 outer edges to this surface though for more control I might have choosen eight.


Smooth-shifting is an easy way to quickly create more geometry. My settings are OFFSET = 0, and SMOOTHING = 200. SMOOTHING is set to 200 to avoid a problem that will mangle geometry when Smooth-Shifted with an OFFSET = 0.

After Smooth-Shifting the surface you need to move those faces and adjust those points to the background image geometry. This can be done roughly because you will need to edit it again after you have created all the geometry you need for the entire breast.

Polygon Smoothing or Subdivision Surfaces allow smooth organic surfaces to be created with reletively simple geometry. I will be using Metamation Plus on this model because I'm using Lightwave 5.6 for this tutorial.

Here's the Metanurbed breast to give you an idea of how the form is coming along. It took 8 Smooth-Shift Operations to form this example. I adjusted each level as I made it and then fine tuned the resultant form.

Anchoring the Breast:
I chose the breast as a starting point because we can make sure that it is anchored correctly to the torso, with all the geometry we need, and not have to edit the torso after we've already built it. Because it's an oblong rounded form set at aproximately a 45% to the front of the chest. Its just easier to build it correctly with out all the other geometry cluttering up the modeler views.

The underside of the breast needs geometry to anchor it to the torso so that it overlaps it in a natural way. These high-lighted faces have thier normals facing away from us. We will build our torso outwards from these.

Note: So far we've only used Quadrangles (four sided objects) in the construction of this model. Though we could use Triangles (and even Pentangles with Metamation Plus) It is better to avoid them because otherwise we would not get a decent representation of our final object by just pressing the Tab Key (turning Metanurbs on) You can see to the right that with a little thinking it's not hard to avoid triangles.


Mirror Tool:
Now that you have some polygons at about 0 on the X axis, you can see how well the two sides line up tangentally. Your points might not be exactly at 0 so in Point Selection mode select the points that you want to line up and hit Control v. In Polygon Selection Mode Mirror your object on the Y axis and Merge Points. Hitting Tab now should show you a good representation of your object so far. While the object is doubled you can make any edits you need to and then delete half of the model again for further modeling.


Model Along Natural Contour Lines:
Model along natural contour lines of the body. This will make it easier to control the shape of the body when fine tuning later, and help to avoid zig-zag shadows across surfaces that you intend to be smooth. If you need to make adjustments or morph targets at a later time, the model will be easier to understand and make changes to.

Note: The Drag Net tool is really useful when making morph-targets for organic forms. Odd point placements where points do not follow natural curves or where they are made to pull against each other so much that they don't represent well the area they control, can make using the Drag Net tool useless. I've had to edit heads in the past that were like that. The only option I had was to make the morph targets for it one point at a time. This is counter productive.