| All game characters wear some sort of outfitmore often than not these will be weird and wonderful and will require extra polygons. In Kila's case, we have some relatively simple additions to make. These include adding details to her crop top and jeans, as well as giving her a belt and a sash that drape her waist. Crop Top Details We'll enhance Kila's crop top and chest area by adding some cleavage, as well as a suggestion of a loose overhang at the waistline. Start with the cleavage area. In the concept drawing, the low-neck top shows a bit of cleavage. What we need to do is define the neck of her crop top to implement this cleavage. 1. | Using the Split Polygon tool, carve in the cuts shown in Figure 4.50 (right). These will allow us to edit the central area at the top of the cloth that bridges her breasts.
Figure 4.50. Cut the polygons. 
| 2. | Smooth out the extra edges you have createdall except the ones that will mark the top of the fabric. These are highlighted in Figure 4.51 on the left.
Figure 4.51. The cleavage, before and after 
| 3. | Start working on the area, sculpting it to achieve the correct shape. You're aiming for the result illustrated in Figure 4.51 on the right.
| 4. | Move the vertices down the center first, pulling them inward, using the side view to line them up with the curve of her torso (Figure 4.52).
Figure 4.52. Move the central vertices inward so they are in line with the torso. 
| 5. | Continue working your way out, smoothing the area, moving downward the vertex just above the line of the fabric; this creates the crevice. Remember to convert joining triangles back to quads.
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Notice in the concept drawing that the crop top is not skin tight, but rather is slightly loose at the bottom. We want to create this pointed "overhang." As shown in Figure 4.53, we'll focus in on the middle of her body. 1. | Following the lines highlighted in Figure 4.54, cut around the center of the body. Mark out the base of Kila's crop top, making sure that there are two parallel cuts encircling the entire body mesh.
Figure 4.54. Create two lines across her stomach, outlining the bottom of her crop top. 
| 2. | Scale the top line out and move it down, creating the overhang seen in Figure 4.55.
Figure 4.55. Create the overhang by moving the top line out and down. 
| 3. | When you created the initial cuts, some small edges will have been created; these in turn make up small polygons, like the ones in Figure 4.56 (top). It is best to get rid of these now, cleaning up the area.
Figure 4.56. Remove these small edges that were created by the cut. 
| 4. | Finally, spend some time smoothing out the general shape of the crop top (Figure 4.57).
Figure 4.57. Smooth out the rest of the crop top. 
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Figure 4.53. To create a loose overhang, work on the area at the middle of the body. 
With Kila's crop top completed, let's continue on down to the jeans, and the sash and belt that drape her waist. Separating the Jeans from the Body Our next clothing task is to model the character's jeans. We could model the left side and mirror it to create the right, as we did with her upper body. Although this would save time, it would present a few problems. First, the sash around her waist cannot be mirrored; it should be built into the waist because it fits snugly at every point from the waist to the opposite hip. Also, we will be building creases into the legs of her jeans, so it would be very obvious if we simply mirrored one side to create the other. Before we begin, we have to separate the jeans from the rest of Kila's body, then create a duplicate to become the right side, and combine the sides as we did for her head. 1. | Delete the mirrored instance if you have one, and select the polygons that will make up the jeans (Figure 4.58). This should be easy because you marked out the top of them earlier.
Figure 4.58. Select the polygons that will make up her jeans. 
| 2. | Go to Edit Polygons > Extract; this will separate the leg from the body. You should not have to open up the options and reconfigure them because they were saved the last time you used this tool.
| 3. | Next, you need a mirrored duplicate, so go to Polygons > Mirror Geometry. Again, you set the options last time you used this tool, so they should be at the same settings now. You don't have to open the options.
| 4. | Since you only need to work on her legs at this point, it makes things easier if you hide the rest of the geometry. So select everything but the legs and press Ctrl+H/Cmd+H.
| 5. | Double-check that the vertices down the center of the legs have merged correctly. If some have not, weld them now; smooth out the crease, too.
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Now we have a complete pair of legs and we can begin working in the clothing details. Creating the Sash Because the sash fits snugly all the way around, we can simply mark in the outline so we'll know where it will be on her form. It is made of thin material, so we don't need to create an overhang as we did with the T-shirt. Our task with the sash is to work on the general area, smoothing it out and tidying it up. Use the Split Polygon tool to mark in the outline for the sash. Follow the lines in Figure 4.59. I am sure your modeling skills are coming along wonderfully now, so I will leave this part up to you. Remember to remove any tiny polygons that have cropped up, and make the area as clean as possible. Your resulting mesh should resemble Figure 4.60. Figure 4.59. Mark in the outlines for the sash. 
Figure 4.60. Tidy up the sash, removing unwanted polygons and creating smooth lines. 
To finish the sash, we will create a couple of folds in the fabric on the outside of the leg. We can rely on the texture to create most of the folds, but these at the thigh are quite distinct, so we will build them into the geometry. 1. | Following Figure 4.61 as a guide, cut the polygons around the outside of her left thigh. You'll need two cuts for each fold. Follow these cuts around the leg, spanning two polygons, matching the cuts on the front.
Figure 4.61. Create more cuts in the outer thigh and build in two folds. 
| 2. | Select the vertices on the top of each cut and move them out, creating the upper part of the fold.
| 3. | Finally move the lower vertices up slightly to close the gap (Figure 4.61, bottom).
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Creating the Jeans Continuing on to the jeans now, we first need to get some idea of the creases in the jeans at the back of her knees, and also on the lower legs. You should have some references for this already on your style sheet. Better still, use the original color concept image (Figure 4.62). You can find this on the CD: Project Files/01/KilaColorRender.tif. Figure 4.62. Use the color concept image as reference for the creases in the jeans. 
Kila's upper thigh area is relatively flat, so we don't need to add any detail here. Like the folds on the sash, the creases in the jeans can be added when we apply texture. We can, however, build in some folds around the back of her knees. Move down to where her knees are; use the guide images to get the correct location. 1. | As you did for the folds on the sash, cut the polygons here at the knees to create two segments (Figure 4.63, left).
Figure 4.63. Creating folds in the denim around the back of the knees 
| 2. | Move the top of each segment out and the lower portion up, producing the two folds you can see in Figure 4.63, bottom. Because we combined the legs earlier, you will need to do this on each knee.
Moving around to the front of her legs, we will now build in some basic knees. These will function more toward deformation than for the overall look of the mesh.
| 3. | Cut the polygons as shown in Figure 4.64. Then pull out the upper section in the middle of the knee, creating a ridge.
Figure 4.64. Create a ridge at the front to act as her knee. 
| 4. | Adjust the overall knee areas, scaling them in slightly to get the correct shape (Figure 4.65).
Figure 4.65. The knee area is complete. 
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Now we get to the lower legs. This area needs quite a bit of enhancement to achieve realistic creases and folds. 5. | Following the progression in Figure 4.66, begin by creating a cut that will be the first fold in the jeans leg. Adjust the vertices around this first cut to fold the polygons at the front over the ones at the back. Move downward, adding in one fold at a time until you reach the bottom.
Figure 4.66. The steps for adding the folds into the bottom of the jeans leg 
| 6. | Rotating around to the back of the leg (Figure 4.67, left), you can see that not much needs to be added herejust a few creases at the bottom will do (Figure 4.67, right).
Figure 4.67. Add creases at the back of the leg. 
| 7. | Follow these same procedures for the right jeans leg, adding the extra detail to the lower leg. You can see this progression in Figure 4.68.
Figure 4.68. Add creases to the right leg of the jeans. 
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When they're finished, the legs of the jeans should look like Figure 4.69. Figure 4.69. The finished jeans 
After all this work, unhide everything and see how she looks. Check out Figure 4.70, left. Her feet seem wrong. They are shaped oddly; plus they are pointing forward. We want them to be pointing out slightly, as real feet do naturally. Figure 4.70. Make a small adjustment to the shoes and the position of the feet. 
Work a little on the shoes until they look more realistic (Figure 4.70, right) and then rotate each foot so the toes are pointing out slightly. You will also need to rotate the bottom of the jeans to match the feet. The Belt The belt is relatively simple. It's essentially just a cylinder that wraps diagonally around Kila's hips. 1. | Still in the same scene, create a cylinder with the following configuration: Radius 0.2, Height 0.05, Subdivisions Around Axis 14, Subdivisions Along Height 1, and Subdivisions On Caps 2.
| 2. | As shown in Figure 4.71, delete the central polygons; then scale the remaining vertices out to create a small rim.
Figure 4.71. Remove the center, and scale the remaining vertices out. 
| 3. | Position the cylinder as shown in Figure 4.72. Scale and rotate it until it just fits around her hip, draping diagonally.
Figure 4.72. Position the cylinder at Kila's hip, draping diagonally. 
| 4. | Working on the vertices, adjust the belt so it lies better (Figure 4.73).
Figure 4.73. Adjust the belt to fit tighter around her hips. 
At the point where the belt slings downward, we can actually see the inside. The problem here is that once this goes into a game engine, you may be able to see right through the belt. Because the polygons on the belt are being displayed as double-sided, we are fooled into thinking it is solid. Let's make it single-sided and see if we get an improvement.
| 5. | Select the belt and press Ctrl+A to open up the object's attributes (Figure 4.74).
Figure 4.74. Open up the belt's Attribute Editor. 
| 6. | In the Render Stats pane, uncheck the Double Sided option; this will show you how the belt will look when it is displayed single-sided, as will happen in some platforms (Figure 4.75, left).
Figure 4.75. Creating the inside of the lower belt 
| 7. | Using the Append to Polygon tool, fill in the gaps on the inside of the belt (Figure 4.74, right)but only do this at the base. The rest of the belt should lie quite close to the character's body, so we don't need to do the rest.
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And there we have it; our model of Kila is complete! You can see the finished model in Figure 4.76. Figure 4.76. The Kila model is complete. 
You can clean her up as we did before, by deleting the history. In addition, at this point you can also freeze the transforms. This will reset all translate and rotate values to 0 and all scale values to 1, without losing any of the position, rotation, scale, or pivot alterations done to the mesh so far. Save the file as Kila_Complete.mb. Although we're done working on this latest version of Kila, we have two more stages to go through before she can be signed off. In Chapter 5, we will examine optimization tasks, and in Chapter 6, we will look at deformation. |
