Tutorial 2 - Meshing

In today's tutorial, I have learnt how to crete a basic mesh in preparation for the creation of my own character. It was important to ensure that I understand how todo this properly because in next week's lesson, we are going to learn how to use the skin tool. 

First, I created a box object and ensured that it was seperated into three segments. In order to make it easier to see the segments, I changed the viewport from Smooth and Highlights to Wireframe: 

The next step was to convert the box into an Editable Poly and change the mode to vertex mode. The idea was to create a male torso shape by using the move tool to adjust the vertices. The image below shows my finished torso shape:

In order to create the head, I used the Extrude and Bevel tools to create an attached neck. The image below shows me part way through doing this:

Now it was time to finish the head using the same methods, however increasing the amount of bevel to form a basic head shape:

 It is advisable to start on the shoulders and arms next. So using the extrude and bevel techniques again, I pulled out the vertices to form the image below. If I needed to make adjustments, care had to be taen to ensure that the correct vertices were moved, otherwise they had to be realigned.

Finally, moving onto the legs and the feet. The same methods were used again:

As you can see, the legs are completely disproportionate to the rest of the body so I used the resize and the move tool to improve on this. After applying a TurboSmooth modifier, it was easier to see where the imperfections that need to be ironed out were:

• One leg and knee is detached from the rest of the body
• One of the arms is detached from the shoulder
• The neck is too long 
• The head is too big

After these adjustments were made, this is the final, basic mesh:

Next, I have to crate hands and feet and apply more detail to the face.