Modeling Cartoon Character

Create two boxes with the same size as the images with a width of 0. 4.Create a box in front view, segments 2-2-2: 5.Extrude the one side 4 times: 6.Begin to create the shape of the foot in the side view Weld 2 by 2 the vertex showed with weld target tool: 7.Extrude the polygones to create the beginning of the leg. Make invisibles all the edges on top to make easy the extrusion of the leg. Make a rotation in Z to the foot to give it its final position. Adjust the vertex to have the right shape of the foot. Round the beginning of the leg by moving vertex 8.in the top view, select these polygons Apply a slice modifier. Move the section plan in the right direction apply an editable mesh To select the other part apply a slice again and again a editable mesh 9.Select the new edges and apply a chamfer to double it Select the created poly and apply a mesh smooth group 2. 10.Extrude it in negative 2 times in local mode. Apply a uniform scale to resize it right 11.Extrude to create the legand adjust first in front view than in side view. Pay attention to round correctly the leg. 12.Extrude multiple times to create the knees than extrude to create the upper leg So you must have this shape. 13.Extrude to the up and next to the right. delete the polygons in the symetry axe. to check if the vertex are rightly aligned to the symetry axe select them and make a non uniform scale of 0 in x axe: 14.Make an instance copy to see all the body. 15.Adjust the back vertex to crete the bottom back and check that there are only 4 edges polygons if it is needed weld the vertex make invisible the edges badly placed 15.Add the edge as this to define the bottom front 16.Continue the extrudion of the body: 17.To prepare the extrudion of the arm, make a chamfer in a vertex on side view: 18.Add these two edges to improve the geometry: 19.Extrude in face view a first time, 20.A second time : make a rotate on the polygons 21.Begin the extrusion of the arm: 22.Continue the extrusion by going a little bit back: 23.For the bend, do multiple little extrude: 24.Extrude last part of the arm in front. end with multiple extrusion for the wrist. 24.To make the chest : weld with weld target the 2 vertex here: 25.Add with cut edge a series of edges: 26.Make these two edges invisible: 27.Create the breast by moving this vertex to the front: 28.Add these series of edges: 29.Create these edges with cut edges: 30.Adjust these vertex in side view: 31.Add these two series of edges: 32.Improve the geometry to have only polygons with 4 edges: 32.To mark the breast ,create these series of edges: 33.Mark the other part with these series of edges: 34.Select the vertex in the symetry axe and make a non uniform scale of 0 in the X axe(to align teh vertex): 35.Make a copy in symetry and weld the central points: The body is almost finished: 36.Make a chamfer with the vertex in top of the bottom back Than add these edges with cut to remove the polygons with 5 edges: 37.Extrude multiple times to create the tail: 38.End with a series of bevel and end by weld the vertex at the end: So we obtain the body: .Begin with a box:

2.With chamfer, double the edges of one side:

3.In the top view track the vertex to the rearand weld them on two sides with weld target:

4.Extrude 4 times to create the fingers:

5.Begin to give the shape to the base of the hand, prepared the extrusion of the inch:

6.Extrude the inch:

7.Select the polygons as this and make a slice plane. Place the section plan in the right direction and click slice. Deactivate slice plane(It is as the slice modifier) Do this for all fingers:

8.Add these series of edges on top of the hand:

9.In the bottom begin by make invisible these edges:

10.Cut these edges:

11.With cut add these series of edges:

12.On the other side add these series of edges:

13.Rounded the fingers by selecting the vertex and scale non uniformein the Z axe:

14.In the side view, select the vertex and rotate them to make the fingers more rounded:

15.Adjust the length of the fingers. Rotate a little bit in z (the fingers are not rightly aligned to the hand)

16.Select all the edges of the articulations (in version 5 and upper use the loop tool):

17.in the top view an in the bottom view adjust the vertex as this:

18.Chamfer the center edge:

19.Extrude the polygones 2 times with each times a scale uniform:

20.With cut edge, add these edges to the end of the fingers and weld the vertex in the center:

21.Pull the edges like this:

22.make invisible the edge in the ceneter and visible these 2 edges:

23.End by adjusting the shape of the hand. Extrude 1 time to create the wrist:

24.Place it right and attach it with the body (see the body part) weld the vertex 2 by 2 if the number of vertex are different add the missing vertex by using the cut edge.

bat

1. First download racket image, something like front blueprint and then create plane in front view. Dimensions of plane must be the same with dimensions of picture.





2.In this picture it is more clear what I meant to say. As you can see I placed racket image in diffuse map slot and then assigned this material to plane object.






3. Create basic object like that will present top part of a racket.






4.Apply Edit Mesh modifier to it. With selected Edge option select out edges of object and then hold
Shift and drag. Try to have something like this.






5. The right part of racket in this picture is basically result of step 4 that is repeated several times ( 8 times to be precise). Whit selected one half click on Mirror button on main toolbar and chose Instance option.






6. Select polygons that are marked, hold shift and drag down a little bit and chose Clone to Element. After that select vertex and replace them to follow shape of a racket.






7. Repeat step 6 one more time and this is something I hope you get.






8. Select vertex of these three parts and close them up to each other. After that select all vertex that are blended together, you should have 12 of them, and then Click Weld button under the Edit Geometry properties.






9. In this step use method: select edge and hold Shift and drag and weld vertex wherever they blend. Here is a result.






10. Again, select edge + Shift + drag, but this time don’t weld vertex that blend. Here is a result.






11. Select these polygons and go to Edit Geometry and chose Slice Plane option. Rotate it like shown and click Slice.






12. After all this is done select one half and delete it. Again mirror the half that is left but this time chose Copy option and attach these two objects. Again, weld vertex that blend. Apply Turbo Smooth modifier.






13. To create handle draw cylinder like this and set sides to 6.








15. Right click on line and go to Convert to Edit Spline. After that select segment under the little plus in modifier list and select line object. Go to Geometry and type 18 in Divide slot, and click Divide. Place vertex to fit the wire of a racket.






16. Go to Tools and chose Array option. Window will show up. Under the Type of Object chose Copy. Under the Array Dimensions chose 1D and type 15. Click Preview and set x parameter to fit your scene.






17. Create one horizontal wire line and set Divide to 15. Repeat step 16, but this time type 18 right to 1D option.






18. This part is tricky and is hard to explain. Attach all horizontal line to one object and all vertical to one, then select vertex and try to place them like this.






19. Create little tube like this for net holder.







20. Copy it several times and place them like this.






21. I hope you recognize this part of racket. Select middle edge in racket profile and go to Edit Geometry and Chamfer it a little bit. Now, as shown select new created polygons and extrude them inside the racket.






22. This is a result you should get






23. Now, create tube object and scale it along Y axis, here is a result.






24. Attach horizontal and vertical wire lines to one object. Go to Compound Objects and chose Boolean option. Pick tube object for OperandB.






25. Create this simple stitch using Shape modeling and copy it several times.






26. Finally, this is a completed tennis racket

eyes

In this tutorial I will cover some of the interesting steps of this project.
I will cover modeling and rigging in general, texturing, working with complex hairs, rendering and compositing.
I will also share a few tips and tricks as I show the process.
(click on the thumbnails to see the full chapter's images)


The first step (as always) was to get a good reference. My friend Ella who is actually a model was kind enough to pose for me to get all the reference. I needed. Setting up good reference. for modeling (and for texturing later on) is an important step to do correctly. It is quite impossible to take a "perfect photo reference." because the camera will always have a certain perspective distortion. Also, the front and side images can never align perfectly so I did my best to set them up correctly based on elements like the eyes, nose, lips, and ears. for these reasons, these images only served as guidelines while modeling.
Even though this project is about a head portrait, I've decided to go all the way and make a full body first to save work for my next projects. To maximize my flexibility for later on, I've went ahead and made a quick rig for the model. I've used Biped for bones and did a quick skinning (its not perfect but It's good enough for initial posing, I'll probably use Zbrush to fix badly deformed areas). I've went ahead and created several morph targets to help me find my final expression quickly later on. Since the eyebrows and eyelashes were modeled separately, I found it very frustrating to get them to move correctly with the skin. The only solution that worked well for me was to break them into small groups and attach to.

	Uv mapping actually came before rigging. When I've reached the point I've decided the modeling is done, I've unwrapped the model before breaking the symmetry so that I only worked on half the model and this way I'll get pretty symmetrical mapping as well. I've used Pelt to determine where the seams will go and together with a little bit of relaxing and hand pulling of a few UV points, the uv chunks were perfectly ready with only a few very minor stretches. After the initial mapping was good enough, I broke the symmetry and went on to arrange the UV pieces as efficiently as possible. Since fine details on the face are more important, I've decided to break the head from the body and give it much more UV space. After making sure i've minimized the Stretches., had as few seams as possible and used up as much of the uv space as I can without having any overlaps I've decided its time to start painting the textures. I started off by sampling many of the elements from the many reference. pictures I first used for modeling, I've then sort of "flattened" the image, took out the contrast and minimized the highlights and shadows, this gave me a rough initial background for the textures. Next step would be to paint the "shades" - where the skin is generally brighter, darker, redder etc'. At this point it was time for me to start working on the finer details. a method I've used allot for this was to create many different pattern layers for freckles, spots, veins and other skin abnormalities, add a black mask to delete it and then slowly bring it back manually with low opacity white brush strokes. To create bump and specular maps I simply desaturated all the color map layers and changed their value and contrast accordingly, only minor local painting was required afterwards.

	Hair
	When I Started working on the hairs I've approached it as I always do. The first step was to clone the polygons that will grow hairs from the head to a new unrenderable mesh. I then added hairs and started combing and testing many different possibilities. A few pointers when working with max's hair: variation - this is the key to make your hair look interesting. Always try to test out how much you can push parameters that will create variations in your hair such as: rand scale, hue / value variation, frizz tip, randomize etc'. Passes - it is often recommended to test how your hair looks when more than one pass is used. The higher the parameter, the softer the hair will render. Multi strand parameters - Hair often tends to clamp up and this feature simulates it nicely. I usually turn it on with root slay having a larger parameter than tip slay. Lights and shadows of your scene will make all the difference about how your hair's gonna render. usually using spotlights with shadow maps are ideal for hairs. An important decision that always needs to be made when working with hairs is if you want to render the hairs at buffer or MR prim mode. buffer usually renders faster and looks softer but MR prim works well with many different light and shadow types. At a certain point I was struck with frustration when I realized that this method is good but it doesn't allow me full freedom and control to design the hair specifically as I want. That's when I came to realize I can work with many smaller groups of hairs instead and control them by splines. I started up by creating 1 spline which acts like the profile of the hair's shape and cloned it twice to 3 different elements that will control the hair. I've added hairs and pretty much used similar parameters as before. Shaping the hair to specific shapes was easy this way. I've clone the hair pieces many times to smaller and larger parts and re-adjusted every piece until I was happy with how it turned out. For extra touches, I've added a few more groups for random single hairs to give it a little more "natural messy" feel.

	Rendering and compositing.
	The image was basically done with the hit of the render button but rendering many different passes allowed me some more fine tuning which was necessary mostly for high res details. I've rendered many different passes and used masks in photoshop to determine where and how much each pass is used. A few pointers about some of them - Specular - I've rendered this pass by turning off all the color maps and setting the diffuse to black (yep, using the built in pass rendering doesn't seam to like working with the SSS materials) I used this pass to control the level of highlights at different parts of the image. Falloff - Rendered the same way, only specular was turned off and I threw a falloff map in the reflection slot. This pass served to fake the "peach fuzz" effect at certain edges. When used correctly, it slightly gives an "oily" feeling to the skin. Hair - I've rendered out each and every piece of hair separately so that I'll have very good control over the colors of the hair in photoshop. Occlusion pass - this pass helped a bit to add more depth to the geometry. I wrote a tutorial on how I use it. Hair occlusion - Same as above. In order for the hair to render out correctly in the occlusion pass, you need to select your hair, under the "MR parameters" turn on "apply mr shader" and place your occlusion material there (you need to be in MR prim mode). Peach fuzz - This pass was rendered out for extra skin details that mainly show in the full resolution. I used a mask to make it show up only in areas it usually shows up like on the the lip or the chin. That's it, after combining all the passes together, I went through some color correcting and some local fine tuning and this is the result (50% resolution). I hope this was informative and interesting for you.