I’ve been working on a deliberately simple human figure using subsurfs. It’s entirely based around cubes with just very basic modelling, the idea being to create a very simple base figure I can use to create meshes for use with more detailed work later, and for trialling animation.
Arms and legs and body went fine, with a little trial and error, and I don’t forsee any problem with the head (it will probably be a separate part anyhow).
But hands and feet.
What I basically need is four or five small cubes attached to one face of a larger cube. It’s that junction that I just can’t get to work. I need to avoid triangles since I’m working with subsurfs, and I’d really like a simple solution that won’t distort the eventual subsurf.
The small cubes need to be joined to the larger cube in such a manner that I can easily manipulate the vertices to reshape the hand/foot, so simply having them sitting on the large cube won’t work.
There has to be a way, but I’ve been beating myself over the head for so long I just can’t see one.
Please, someone show me a simple way to do this and make me feel REALLY stupid
Umm, that is 2-dimensional, but extruding that shape may do it for you
on the left is probably near where you are
in the middle there is enough detail on the main part for the finger
on the right I made the detail lower on the bottom side. This made the corners have too many edges coming out of them to smooth well. Ideally each vertex would have exactly 4 edges coming out of it. Only a torus is this way (and closed), and a human-torus wouldn’t look very accurate
I just figured out that that image was wrong. Humans have 5 fingers including the thumb, not five, and the thumb (or 6 fingers)
z3r0 d’s example above is perfect for feet, which I also have to model.
I’ve spent a little time trying to work out something similar for four fingers, but couldn’t come up with anything symmetrical. However, that may be irrelevant in this case depending on the placement of the thumb.
For symmetry my first attempt used the above pattern, minus the middle (extraneous) finger and with the two quads at the top centre shrunk down horizontally. It seems to produce a pretty smooth mesh but I’ll give my own. asymmetric solution a try as well at some stage to see which works best.
