Figure 1
STEP 2: Go to the layer containing the tunic. Set the display type of the Perspective View to "Wireframe Shade."
STEP 3: Select the three rows of polygons that form the belt. Right now they share the points of their borders with the rest of the tunic. The tightly spaced points of the top of the belt look fine, but the bottom of the belt is noticeably distorted by the looser mesh of the skirt.
STEP 4: Type x to Cut the mesh of the belt out of the layer, and then type v to Paste it back into the layer. As long as you do not Merge Points, the borders of the belt will remain separated from the borders of the cloth. Select these polygons again and assign the Part Name of "Separate Mesh" to the belt geometry, to make them easier to select in the future. (Figure 1)
Figure 1
The borders now look better, but this belt looks flat. Happily, it has two "rings" of points in the center for us to manipulate.
Note: If you had patched the belt region with an eye towards polygon efficiency, resulting in one band of polygons instead of three...don't worry. You can easily add two "rings" of points right now with either Knife or Bandsaw. You did well to patch with the fewest number of polygons that gave you the results that you wanted -- it's always easier to add geometry than it is to remove it.
STEP 5: Select the two center "rings" of points in the belt.
Use the Stretch Tool on them vertically to move them closer to the top
and bottom borders of the belt. (Figure
2)
Figure 2 |
Figure 3 |
STEP 6: Use Smooth Scale (Modify > Stretch > More > Smooth Scale) to puff these points outwards, giving volume to the belt. A Smooth Scale of about 5mm should do it, but use the value that you think looks best. (Figure 3)
We need a belt buckle and a belt strap. These can be pieces of geometry that "float" on top of the belt. They must lie close enough to the belt that it looks like part of the belt from all angles...yet they must not intersect the belt, or else they will appear to lose their ink lines. This is because those edges that qualify as Edges would be buried in the mesh of the belt, hidden from view.
Tip: When modeling, avoid an intersection of non-transparent meshes unless you deliberately want to "hide" an ink line beneath an opaque surface.If you do "hide" a polygon capable of causing an ink line beneath an opaque surface, you cannot be sure that its ink line will be hidden in all situations unless Edge Z Scale in Layout is set to 1.
The default Edge Z Scale value is 0.998, which places ink lines 998/1000ths of the distance between the object and the camera. This value of 0.998 places ink lines slightly "in front" of the object. For example, the ink lines of a flat plane 1m from the camera will appear 0.998m from the camera (making the ink lines appear 2mm "in front" of the object at that distance). This default setting usually makes the ink line look smoother.
However, the chance of "buried" ink lines appearing on the surface of an object increases with the distance of the object from the camera. Keep this in mind if you plan to use high Zoom settings on your camera to look at distant celshaded objects. If unwanted ink lines appear, try increasing the Edge Z Scale to fix the problem.
STEP 7: The easiest way to make sure that the new geometry lies
flush with the belt geometry is to build it from a copy of the belt geometry.
Deselect everything. Select the polygons of the belt and type c to Copy
them. Go to an empty layer and type v to Paste them. (Figure
4)
Figure 4 |
Figure 5 |
STEP 8: Of these copied belt polygons, you only need the polygons that surround the belt buckle area. Select everything save for the six SubPatches that surround the belt buckle; type x to Cut them out, leaving the six SubPatches behind. (Figure 5)
STEP 9: We're going to Extrude these polygons into a belt strap. The current SubPatches will form the "back" of the belt strap, so they ought to face the belt. Type f to Flip them (Detail > Polygons > Flip) so that their normals face the belt, as shown in the upper panel of Figure 6.
STEP 10: Type Shift-e to summon the Extrude tool (Multiply
> Extend > Extrude). In the Top View, left-click on the polygons, hold
down the Ctrl key to restrict movement to one axis, and drag downwards
slightly. It should look like the lower panel of Figure
6.
Figure 6 |
Figure 7 |
STEP 11: This belt strap needs a pointy end. Select the three rightmost SubPatches at the end; type Shift-f to bring up Smooth Shift. Right-click on the selected geometry once to create a slight Smooth Shift; Move these polygons to the right in the Back View to grow the end of the strap. (Figure 7)
STEP 12: Use the Stretch tool on these selected polygons to give
the end of this belt strap a point. (Figure
8)
Figure 8 |
Figure 9 |
STEP 13: Almost there, but this belt tip has an oddly "pinched" end. Zoom in on the belt tip. Select the central four points of the belt tip; in the Right View move them to the right until the SubPatch "lines" that run through them look vertically straight. This should eliminate any unwanted curve in the edge of the belt tip. (Figure 9)
Now for the buckle. We created the belt strap from a copy of the belt geometry so that the strap would lie flush with the belt; now let's create a buckle from the belt geometry so that it, too, will lie flush with the geometry underneath it.
STEP 14: Select the six polygons from the "front side" of the
belt strap; Copy and Paste them to an empty layer. Use the Knife tool to
make two slices in this geometry; one on each side of the belt in the model
sheet. Don't worry about making the new SubPatches line up with the ink
lines of the model sheet; worry about making the new points line
up with the ink lines of the model sheet. (Figure
10)
Figure 10 |
Figure 11 |
STEP 15: Select the outermost six SubPatches and delete them. You now have SubPatch geometry that surrounds the belt buckle on the model sheet.
STEP 16: Select the six existing SubPatches. Activate the Smooth Shift tool and right-click on them once to give them the slightest of Smooth Shifts. Then use the Stretch tool in the Back View to shrink the points of the still-selected polygons inwards. Stop when the points form a border that matches the thickness of the belt buckle in the model sheet. (Figure 11)
STEP 17: Cut the selected inner polygons, leaving a border of
SubPatches behind. You now have a two-dimensional belt buckle. Flip these
polygons to face inwards, towards the belt strap. Then, in the Top View,
Extrude the geometry into a three-dimensional belt buckle. (Figure
12)
Figure 12 |
Figure 13 |
STEP 18: Assign a yellow surface named "Kara Belt Buckle" to this three-dimensional belt buckle.
STEP 19: Use the Stretch tool to make the belt a little taller, so that it looks more like a belt buckle and less like something that's sitting on top of the belt strap geometry. (You don't want to let the audience in on the trick, do you?) (Figure 13)
Now you have an aesthetic choice to make on the shape of this belt. Do you want to leave it "crimped" in the corners, or do you want it to be simple all around?
If you want to simplify this shape, follow the next step.
STEP 20: To see what is causing the "crimp" in the corners, select
the points that form the inside of one of the sides of the belt. Notice
that the topmost and bottommost pairs of points are pushed in towards the
back. Moving these pairs towards the negative Z axis will straighten out
the crimp, as the points will then line up with the rest of the points
that form the inside of the side of the belt. This in turn will straighten
out the SubPatch lines currently running through those points. These lines
don't have to be perfectly straight -- see if you can up the inside curve
with its outer counterpart in the Right View. Then do the same for the
opposite side. (Figure 14)
Figure 14 |
Figure 15 |
So how does this geometry "line up" with the geometry of the belt strap? Make the belt strap a background layer and check the Perspective View. Are the black lines of the boot strap in the background layer intersecting with the belt buckle? If so, you need to move those intersecting areas of the belt buckle out of the way -- otherwise the Edges for the belt buckle and the belt strap will "disappear" in those areas.
STEP 21: If the buckle appears to be intersecting with the belt strap, Move the offending points of the belt buckle in the direction of the negative Z axis in the Top View. Don't move the points one at a time -- you'll risk distorting the mesh. Instead, select the points that form an entire side or center of the belt buckle in the Top View and move them as a group.
STEP 22: One last detail. Go into a new empty layer and make the belt buckle a background layer. Type Shift-x to activate the Box tool. Draw a box about as thick as the top of the belt. Give it three sections along the X axis. Place it in the vertical center of the buckle, just in front of the buckle, on the side shown in Figure 15.
STEP 23: Hit the Tab key to turn this box into SubPatches. Move it close to the geometry of the belt buckle (as close as possible without intersecting the geometry).
STEP 24: Select the rightmost SubPatch of the box. Hold down the Shift key so that you can make the belt strap an additional foreground layer. Move the selected SubPatch towards the positive Z axis in the Top View so that it touches, but does not intersect, the "lowest" curve of the belt strap. It should look like Figure 16.
Figure 16
Note: You must not let geometry intersect unless you want to lose your ink line at the "seam" where the geometry intersects.
STEP 25: Make the box the only active layer. Make sure that its surface geometry has the same surface name as the rest of the belt buckle ("Kara Belt Buckle").
STEP 26: It also needs to have the same weight map as the belt strap and belt buckle -- "Waist." The belt strap and belt buckle were derived from geometry that already had "Waist" weight values, so they already have "Waist" weight map values. You created this little box from scratch, though, so you need to assign it weight map values. Deselect everything. Use Map > General > More > Set Vertex Map Value to assign this SubPatch values of 100% under the "Waist" weight map.
STEP 27: Cut and Paste the geometry of this box out of its layer, and into the belt buckle layer.
The non-pointed end of the belt strap, as it stands now, will generate a visible ink line. We don't want this ink line -- it doesn't exist anywhere on the model sheet, and it would look "odd" as part of a drawing of a belt. We have a few ways of "hiding" this unwanted ink line.
The first way would be to bury this end of the strap in the mesh of the belt -- but that leaves no guarantee that the ink line won't show up when filmed with high Zoom lenses at a distance.
The second way is to "line up" the ink line generated by this edge with the ink line of the belt, in hopes that they will appear to be one and the same when rendered. This will leave an ink line consistent at all distances...but with no guarantee that an audience won't "figure it out" when seen up-close.
The third way makes the belt strap part of the belt itself. Because the back of the belt strap was made from copies of the front of the belt, its points should line up perfectly. Making the belt strap part of the belt, then, is easier than you might think.
STEP 28: Make the tunic layer the active layer. Select the polygons of the belt. Cut the belt out of the tunic layer, and Paste its geometry into an empty layer.
STEP 29: Make room for the belt strap! Select the three polygons
shown in Figure 17
and Cut them out.
Figure 17 |
Figure 18 |
STEP 30: Go to the belt strap layer. Select the three polygons on the back of the belt strap that correspond to the polygons you just Cut in the last step. Cut them out. (Figure 18)
STEP 31: We're going to use Merge Points to get this belt strap
to merge flush with the rest of the belt, but we don't want to merge every
single overlapping point. Some of the base points of the belt tip also
share the same XYZ coordinates as some of the points on the belt. We need
to move these points out of harm's way. Select the SubPatches that form
the belt tip, place the mouse pointer in the center of the belt in the
Top View, and use the Rotate tool to Rotate these polygons forwards slightly
-- just enough so that their points no longer overlap those of the belt.
(Figure 19)
Figure 19 |
Figure 20 |
STEP 32: Deselect everything. Cut and paste the belt strap layer into the belt layer. Type m to Merge their points. It should look like Figure 20. (If not, use Weld to "sew" any visible seams shut).
STEP 33: Cut and Paste the geometry of the belt and buckle layers into the tunic layer. It should look like Figure 21.
Figure 21
STEP 34: Save this object as torso26.lwo.