Tutorial 1 : Making a Single Mesh Avatar

1. Use tool Sculpted Surface (SS) to open the cross section (Xsect) window

2. Make a rough ellipse with 12 points, using Snap grid option so they are evenly spaced. Use Zoom view if necessary to be about this scale for the default Grid

3. Using SS tool, add about 7 or 8 vertebrae. The first Xsect will look like your first attempt to create the ellipse, it's irregular. Just go to the Xsect (or vertebra) that is perfect, press button Copy Xsect, go to the other and press button Paste Xsect.

4. Using the Edit Xsect in the SS tool, first arrange the vertebrae so they are approximately at the desired levels of head, neck, shoulder, waist, hip . We'll see about legs in a moment.

Then, using the Scale tab in the SS tool, and using the 2-views Front and Left, resize the Xsect of vertebrae to get a human shape. Remember to uncheck "Uniform scale" to get different scale ratios in different axis.

5. Let's worry about the legs.

At one vertebra below the hip, at the level of the junction of legs with the body, Edit the Xsect. You would be viewing a cross section of the body , top-down. So the left part of the Xsect is actually the beginning of the right thigh.

Pick the vertices as shown , and start moving them toward the horizontal axis .

Do samewise for the left thigh. Then, arrange the other vertices so they are more evenly spaced, and the angles are more similar (roughly 60°, enough for the standard Smooth solid feature). You get the Xsect as below.

In another try, you may want to use a 18 vertices body Xsect to get smoother solids, but my experience is once you've textured it, 12 is enough, and you have less vertices to worry about.

6. So now you get the Xsect of the 2 legs, except they're still linked by a line, (that will create a surface when we finish Editing Xsect and go back to the SS window).

7. Using the Edit Spine buttons, add vertebrae that will be at knee level (for optimal bending of solid, you better place 2 vertebrae there) , at shin level (the meaty part behind your tibia) , start of Boot level (if you want boots), ankle level.

You may want to spread the legs apart, because when you will later animate the Mesh, you dont want the 2 h-anim Sphere-of-influence (SOI) to be too close together, as vertices in one limb may be affected by movements given to the other limb.

8. At the junction of the body and the 2 legs, pick and move all 4 vertices that form the inner part of thighs, to one same place.

Use Snap grid will make it easier, the vertices (actually points on the Xsect) will all snap to one point of the grid. (See Figure at right .......................=====>

9. For the ankles, use Rotate Xsect tab in the SS and continue adding vertebrae to make the feet (or boots) .

======== See Figure below

10. Now stand back and look ! Then ================= >

11. Let's take care of some unfinished business.

As you recall, each Xsect for the leg parts still has a line connecting the 2 leg sections. Let's take that out.

Holding Shift (to select only triangles) and Control (to add to selection) , select the faces between the legs. Then hit Delete.

Flip the IFS over, make sure all faces that should not be there have been removed, or else select and delete them. (As you deleted the unwanted triangles, the Sculpted surface has turned into an IFS)

12. Hey Presto ! you get this Figure at right.

Wait ! something wrong here ...because the orientation of the triangles in the process of making IFS. Look at the lap (or the lower abdomen) of the avatar : By default, the diagonals of the quads are all oriented in a parallel direction. But the human body is symmetrical. So you need to rotate a few diagonals here and there to give a smooth, normal, look .

Turn on Edit IFS, select the "faulty" edge as in the figure below, and use the Rotate Edge button on the Floating toolbar in the IFS Editor. Do the same for the backface (where the butts should be...)

13. Now the arms.

If you are lazy, just make a long cylinder with 6 cross sections (vertebrae) of 6 or 8 points (like when you started on the body ) and poke it through the upper body to make the forearms, and arms. Like this :

And then, you can either do a Boolean Union directly , or put these 2 IFS into a Group node, which you then Convert to IFS (Model Menu) . You then shape a hand at each end and that's it !

Now, supposing you hate Boolean Ops, you can use the method exposed in here "So you want to pull a Janet..." to extrude directly the forearm, arms, hands from the side of the chest.

See the sequence below :
A. select a square where the arm meet the body
B. refine edge and move vertices to get a hexagon base
C. Extrude the arms out and go untill the fingertips.

14. Make the arm's perimeter :

A. Select a diagonal at Arm's level.

B. Use :Refine Selected Edge in Right-click menu in IFS Editor.

C. Select the vertical edge that is between 2 "X" thus formed

D. Use Rotate Edge on *that* edge.
It will give you a horizontal edge there where none existed before.

E. Repeat the operation once or twice ,
enough so you can pick a hexagonal shape
from the side of the body. ( see upper right)

F. Extrude 3 times (see lower right) :
one for the elbow, another for the wrist ,
another one for the middle of the palm,
a last one for the fingertips
() .

This hand you will have to sculpt.
I'll have another tutorial on how to make a hand

So there's your avatar !

From this basic shape you can create , by pulling and moving specific vertices, variants that include female avatars, birds, spacesuits, etc.

It's just up to you !

Next tutorial will be about h-anim : how to make this basic single mesh move its arms, run, bow, wave etc.

Check back here soon.

Happy building, and hurrah for Vizx3D !

(Duc -- dphamhi@yahoo.com http://geo.phamhi.com)