© 2010

• Freak tutorial •

Victorian freak overview
Page 01 - Starting off	Page 02 - Creating a template
Page 03 - Model and Detail	Page 04 - Mapping

2. Creating a Template

First I looked through my archive for a male model to use as a template. If you do decide to create alot of different human figure characters its worth your time creating ‘naked’ male and female template models. These will provide you with something to build from and save you a lot of time, rather than have to start from scratch. When you do create the template just work on one side of the body and use a symmetry modifier or a mirrored instance to see the result. Only one side of the mesh will be required for template models. For this model I also added a range of walk and run animations for skin testing, with the first frame being set for the 'Christ’, skin pose. For the mesh I used a stack that combined these modifiers - Symmetry - Skin - MeshSmooth This combination gave me the chance to test out the skin while allowing me to modify the mesh. Rather than having to apply and check all the time.*Tip*If required you can turn off a modifier giving more processing power. Or set the modifier to work only when rendering. This rule mostly applies to MeshSmooth, which slows down things even when not subdividing.

Good enough I tell myself. He won’t look that pretty soon. Notice the old school max.3 bones and a set of teeth. For animating, I used the 'Interactive IK' button to control when I wanted the inverse kinematics on and off. I found animating alot easier by setting a key to toggle it, then generated an icon for it on my main tool selection to know when it was on. I have to say I do prefer the old school approach for setting up bones and IK’s, with less IK helpers and bone constraints and set-ups, which can fill a scene up with lots of extra information and workload. But this is all just a question of taste.

Template skinning Because the template model has already got skinning I should at least say something about it. I know it may seem a little strange so soon in the tutorial, but bear with me this will help with the model process. Skin envelopes Alot of people poo-poo skin envelops. Mainly because they are not very precise, but for starting your model they are a good system for doing basic skinning, as they don’t mind you altering the mesh when dropping down a stack, unlike vertex weighting that can go NUTS if a new vertex has been introduced to the stack. Once you’re happy with a mesh you can then use the envelopes to convert into vertex weighting and do all the fiddly work. With the model I was building I found it didn’t need to use vertex weighting as the skin envelopes where affective enough.
	Envelope influences

Page 01 - Starting off	Page 02 - Creating a template
Page 03 - Model and Detail	Page 04 - Mapping