Modelling tutorial, in 4,398 easy steps!

[neener]

Okay, so I'm going to start adding mini tutorials to this thread, showing the basic sequence of events I go through when I make a character. I don't know how many steps there'll be, but I figured it was better to upload them as I get through them, instead of waiting til the end to post them all. I wanted to get your first thoughts on it, so I can clear things up for the tutorial forum.

Anyway, so..

STEP ONE - PREPARATION!

First things first: If you're modelling anything without reference material, stop it right now! Just about every artist in every medium uses some sort of reference, be it prelimenary sketches, blueprints, even those little wooden mannequins you can move into sex positions. It's very easy to use references with 3D graphics, so if you've got into the habit of just opening up Max and modelling blind, get out of it as soon as possible.

The first thing you should do is draw up what you want to model, as a template to work over later.

Since I'm making a humanoid, I drew him in the universal position from the front and the side. Note that I tried to keep the proportions equal in both pictures, so that the body parts line up. Essentially, you want this picture to be a schematic of your character. Also note that it doesn't have to be a GOOD picture, nor does it even have to be complete. There was no point drawing a second arm, when I can just make one in Max and copy it.

The next step is to get that picture into Max to use as a template.

In Max, Create a Plane

and drag it out in the Front viewport. Since we're doing this for Civ, line the Plane up so the bottom touches 0 on the X co-ordinate (the thick black horizontal line on the grid) and the middle of the Plane is at 0 on the Y co-ordinate (the thick black vertical line) like so:

With the Plane selected, switch over to the Modify tab and click the pull down Modifier List menu. Find the "UVW Map" and select it.

This allows you to project an image onto your plane, which we'll do in a second, but first we need to tweak it a tiny bit.

On the right hand side, with the UVW Map modifier still selected, scroll down and click the Bitmap Fit button. This basically tells Max to fit the modifier to a graphic file of your choosing.

You'll be asked to pick a 'bitmap' (really it's any image file, it doesn't have to be a .bmp file), so go and find the template you drew earlier, and select it. Now we need to actually apply the image to the plane, so open the Material Editor (just press the M key on your keyboard) and click on this little button:

It'll ask you to pick a Material, so pick Bitmap right at the top, and find the template picture you drew. You'll see the picture appear wrapped around the sphere in the Material Editor. Click and drag that picture onto the plane in your scene and it will apply it. However, you probably won't be able to see it, because the Material isn't set up for it, so we click this little button:

This changes the Material to make it show up in your scene. You should be able to see it applied to the plane now. If you still can't see it in your Front viewport, you might need to change the viewing options to Smooth & Highlights. Right click on the viewport name in the top left corner, and select Smooth & Highlight.

The picture should now show in your Front viewport. However, it probably won't be centred, and we need it to be, so there's still more tweaking to do!

In the Modifier Stack, which is the list on the right side of all the modifiers you've applied, expand the UVW Map modifier and click on Gizmo.

The Gizmo is a little device which controls the exact placement of the UVW Map. When you click it, you should notice a little yellow box appear on the Plane, with a green line on one edge. Click the Move tool and move your Gizmo over so that the Goblin (or whatever you're modelling) is centred, like so:

Note that I also moved it down so that his feet actually lie on the 0 co-ordinate.

That's the end of tweaking the UVW Map, but now we need the side view too. Luckily, we don't have to go through all that hard work again, because we can just copy the existing plane, including all its modifiers.

Press Control + V on your keyboard and you'll instantly Clone the selected object. We now have two Planes, but we need to turn the cloned one to a right angle. So, in the Top viewport, with the new Plane selected, right click on the Rotate tool. You'll get a little dialogue box with 6 options. In Absolute:World, in the Z box, type -90 and press enter. You'll see the Plane turn, so the two Planes look something like this:

Note, I moved the new plane over to the side a little, so the two Planes form a T shape instead of a + shape, but that's really just personal preference. If the side-on picture of your character isn't centred in the new Plane, then just go to the Gizmo like we did before and move it to the side. You should get the idea from the above picture.

And then you're done with the Planes! Theoretically, you could just leave it there and start modelling your character, but you'll probably regret it in the long run as it can be hard to make out details, and the texture can warp slightly as you move around in 3D. It pays to take a few more steps and make life much easier in the end, so on we go.

Click back to the Create tab, and click the Shapes button to see the below set of objects. Pick Line.

Now you simply start to draw lines around your templates in the Front and Side viewports, sketching out the details with Lines as if you were tracing it on paper. Keep going until you've drawn many lines all over it to form the picture, as shown below. If you find that you've started drawing a line and suddenly you're at the edge of the screen and have no way of scrolling over ot keep drawing, simply press the I key on your keyboard. That will centre the viewport on your cursor, wherever it is. That way you can keep drawing lines without needing to stop,close the line, scroll and then start again. Great timesaver! Also, at any point you can right-click on the viewport name and change back to Wireframe so that it's easier to see which lines you have.

When you have all the lines for both side and front views completed, you can delete the Planes because we don't need them anymore. But they're still an inconvenient jumble of lines, so let's put them together.

In the Front viewport, right click on any of the Lines and select Convert To: Editable Spline.

Once that's done, you can scroll down on the right side to the Attach option. Click that.

Now click on all the other lines in the Front viewport. You'll slowly attach them all together into one big super Line! Be carefuly not to select any of the Lines that make up the side view, though, as you want the two to be separate.

When that's done, go to the side viewport and repeat the process, attaching all those Lines together. You should end up with two Lines, one is the front view of your character and the other is the side view:

Again, I moved them apart because I prefer it that way, but you get the idea.

And that's the end of this first section of the tutorial. Now that we have those two templates properly adapted into Max, we can use them to make life much easier when we start to create our character, which I'll go into in the next step.

 

[Kael]

This is to good to be in a private forum. You should move this out to the how to forum.

 

[neener]

This is to good to be in a private forum. You should move this out to the how to forum.

You think I should do that already? As I said in the opening paragraph, I was planning on getting feedback first. I figured some parts might be confusing or not compatible with older versions of Max, and that I should run it by the guys here first. Also, I thought it'd make more sense to put them in the Tutorial forum when the whole thing is done, instead of in pieces. But I'll just copy it over if people think it's better that way?

 

[Rabbit, White]

First of all, awesome!

Second, I don't see anything wrong with putting a rough draft here first. Though there's probably no need to finish the whole thing first, since it might be very big, but depending on the parts you might be able to combine them into "lessons" before publishing on public forums.

In any case, I'm gonna go over each as you publish and give you feedback.

I must say, I still haven't gone over this first part (gonna do that tomorrow) but I find it interesting that you converted the sketch into max splines to use as reference (if I understand correctly from the quick overview I did). This is definitely not something I ever read in any tutorial (they always go straight from a sketch (on a plane) to building the thing). Anyway, it kinda makes more sense really and I'm curious to see how it'll affect the process later on.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

If you want I can move this thread to the tutorials, just tell me
Edit: that means I believe I can since I got thread tools to move a thread but never used them before.
Edit: no I can't seems I can only move threads if I started them, nevermind. You will have to copy that yourself if you want that tutorial public.

 

[neener]

PART 2 - BASIC MODELLING!

Okay, so in this tutorial I'm going to try and show some of the basic modelling techniques that I use. Please bear in mind that this is only one of many possible techniques, and is by no means the One True Path To 3D Zen. It's just the one that a lot of people prefer.

Oh, one thing, hopefully you'll all understand the screenshots. After posting the last tutorial I found out you're only allowed 15 pictures per post, so I'm trying to combine multiple things into each screenshot, so possibly they'll get a bit jumbled.

Anyway, so we pick up right after the end of the last tutorial. The next thing to do is start actually modelling. My preferred method of starting out an organic character is with 'splines'. Which are basically just 3D lines, like the ones we traced around the character. So go to Create, and Shapes, just like before, but this time click on Circle. Then, in the Front viewport, create a Circle at your templates waist. Using both the Left and Front viewports, rotate it and scale it so that it fits the template from both views.

When you're comfortable with the placement, hold down the shift key and move the Circle halfway up the character's body. This will Clone the Circle. Again, scale it and rotate it if you need to, to make it fit both the front and side templates. Once more, hold shift and move the Circle to clone it up around the shoulders of the character. You should end up with something like this:

Now that we have all three Circles, we're going to attach them together. Just convert one to an Editable Spline like we did before, and use the Attach button to make them into one object. However, make sure you start at one end and attach, in order, to the other end. If you attach them out of order, you'll get very weird results when you do the next step, so make sure you don't!

After they're connected into one object, we're going to apply the Cross Section modifier. Find it in the list and select it, and use the Linear setting. This lovely little modifier will connect up all three circles into a kind of cage shape. The more eagle-eyed readers will already be able to see the character coming to shape!

Next, we apply another modifier called Surface. Find that and apply it. This modifier, as the name suggests, creates a surface of polygons all across the cage. However, by default it probably creates way too many polygons, so on the right hand side, lower the Steps to 1. Also, make sure Remove Interior Patches is ticked. As for Flip Normals, that just depends on your scene. Depending on the order you joined the Circles together, you'll either end up with a normal mesh, or you'll have one that's inside out. Just take a look at it and you should be able to work it out. If it's inside out, tick the Flip Normals box, and it'll look right again.

Now we have a base for our modelling, we're going to convert it to an Editable Mesh. Right click the body and select Convert to Editable Mesh (obviously!). While we're at it, right click it again and select Properties. In the box that pops up, in the Display Properties section, un-tick "Edges Only". This will let you see all the little lines on your model, instead of just some of them. It's almost impossible to model without being able to see all the lines, so get used to doing this.

Now that we have an Editable Mesh, I'm going to run you through each of the editing 'modes', as we keep working on the model.

First up, Vertex mode!

Select Vertex from the right hand menu, and you'll see a blue dot on every vertex. Make sure Ignore Backfacing is turned off here. When Ignore Backfacing is turned on, you will only be able to select parts of the model that are facing you, whereas if you turn it off, you'll find yourself selecting parts of the model on the opposite side of the model. There are times where each come in handy. For now, make sure it's turned off, and select the row of vertices shown in the screenshot below. They don't need any adjusting in the Front viewport, but in the Left viewport, scale them in slightly and rotate the whole row to fit the template.

While we're in Vertex mode, I'll also show you one of the other major tricks. If you look at the screenshot below, you'll notice that we really don't need the vertex I've selected on the left. So, select the Target button from the Weld section of the right-hand menu, and click and drag that vertex down on top of the one below it. This will weld the two vertices together, which is probably going to be your number one way of reducing detail on your model.

Note, you might also realise I've moved one of the vertices at the top of the character's back. Feel free to do the same.

Next, Line mode!

Switch to Line mode on the menu, then click the Turn button. Unsurprisingly, this will turn any line you click, so do that to the two lines I've selected in the screenshot below, so they run from the front of the model to the back, rather than across it. Note that I've turned Ignore Backfacing on now, because I don't want to accidentally turn lines that are on the other side of the model.

The reason we're turning these is because we want the model to be symmetrical. You'll see why soon. I'll also show you how to Divide lines later.

First though, we move onto Face mode!

Pick Faces on the menu, and with Ignore Backfacing turned off, simply select the entire right hand side of the model and press the delete key. Yep, just delete that whole side. This is why we wanted the model to be symmetrical. It just doesn't make sense to double our workload by making changes to both sides of the character, so instead we'll just copy the side we're working on. This is also why I only drew one arm on the original template. While we're still in Face mode, move your view around so you can see the bottom of the model, select all the faces on the bottom, and delete them. You should end up with an open hole going up inside the body.

Before we copy the side we're working on, it makes sense to build it up a little bit first. So go back to Create and pick Circle again, and start making another spline cage like we did before (using Cross Section and Surface modifiers), only this time do it for the lower half of the character.

Just as we did before, convert the objects to Editable Meshes and move/scale/rotate the vertices to fit the template. As you can see in the screenshot below, I've adjusted both the robes and the arm to be somewhat similar to the template. They don't have to be perfect, of course. There's plenty of time for finetuning later. Again, select all the faces on top of the robes and delete them, so there's an open hole going down into the robes. Do the same for both ends of the arm, so that it's kind of like a hollow tube.

Attach all three sections together to form one object. Don't worry about the seams between the sections just yet. We'll get to those. When you've attached them, click the Mirror button on the toolbar across the top of the screen. A window will pop up, and you want to choose Instance. If you pick No Copy, you'll just flip the object horizontally, and if you pick Copy you'll simply create a second copy of the object. However, if you pick Instance, then you create a copy which is constantly updated. Every change you make to one side will be mirrored on the other side. This means half as much work for you!

Note, you may find that when you create the copy, it moved way off to the side for no particular reason. If so, either use the Offset option like I did in the screenshot, or simply click OK and then move it yourself. So long as they line back up as close as possible, it's ok.

Now we need to fix those ugly gaps in our model. Remember how we welded vertices before with the Target weld button? Well, we could do that all the way around, but this is a good opportunity to show you the other type of weld, which is Selected.

Change to Vertex mode and select two vertices on either side of a seam in the model. I've chosen two at the waist of the character. Make sure they're on opposite sides of the seam, in case that isn't clear in the picture. This process is a lot like sewing up a tear in some fabric.

With both vertices selected, use the Scale tool to scale them as close together as possible. They might move slowly, so just scale scale scale scale scale. Then, when you think they're very close together, scroll down the menu to the Weld section, and click the Selected button. If the vertices are close enough together, they'll weld into one. If they're not close enough together, you'll get a message saying that "no vertices were within the weld threshold". If so, just scale them closer together, or gradually increase the threshold (the number to the right of the Selected button) until they weld together.

This is a handy tool in many situations, so use it to go around the whole waist and weld the seam shut. Don't bother doing the arm and shoulder yet, though. They don't match up properly yet and welding them as they are would be disastrous, so just leave it unattached until later.

I've covered most of the basics now, but I'll just show you a few more tricks that modellers use. I promised I'd show you how to Divide lines, so I'll do that now.

In Line mode, click the Divide button from the menu and click on the line you want to Divide. It's that simple! Doing so will add a vertex, thereby dividing the line in half and adding two polygons. In the screenshot below you can see the line I chose on the character's waist (on the left). And then at the top right of the picture, you can see what it looks like after I've divided it. Notice that in doing so I've ended up with a line that looks a bit out of place, so I'm going to Turn it (as shown in the bottom right of the screenshot). Doing this keeps the model tidy, which is much more important than you might think, especially when it comes to texturing and animating the character. Any time you add detail to your model like this, check it to see if any new lines need turning.

Carry on dividing the lines at the waist, like I've done in the next screenshot, and then turn the lines to the right position. Continue like that around the back of the model and before you know it, you've made room for a belt!

Using Divide and Turn is the absolute best way of adding detail to your mesh, and you'll use it all the time. You have tons of control over the model that way, and it makes the process much more akin to sculpting, which is how it should be.

That's it for this lesson! I'll carry on with the model next time. I know it doesn't look like much yet, but hopefully once we get some more detail it'll come together. Let me know what you thought of all this, too!

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

This is absolutely wonderful neener!! You're my new hero!
i have learnt SOOO much in these 2 tutorials. (i would also like to ask: could you do a skinning tutorial in detail like these? i tried to follow duke's, but i got lost on the last step , the flattened mapping thing was really confusing)

I assume you could apply these tutorials to buildings also.

 

[neener]

This is absolutely wonderful neener!! You're my new hero!
i have learnt SOOO much in these 2 tutorials.

Cool! Glad to hear they're proving useful

(i would also like to ask: could you do a skinning tutorial in detail like these? i tried to follow duke's, but i got lost on the last step , the flattened mapping thing was really confusing)

Yep, that's going to be part of the process. Skinning and Animating come after the Modelling. I'm still not entirely sure what I'll do with Animating, because it's by far my weakest area.

I assume you could apply these tutorials to buildings also.

Yeah, most of it definitely. The spline cage stuff is better suited to organic modelling because it fits the curves better. For buildings (or, at least, human buildings) most people would probably use box modelling, which I'll try and do more of in the next tutorial.

 

[woodelf]

Thanks neener. I don't have access to max (at work) so I can't put this to use, but I'm going to print it out!

 

[woodelf]

I've never done any Spline modeling so this is going to be quite a learning tool! This is awesome.

 

[woodelf]

Not to be a complete fanboy , but this is 20 pages of exactly what I needed! Nothing online or in any books I've read even comes close.

I have it c/p into a Word file if anyone wants it.

Thanks god for my color printer at work.

 

[seZereth]

wow, that looks quiete nice i think we can expect some really great models soon. and perhaps with this woodelf will be soon lvl 6 or 7 or 8 how long do you take for a model like that goblin, and howlong does t take to draw that sketch?! (doyou do that with photoshop or what tool do you use?!)

(now we got some really good programmers and a really good artist, i think in the near future i will become quiete obsolet...)

 

[neener]

Not to be a complete fanboy , but this is 20 pages of exactly what I needed! Nothing online or in any books I've read even comes close.

Thanks for the kind words!

I have it c/p into a Word file if anyone wants it.

Ooh, that's a good idea actually. Maybe when I've finished them all, you can do that for me, so people have the option of which format they prefer.

how long do you take for a model like that goblin, and howlong does t take to draw that sketch?! (doyou do that with photoshop or what tool do you use?!)

If I did the model properly, in work conditions, it would probably take me a few hours to finish. However, I never do it in work conditions, I sit here watching TV, reading websites, talking to my girlfriend, stopping to take the dog for a walk or to cook, etc etc, so in the end it takes me a whole day, usually. As for the sketch, it took me a few hours under the same sort of conditions. It's a pretty rough sketch, it's just blobs of paint with very little detail. You can see how lazy I got with the side view, especially the lower robes and feet. Oh, and yes, it's in Photoshop.

(now we got some really good programmers and a really good artist, i think in the near future i will become quiete obsolet...)

No way, dude! You're like the NIFViewer kung fu master. As I've said before, I don't know the exact plans for this mod, but I've always thought it would be cool for each race to have almost all of the units they can have in the real Warhammer game. For that to happen, we're going to need some NIFViewer creativity!

 

[Rabbit, White]

wow, that looks quiete nice i think we can expect some really great models soon. and perhaps with this woodelf will be soon lvl 6 or 7 or 8 how long do you take for a model like that goblin, and howlong does t take to draw that sketch?! (doyou do that with photoshop or what tool do you use?!)

(now we got some really good programmers and a really good artist, i think in the near future i will become quiete obsolet...)

Ditto here

On the plus side, maybe I'll get a chance to play a game of civ4 or two

 

[neener]

I thought you had Max, Rabbit? How could you be obsolete?!

 

[woodelf]

No way nifviewer and skinners ever become obsolete. Once this tutorial comes out everyone will pass me on noob lvl3.

 

[Gerikes]

No way nifviewer and skinners ever become obsolete. Once this tutorial comes out everyone will pass me on noob lvl3.

What the? Hey, did I miss the vote for making you noob lvl3?

Well, looks like you made it without me anyway

 

[woodelf]

It was a private ballot.

If I ever animate something we can have a public vote.

 

[seZereth]

ok, thats cool... cant wait to see something finished from you, and you know with nifviewer it is enough if you create some more diverse heads and armorparts / weapons i can switch it... what i really need is a humanoid model, like the scout from civ4 but without backpack and without skirt, so an ancient model that wears only trousers... actually we dont have this yet

 

[neener]

Here we go again! Since nobody has asked me to clarify anything in the tutorials yet, I'm probably going to try and speed things up a bit and skip some of the screenshots that just repeat things from earlier.

Part 3 - More Modelling!

Okay, so I mentioned that we'd connect the arm later, and now seems like a good time to do that.

Move round to the back of the character and grab the two vertices shown in the picture. Use the Move tool to pull them closer to the arm, and bring them up a little too. In real life, your body isn't really cylindrical, as your back is much flatter than your chest, so it makes sense to do the same with your model.

Using the Divide Line technique I mentioned in the previous tutorial, try to go around the area of the body where the arm will connect up, and add vertices to create a kind of 'socket' for the arm to connect with. You can kind of see what I mean in the screenshot below. Notice how I've moved vertices, and added new ones, to line up with the arm.

Select the faces I did in the picture and delete them. The arm is going to connect up there so we don't need them. Go ahead and attach the arm, and weld the seam shut like we did before.

Now to give our little goblin some hands. First of all, take a look at the wrist. There's no way we need all those vertices all the way around, so let's reduce some of the detail. At the moment, we have 8 vertices around the wrist, and we only really need 4. Weld them into 4 vertices like I have done below.

So now we're going to make the hands. Since there's no reason to animate the opening or closing of hands in Civ, we're just going to model them as clenched fists. It's easier, and saves us a bunch of polygons too.

Hopefully the image below will make sense as I explain it. First of all, with the open lines of the wrist selected, hold down the Shift key and move them over (in the Front viewport, ideally). This will extend the mesh as you can see in the second part of the picture. Now, because we don't want his hands to look like pegs, we're going to rotate the open line 45 degrees so that it's more of a square shape, as opposed to a 'diamond' shape. Again, you can see this in the third part of the picture. Unfortunately, doing that has given us a bunch of really messy lines which we need to sort out. So move around the wrist area and turn the lines as you can see in the fourth part of the picture. Next, hold down the Shift key again and move the open edges a little further on, before scaling them down slightly, as shown in the final part of the picture. Feel free to tweak the vertices slightly to get them into a shape that looks roughly like a hand.

And now I show you another little trick! We obviously have an open hole at the end of our hand, which we need to fix. So we're going to just create some faces out of thin air.

In Face mode, click the Create button. This will show you all the vertices on the model. By clicking on three vertices in succession, you'll create a face between them. So click on the vertices I showed in the picture below. Now, it's important that you do them counter-clockwise, in the order I do them. If you click the vertices clockwise, then the face will end up facing the other direction, towards the inside of the model. Create another face to fill in what's left of the hole.

Our goblin might have some hands, but he still doesn't have a head, so let's try and fix that now.

I was tempted to try and model it using spline cages, but I decided it was a little too oddly-shaped for it to work, so instead I'll show you how to use basic shapes to your advantage.

Go to the Create menu, and click on GeoSphere. Make sure you select the "Octa" geodesic type, and lower the Segments to 3. The reason we're using Octa is because it uses far fewer polygons to achieve roughly the same shape. Using the Icosa type would give us a sphere of about 160 polygons, while the Octa type is only around 70.

Drag the GeoSphere out to roughly the shape of the head in the template.

Convert it to an Editable Mesh and, in the side viewport, drag the vertices at the front and back of the sphere to where we want them to be in order to make the face. You can also delete the right hand side of the geosphere if you want, since the face is going to be symmetrical like the rest of the model.

You can see the face starting to take shape, but he definitely needs a nose. Divide the line at the front of the sphere and drag the vertex out to the tip of the template's nose, like I have done in the first part of the picture below.

Next, divide and turn the lines I've pointed out above in the side viewport, and then divide the next line/move the vertex in the front viewport, as you can see in the previous picture. I can't think of a better way to explain it than with that picture, so hopefully you can make sense of it. You should end up with a proper-looking nose.

Keep dragging vertices around to fit your template, like I did below. Also note that I've lined up the bottom of the sphere with the top of the body mesh, and then attached them together.

So far our entire model is still only about 570 polygons, which is ridiculously low, so let's start adding some detail, starting with the hood.

In Face mode, select the faces I have in the picture below. Scroll down the menu to the Extrude section, and click and hold on the little up arrow, and drag the mouse up a little bit. If you keep the mouse button held down, and you drag the cursor up a little, you'll have much better control over the extrusion. What this button does is basically push all the faces you selected up away from the model.

Now, we don't want the whole group of faces to lift up, we just want the edge of the hood to do it. So let's spin round to the back of the model and weld some of those vertices back together again. As you can see in the second part of the picture below, you should end up with just the front rim of the hood lifting up away from the model. Select the vertices along that rim, just like I have, and move them forward and down a little bit, to create a much cooler-looking overhanging hood.

You can use this same technique all over your model. Just extrude sections of faces, and then weld back one end of the newly extruded surface. Go nuts with it (within reason!) and you'll probably end up with something like this:

As you can see, I've extruded some ears for him, as well as bracers around his wrists. I extruded the belt that we created way back in an earlier tutorial, and I extruded his robes in several places. Also note that I gave him feet.

A lot of the detail in that model is probably unnecessary, to be honest, because it'll be lost at the default viewing level of Civ 4. The skin is going to be much, much more important in making the model look good in the game. However, even with such potentially pointless detail added, the whole model still only comes in at less than 700 polygons, so I don't feel too bad.

One last step I'm going to do, which I totally forgot about earlier, is that I'm going to add a little bit of detail to the elbow of our goblin. I could definitely leave it as it is right now, but because it's one of the most flexible parts of the human body, it's going to animate a little weirdly if I do. The arm will look really odd when it bends unless I add a little detail to the elbow. So, do what I've done in the screenshot below, dividing the lines of the elbow. What this does is mimics the loose skin on your own elbow, as it gives the model some extra stretch when the arm bends.

Ordinarily you would do this to the knees as well, but since our character doesn't really have any visible knees, it should be okay. I hope it will, anyway, but I guess I'll find out later.

In case you were wondering, we're going to leave our character as half a person right now. It's easier to unwrap one half of a character instead of two, so we'll wait until that's done before we join the two halves together.

And then you're done with the modelling!

Next step is going to be the long-awaited guide to UVW unwrapping and texporting.