Entry 8: Puppet Master Modelling Part 1

Since at the time of my last entry most of my deadlines had been hit, I was allowed to focus on other module deadlines, which is why its been a while since I lasted posted on the blog.

However, I have since completed the low poly modelling stage for the Puppet Master. This first post of two will show how I created his parts and the procedures that were followed to create him.

1: The Hat

So, carrying on from where we left off with the blockout model I created:

I decided to focus on the the simpler clothes of this character in order to get them out of the way first. I started off with the hat, which originally looked like this:

As you can see it was pretty basic at this point. The first step was to cut it in half, and extrude the polys upwards in the inner part of the hat. The inner ones are highlighted in the image below.

It took a little time, mainly in order to make sure the inner verts lined up with the outer ones closely. Once this was done, I mirrored the hat piece, attached the pieces together, and welded the verts so that the model would bow be complete, as you saw in the first image.

From here I want on to turbosmooth the hat in order to get a better shape for it. I liked the smoother shape it had acquired, however I felt that it it was too high poly with 1,120 polys and 2,240 tris.

I therefore went on to reduce the amount of polys the hat had, making 3 different versions: the original high poly, a medium poly, and a low poly hat. You can see the low and the high poly compared below:

The shape is lost slightly in the low poly, but not by a huge amount. I was much happier with the new 432 poly and 864 tri counts. To create the lower I removed a lot of the polygons I created for the inside part, as this wouldn't be seen by the player, and many of the loops on the outer layer.

Happy with the hat, I added it to the original blockout and applied a green material to it, to remind me that this piece was finished for now and that I could now move on to the next part. So in a way it acted as a progress bar of sorts, loading more of the green until the model was finished.

2: The buttons and bells

With this done the next parts I focused on where the yet to be created buttons found on the puppet Masters coat, and the bell attached to his head protrusion.

I began with the main buttons for his coat. I wanted to create ones with a slight spherical feel to them, instead of the flat ones that I used in my concept and turnaround.

The first step was to create a capsule from the extended shape selection and delete everything except the top spherical part.

Then went on to add in extra lines and using the extrusion tool both inwards and outwards in order to create the shapes I wanted.

The bottom section was capped, with lines and verts added in that joined up in the middle, and extruded this circle upwards to create the space for the clip that would attach the button to the coat.

For the clip, I originally attempted to create via extruding it and shaping it from the button itself. However, whenever I got close to completing it, an error would always occur which messed up the topology and could not be fixed:

So instead I created the clip piece separately and attached it to the button instead, which finished off this piece.

For the buttons on the coats arms, I simply created a cylinder, gave it a short height, added a few lines and chamfered them to get a circular effect.

Finally, for the tail bell I wasn't quite sure how to proceed at first. I wanted to created a proper bell, for example like one a cat would have, instead of my basic design within the concept. I had reference images of these kinds of bells whilst modelling the part in order to make it easier.

Progression of the tail bell. 

I started off with a sphere, and chopped it in half, making a small extrusion at the top for connecting it to the head protrusion.

However I quickly found this wasn't effective for what I was designing. So i made another sphere, chopped off the top, and extrude inwards. This made more sense, however I then had to move the verts around to make it match the shape of the outer layer.

I created a copy from the finished piece attached it, and stitched the two pieces together to  complete the bell shape. I decided not to create the ball piece that goes inside, as the puppet master, instead leaving it as a hollow bell to add to the air of mystery the character has.

With the bell complete, I added all the pieces to it, further adding to the finished green pieces on the models.

3: The Arms and Hands

Since I was planning to do the straps that are on the puppet masters torso and shoulders till later when the model was more developed, I went on to model the his arms and hands.

I started with the arms, which I previously left attached due to not knowing if they would work well topology wise when attached to the bodies.

The arm piece was relatively straightforward to do. I added topolgy to the elbow to make it more visible and to allow it to stretch and bend for animation purposes. I then capped the open space, extruded it inwards, and added geometry to make it spherical

I did this due to the fact the possibility of the puppet master's hands popping off was discussed in order to follow and control his puppet characters.

At this stage it was finished, however it wasn't highlighted green as of yet due to the fact I was considering attaching it to the main body later, so for now it was left as it was.

With this out of the way, I moved on to hands. In reflection out of all the pieces on this post so far, the hands were probably the most difficult to make. Hands aren't my strongest point when it comes to 3D modelling in Max, so it took a few attempts to get right.

I started off by taking the hand from the original blockout and adding in additional geometry. I then turbosmoothed it, however I wasn't happy with the result that it created, and decide to try a different method instead.

For my second attempt I followed a tutorial online, which although gave some nice looking geometry, also caused issues when it came to turbosmoothing and attempting to add in additional lines for geometry. It did however allow me to work out how to do the part of the glove the hand slips into. Again. I wasn't happy, and proceeded to try a different method out.

For the last attempt I found a different tutorial which worked perfectly for the style I wanted to go with, in which it allowed me to create a cartoony hand with space to create working geometry for animation purposes. You can see the initial version and the final edited version below:

With these finished I added them to my work in progress model.

Now as you can see at this point the model was about half way done. In the next post I'm going to show you the work for the final steps for the puppet masters head, torso and coat straps.