Merun v2 - Now with 100% more polygons!

This is my second version of my try at a 40-ish cm mature female doll. Version 1 was made of paperclay and Apoxie Sculpt, and taught me a TON about sculpting and jointing. But after 8 months of work, I've found there are certain elements that I find difficult to impossible to achieve in clay - and the waiting times on Apoxie curing are killing me. Additionally, I'm a SAHM of an active toddler - finding time to go up to my studio to sculpt is pretty difficult for me, as my son's not allowed up there for his own safety. But I've done 3D models for about the past 5 years and so I've decided, inspired by firefly's success with her beautiful Pulkidoll, to give it a try in 3D.

Here are the reference pictures I'm using for her head:



Her face will be based on a beautifully sculpted but lesser-known bust of Nefertiti. I prefer this bust to the Berlin bust as it looks younger and softer. I'll be getting the face as close as I can to resemble that bust, but I'd also like to make sure it's anatomically realistic, so I'll be adding a bit of detail around the eyes, and sizing down the ears a little bit.

I will be sculpting her from the top down, creating her head, body, and limbs in one piece to start with, and then I'll cut it apart and insert the joints.

I know there's bit a bit of kerfuffle with 3D stuff lately - but I'd like to use this thread to educate folks a little bit with what goes into creating a 3D model, and how it's actually not that different from doing it in clay.

 

The Face - Part 1

Now, there's a lot of different ways that you can make 3D models. One of the most popular is box modelling - where you start with a cube and add detail and pull parts out and smush them in. It's probably the most similar to clay modelling and gives you a good overview of your work as you go.

However, every time I've tried to do box modelling, I end up with something that looks like Voldemort mated with a Grey alien. And I tend to be more about details than overview. So what I do is piece by piece modelling, creating each piece and segment one by one and fitting them together. This works really well for me as I can see the "flow" of the polygons as I work, tracing lines of muscles and bones beneath the skin.


I always start with the eye area on anything I do. I have to be able to see the soul within before I can go anywhere with it. So I'll start by outlining her eye socket and roughing out the lines of her nose and cheek.




Then added more to her nose, including some nostrils. I also added a Symmetry modifier, so it automatically creates the right side of the face as I work on the left - I will let it keep doing this until I'm almost done, and then I'll go in and edit it a bit more so that it's not perfectly exactly symmetrical. I've also added a couple spheres as placeholders for the eyes.

She's really lumpy at this point - I'm mainly just trying to get the polygons in and fitting together properly - not worrying about the exact shapes yet.




Eyelids roughed in. Emphasis on "rough"!




Tweaking the eyelids some. They're still not perfect - the lid on top of the eyeball needs to be thicker toward the outer corner, thinner toward the inner corner, and with a thicker, more natural looking crease, but at least she doesn't have weirdo fish eyes now.




Outlining the mouth and chin area:




Roughing in the lips:




She's looking pretty freaky at this point, but having everything basically in the right place means it's mainly a matter of shifting vertex locations on the main part of her face now. I may add a bit more detail here and there, but the main face is in place. Woo!




Added the top and back of the head and extended her cheeks a little. Also tweaked a lot in her cheeks so she's not so gaunt, modified the lips and nose a bit, and tried to soften the eyes some more.




How she's looking right now, after several more hours of tweaking. Her nose is still too sharp, her eyes a bit too buggy (I need to pull the whole eye socket out a bit more), her chin too pointy, and of course she needs ears and a neck, but she's not making me go "euuugh!" every time I look at her anymore.




3D may be faster for me than clay, but it's certainly not like I just wave a magic wand at the screen and it just does it... It's taken me all weekend to do just that, and I'm still far from done!

 

Yes, I'm using 3DS Max. The images shown are smoothed, rendered versions of my model (helps me see exactly the topology, especially if I change the camera angle and lighting angle - oblique lighting helps a lot!). This is what it looks like in the working view, without smoothing applied. It's a lot more faceted:



I use a few planes set up with my reference pics so I can position things properly, and I can make the model transparent so I can see exactly how to place things like the eyelid and so forth. The reference pics -sort of- help but because they're photographs taken at slightly different angles, I have to kinda fudge it a bit in a lot of areas.

 

Not exactly. I'm... reproducing it, just in a different medium. The same proportions, most of the same topology, the same jointing, just redone virtually. Cleanly. I'll be using high-res photos of my sculpt to help get the shape and proportions right - I've looked into 3D scanning but at an affordable price, the results wouldn't be great - jagged and blechy and would have to be redone anyway to make it nice and clean and smooth for printing. So I'm starting over in polygons. I love getting hands-on with clay but I hate the mess and the... mushyness. Vertices are exactly as mushy as I want them to be. Or not at all.

 

Looooooove Shapeways! Go go affordable 3D printing!

I'll probably be doing her in a 40 cm size, and may also do her in 60 cm. I do eventually want to market her for sale, so I figure offering her in two popular sizes will be better than one. I'll probably start with the 40 cm though, just to get the hang of casting and whatnot.

 

No, I haven't, penguu. It does look really neat - have you used it? I've looked into other softwares (like Blender) that have some interesting features but a lot of my reasoning in wanting to use 3DS Max is A) I already have it and B) I already know how to use it. But I'm totally willing to try anything that doesn't have a steep-as-Blender-or-Maya learning curve.

 

Just a quick update...



Fixed the lip corners and messed with the nose a bit, tried to give her more pronounced eyelid creases, and worked on her cheeks and jaw some. Still not done but I think I have to force myself to rough out the rest of her body at least before I do any more on her face. Can't get caught up on the details when there's more important things to do.



Jphobia - I really don't think I could have done the 3DS Max version without first doing it in clay, spending ages trying to perfect the joints, and coming up against limitations. Without that hands-on knowledge, I dunno if I could grasp it either. Kinda wish I hadn't spent all that time sanding the damn thing though, and had just roughed out the jointing and proportions and basic shapes. Oh well.

Pity the deodorant balls didn't work for ya - I wonder what other plastic spheres might be common... the bottoms on plastic easter eggs? I know twigling used some christmas ornaments... The plastic covers for deodorant work okay too - you can only get a half-sphere from one but if you're using it as a secondary joint that's all you need. Also some baby bottles come with a cover that is rounded on top - would get you another half-sphere, could probably get them at a store that sells cheap plastic crap (I dunno what they are in London - in the US they're dollar stores... :P )

 

Haha my cakes are ugly too.

I'm a low poly modeller mostly so the idea of working with omgsomanypolys is a little scary. I do kind of love the MeshSmooth modifier... I'll look into Zbrush though - I think there's a demo. I saw some time lapses of it being used for character modelling and it looks interesting. Not sure if its workflow will work for my style though - it seems very all over and then refine based on the demo videos I saw, rather than more immediate-details based. The desire to work that way is probably more of a personal failing than needing stuff to conform to my way of doing things though.

 

The start of the torso. She's currently too swaybacked - especially since I'm probably still going to do a 2 part torso.

 

Lots more done - trying to further define her forms, keeping in mind how bone, muscle, and fat work together.

Her crotch still needs a lot of work, but I think I'll just get it working a bit smoother and basic and then move on - I'll have to do a lot of modifying of the angles there when I cut it to insert the joints.

Something about her shoulderblades is still bugging me, she needs more muscle to her mid-back, and I think maybe her ribcage isn't rounded enough in back? Also I need to make her collarbones look less like... I dunno, cardboard or something. Her belly, the rounded part, might be a bit wide - I want her to look voluptuous but that area might be a bit much... But she's coming along.

I love her bum, and butt dimples, and her hips though. I think hips are the sexiest part of a woman - it's really important to me that she have va-va-voom! hips.

Next will be adding legs and arms and giving her a more natural and relaxed looking stance. And joining the head and body.

 

Wow it's been a long time since I've posted updates, but she's finally to a presentable state. My pics are HUGE so I'm not posting them inline.

The basic layout of the body is pretty much done, though entirely tweakable. There's some areas of imperfection (on the front near the shoulder/arm and between the breasts) that I'm not worrying about too much at this point - the wonky bits are either in areas that will be cut for jointing (so it's pointless to smooth them) or areas I may be tweaking still and would have to smooth again anyway.

Here's the head and bust:

http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/25489_110201104116doll-bust.jpg

You can see on the back of the head that the "symmetry" modifier has been used to get both sides working (there's a small open seam because the vertices along the seam got moved a tiny bit off-center), so I only have to modify one side, not both, when I make a change. I'll continue working in symmetry probably until I get her printed - modifications I make to her with Apoxie once I have her in-hand will be, by nature, a little asymmetrical.

I'm pretty happy with her head/face. It doesn't need a whole lot more tweaking, IMO. Head shape being elongated like that is very much intentional - though once I cut the headcap, I may do a "normal anatomy" version as well as an "amarna" head like this one.

She's not exactly like the bust of Nefertiti, but she's close-ish, and perhaps a little more like the face of a real person. I decided I wanted to make her kind of like what a human version of that bust would look like (so the ears don't stick out quite so much and are a little smaller, among other things). Not sure if her eyes are still a smidgen too big though.


http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/25490_110201104620doll-body.jpg

Hands are intentionally a bit straight/stiff right now - I'm leaving them unposed for the time being and when I cut them, I will duplicate them and do them in several different poses, so I don't want to mess with them too much besides shape and proportion at the moment.

There's something about the front that I'm not loving and I don't know why. I like her butt and back, her legs and feet, and her arms are okay, but there's something about the front which is too stiff or athletic or... something.

The breasts are all right though they need a little smoothing on the edges (again, one of those things I'm putting off until the placement and shape is otherwise perfect) - I wanted a fairly full breast size while staying pretty youthful and perky, and to look natural and decent both when she'll be clothed as well as nude. This means they're more pointing forward than hanging to the sides than real breasts would be, but it's sort of a balancing act.


I would love critique and feedback! Mainly looking for critique on her overall shapes and anatomy, and any areas where I can make her look more natural, sexy, etc... I was going for a fairly pinup-like body shape (think Christina Hendricks) with medium-sized breasts, so the slightly exagerrated waist-to-hip ratio and elongated legs are intentional, as is the head size being slightly larger than it would be on a human (so she won't look like a pinhead next to other BJDs).

Anything I can do to give her a more natural stance would be helpful too, since I would like her to look fairly graceful and sexy before I start cutting her up - I think this will help her look better posing once she's cut, rather than stiff.

Feel free to nitpick, draw over my pics, or offer any tweaks/changes you think may be necessary. She's easy to change, and I can always save old versions to go back to, so I have no problem with experimenting to try something new!

Thanks for looking!

 

I'm going to rig her to test the joints so I can see exactly the range of motion and pivot points and all that malarkey - not going to make any cuts whatsoever until I do, just so I can see exactly what needs cutting away and what can stay. I'll probably do something like my clay doll, but with a joint under the ribs rather than the bust, and a hidden double knee joint.

Edit: Did a bit more work on her back this evening - tried to smoothe out the deep groove the previous pics had down from the back of her neck, since that shouldn't extend up very far. There's still a hint of it too high but I'm working to fix that.

Mostly worked on shoulderblades, trying to create more definition in that area without them being too prominent... the position of the shoulderblades on a real person changes so drastically as they move, I don't want them to show too terribly much since they'd look odd when the doll is on all fours or arms above her head or something... but I also want them to be there a little bit, cos shoulderblades are sexy.

Also tweaked her hips/love handles a bit which I think looks more natural, and made the area between her butt dimples a little wider, and thickened the fat pad between the butt dimples just a tiny bit.

http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/25508_110201225852shoulderblades.jpg

 

It's really not all that difficult - just time consuming and a little mind-numbing. Just a slightly different skillset, but not too different from sculpting, especially when you get into looking at it from every angle and turning it over and all that kind of stuff.

Here's the front since I've tweaked her a bit. I tried to soften the top edge of her breasts a little as they were looking a bit fake, and added a little more definition to her ribcage, since I'll be cutting there. She's still not quite there, but a little better:

http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/25512_110202100135front.jpg
http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/25513_110202100242frontside.jpg

I think you're right about the triangle shape. Every time I look at her I see a super high-cut hip 80s aerobic instructor kinda thing. I think that's a lot of where the "too athletic" vibe I'm getting is coming from. I think I need to bring her hipbones down and a little more front and soften that area a bit. I was wondering if it was just me, but I'm glad ya pointed it out. I'll try to mess with that area today.

 

Thanks guys!

I recently got a subscription to 3d.sk so I have a TON of anatomy reference photos. Unfortunately most of them are not of women with much meat on their bones (or otherwise are of women with a lot more meat than I'm looking to do) but I think I'm getting closer. I think what I've got now is actually about 10-20 pounds lighter than what I was trying to go for, but it's a fairly simple process to fill out areas bit by bit - so much love for the soft selection and spherify modifiers.

http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/25523_110202204139bodyfront2.jpg

I brought the hip bones in front down a little bit and sort of... rotated that area, I guess, to try to make the hip bones look more natural. I also tried to fill out some of the V-shaped crease that was pointing into her crotch, elongated her torso a little bit, and thickened her waist just a smidgen so she wasn't quite so pinched there. Looks much more natural, I think. I played around a little bit with the line of her hips on the side too. Not sure I'm quite there yet on 'em.

Let's see, what else... thickened her lower legs a little bit, and widened her shoulders just a smidgen.

 

You're right, they were still looking like I needed to pop 'em with a pin.

http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/25539_110203203352body.jpg
http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/25540_110203203558bewbz.jpg

Pretty major boob-overhaul done today. Fairly major reshaping, trying to make them look a lot more natural. For some reason her other nipple disappears from view in 3/4 view but it's still there! Trying to make the nipples sort of soft and ambiguous so she can be blushed with tiny little ones or whatever. Not sure why they seem so bumpy when I save the images - they're nice and smooth in 3DS. Maybe it's the colour/tones I'm using and the jpeg compression.

I also widened her ribcage a smidgen too, which I think makes her look a whole lot more balanced and natural.

Argh, getting so impatient! It takes so long to do even small edits (really not faster than clay, just easier to get symmetry!) and very difficult to do with everying else I have going on. I really really want to get to a point with her head that I've got her headcap and neck jointing worked out... I kindasorta want to do two faces for her - possibly three, if I do a "dreaming" head for this face and then do a completely different face too. I know the character this head is meant to be, but there's another one I'd like to do as well... which will be a lot easier to do just modifying my current topology, once I have the head cut and jointed properly.

Can't get ahead of myself though. Have to get the proportions just right as I'll mess up the operation of my joints if I have to reshape. Waaaah want to cut nowwwwwww. :pout

 

Wheeee, sooooo I went ahead and started cutting, AND I have her with a basic start of a rig:

http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/25589_110206105915rigged.jpg

Which means she's poseable now. I haven't actually put in any joints yet so moving her just makes massive gaps, but those will be filled with lovely joints soon enough. I've never done any kind of rigging before so this is completely new territory for me. It's kind of frustrating though, as the way the joints show are sort of as, well... like this:

http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/25590_110206110400skeleton.jpg

Kind of bar-like things, but what matters for animation/flexing/whatever is pivot points - the spot where each section meets. So it's a little annoying. But I guess it's just a matter of adjusting them nicely and learning what the heck I'm doing. I need to now get them placed exactly perfectly right (and put in a couple more for the double-jointed elbows and knees) as the pivot point of each joint will be the pivot point of the actual joints of the doll.

Should be pretty neat as I went to a lot of trouble to sort out why pivot points matter in doing all those diagrams a while back, and now I get to use it directly.

I'm moving this month too though, so probably won't be able to make major progress for a while.

I should totally be packing. Instead... http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/25652_110206162323feet.jpg

I almost want to weep with joy, I'm loving working on this so much. Now that I have the hang of aligning the pivot point of the virtual joint with the pivot point of the actual ball, I'm making mad progress at a rate I never thought possible. Being able to edit quickly, without having to wait for things to dry... zomg YAY. Plus I can make things go semi-transparent so I can see that parts are snug up against each other without going through each other. And I can rotate to exact degrees - so the ankles will be capable of an exact human range of motion, but no further:

http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/25660_110206203732feetrotate.jpg

First is flat-footed, 0 rotation. Second is -20 degrees, feet tilting upward. The top of the foot then collides with the front of the ankle, preventing over-rotation that would look unnatural. Third is 50 degrees, feet tilting downward to point the toes. Bit hard to see in the pic but the heel collides with the ankle there, so they won't be able to rotate further.

I still need to tweak the collision through the entire range of motion, and adjust the inside of the cup of the ankle so the foot can bend sideways about 10 degrees in either direction, and rotate about 20 degrees inward and 50 outward, but that should be fairly easy to accomplish now that I know what I'm doing.

And I only have to do it once, because the other side is created automatically. HUZZAH!

 

It's been a while since I've posted... I've been sort of stalled for a while... Constantly running up against my lack of 3D/rigging knowledge, and how to accomplish what I want with polygons. I worked for a long time on the hips only to scrap everything I'd done because it just looked SO BAD.

So I started doing some of the easier jointings like the wrists and the head. And because my kid has started preschool (okay so he started today but three uninterrupted hours are so precious!) I will have more time to work on things! YAY!

Today's task was the inside of her head, and getting the faceplate to work with the head back:





Just have it coloured green temporarily so it's easy to see where it is. There's a little bit of a ridge where the two parts come together due to the smoothing, but I think I can probably get rid of that, either in 3D or just sanding it off when she's printed and in meatspace.



The inside of her face, with eyewells... which may be too close to the outer shell of her eyes to work right. But I really don't want to have to set them any further back or the eyes will look really wonky from a side view.



The inside of her head back. Not sure if I'll keep the domed shape there or flatten it out. Certainly will need some modification for a hole and to hold the elastic in some manner. Not sure if I want to do an s-hook, or create a separate piece for the elastic to hook onto.

I really wasn't sure about the faceplate thing, but I think I'm going to make a closed-eyed version and maybe even a smiling expression variant for her, and it'll be a lot easier if it's done via faceplate that way. I still need to figure out how the faceplate will attach - I definitely want to use magnets but I'd like there to be something else too - some sort of ridges to key the parts together, or something.

 

Thanks, whitewings! I went and took a look at your dollie's head - it's a little hard to see the exact features you describe but I think I get the idea, and will try to do something similar.

liu484 - Hmm, I think perhaps the inside corners looked too deep because of the lighting - I'm not great at getting a good lighting setup in 3DS Max. I tweaked her browbone a little bit, and in doing so noticed the outer corner of her eye needed a little lifting and fixing of the crease.



It still makes the browline look more slanted than it actually is because of the lighting - the actual contour is a bit more rounded:

 

Hehe not sure about mystical, kwmelvin, but I love seeing wireframes of stuff myself.

Jphobia - The back of the skull shape is actually on purpose. She's based on a bust of Nefertiti, so I was going for the weird elongated Amarna-style skull... I will probably do an alternate version that's more human-shaped as well, ending sort of where the shadow is on the side view.

Not sure how I didn't notice how far back her ear was though. O_o I'll have to make that my first priority to fix. Thanks! It's really helpful to have other sets of eyes seeing what I can't as I've been staring at her too long.

Edit: Not entirely fixed - I think the ear may still need to come forward a wee bit and I'm going to have to work on her jawline as it's gotten distorted forward of the ear. I think the ear may also need to tilt back a bit more - upright is probably a wee bit closer to life, but I'm going for something between "she could be a real person" and "she looks like an Amarna princess"



I think I may also need to exaggerate the head back a bit more. The more I look at it, the more it just seems just wonky enough to make it look strange, but not elongated enough to make it an obvious stylistic choice.

Just for reference, many of the Amarna busts and reliefs depict the heads of the royalty like this:



I don't want it -that- elongated as that just looks alien to that degree, but I want it to look more intentional rather than an error.

 

I couldn't possibly more pleased with myself today if I'd found out I'd developed the ability to poop diamonds.

I've managed to make a really nice double knee joint that I am SUPER proud of and it works really really nicely! YAY!

The knee jointing isn't entirely finished (I still have to model most of the "cup" parts and the surrounding edging on the top portion of the leg) and make sure there's no parts colliding at any point in the rotation, but I can't believe how well this works!




The jointing shows a wee bit from the side, but that's unavoidable, and I've seen quite a few other dolls that show at least that much from the side, so I'm not concerned. I may do a little more work to see if I can minimize it though.




I think the most major tradeoff is having to hollow out the backs of the thighs somewhat, so her calves can fit against them. However, I've expanded the sort of... back/side areas of her thighs so that in side view, the thighs don't look terribly unnaturally squished toward the back/bottom. Of course it still needs some refining and some of the edges are a little too sharp still, but it's working and doesn't look terrible.



The primary rotation is the double jointed part itself, and it can rotate back 75 degrees - however, it -looks- like 90 degrees because of the angles and shapes of the leg, and should make for a very natural looking sitting position when the thigh is rotated up, so only the main joint of the knee should have to move to sit nicely.

I'll be installing some locks to make sure the lower joint doesn't move until the primary joint is fully rotated to this 75 degree position.



With only the primary joint rotated to its full extent, from the front view (sorry, this is hard to get a picture of - the camera doesn't want to rotate nicely up underneath), it looks like a single joint - the double joint piece is sort of a "cap" that fits over the ball on the top of the lower leg and hides it entirely.



Then, the bottom part of the leg itself can rotate another 75 degrees (for a total 150 degree rotation). It's only then that you can see the ball of the leg part from the front at all - it's sort of set quite low in the leg itself, but it creates a fairly decent looking front view of the knee (still tweaking this).



And from the side - I'm sooo pleased with how small the jointing ends up being when the leg is fully bent. It's bigger than a human knee, but really, not by all that much - certainly much smaller than any other knees I've seen that bend this far. And the shape of the calf-against-the-thigh looks quite natural to me - like the flesh is compressing, even though resin won't be able to. She should be able to sit on her heels quite naturally once I put in hip joints (again).



From the front, the knees look a lot like the clay version I did originally, only neater and more refined. The seam where the lower and upper leg come together is mostly hidden underneath the kneecap.

Oh yeah! Also:



She has a working torso now! She can tilt backward about 50 degrees, which I love the look of.



But she can only slouch forward about 10 degrees, which is hardly noticeable.



And she can tilt to the side about 10 degrees...

But I think once she's actually printed and in my hands, she may have a greater range of motion for those poses - basically with the 3D stuff, I have to say "this is the pivot point" and I can't really easily move it during the rotation. However, with my clay doll, her torso can raise up a little bit out of joint to do a much greater range of motion - this would technically change the virtual pivot point. But even 10 degrees isn't terrible just in 3D - I think I can probably get almost 30 in real life from her, as long as I make sure the "cup" part of her upper torso is quite hollow inside.

It's going to mean limiting how I can put in torso posing locks, but I may be able to get almost the same effect as a lock by giving the two pieces some "tooth" to the texture, so they aren't perfectly smooth and will have more friction to lock against each other. Not sure if this is a good idea though, with all the modification people do with dolls that involve sanding, but I guess my main concern is creating a great doll "out of the box" so to speak.

 

Thanks kwmelvin!

I'll be getting printing done by Shapeways, which is in the Netherlands and has very reasonable pricing (relatively speaking) and lots of options in materials. I think it is indeed Eyedoll that's in NL and made a 3D doll. Theirs is maaaany parts though - much more advanced than what I am capable of!

 

Each piece will be printed separately - right now it just all looks like it's put together due to me adding a jointing system in 3D (kind of like virtual elastic) and the positioning of the pieces. I can pull everything apart as I like though, and there's a limit to the amount of polygons they can print per piece, so doing it separately will be essential so everything's nice and smooth - too few polygons and it would look very blocky and sharp.

I think what I may do is try to finish up her head soon and go ahead and get that printed just to get used to their services, see if there's any problems with the way I've been modelling stuff, and to see what it'll be like in-hand. Or possibly maybe do her hands, or feet, or something small. Everywhere I've looked, people report good experiences with Shapeways and I had good contact with them myself (I emailed months ago to ask whether them printing a naked anatomically correct doll would be a problem, as they don't print "objectionable" materials - sexually explicit or violent objects and they got back to me very fast and said it would be fine).

 

Wow, that is really cool, Guro! You model kind of like I do, with lots of extrusions from the open edge - though I made my whole model as a solid entire human first and then I'm chopping in the joints. Also I'm not bothering to UV map mine since I don't really need to texture it (though I do have a very very basic "clay" type material applied for rendering purposes). Looks great though - love the face!

 

I'm soooo terrible at rendering! But since I'm planning on selling my doll once I'm all done, I might use the 3D to do some stylized renders for something - maybe for helping in showing how to put it together, or showing the measurements in a more interesting way or something - dunno.

I'm glad ya like the jointing! It's taken a load of work and still isn't near done (still need to do the shoulders, hips, and elbows, and cut all the slits, create locks, "drill the holes" and make sure it all works together with no clipping) but I'm pleased as punch with how the knees have come out!

 

Just a quick update!



Mostly I've been doing some tweaking and reshaping lately - I showed her to an acquaintance who immediately said, "Hmm, her ankles look chunky," and I spent two days fixing that... and then realized her neck was too short, her head too small, and her arms too short. So I've tweaked those a bit too.

And she has shoulder joints, including a smallish shim to help her movement - I want a very human range of motion for her shoulder.

For some reason, modifying the arms has completely broken my symmetry modifiers so for now, she only gets one arm.

 

Basically, I added a sphere at the top of the arm where the sculpted shoulder was, and sized it until it fit just inside the bicep. Then I cut away the sculpted bicep and patched the sphere in, so her whole shoulder and bicep is actually a joint. There's a shim (a half-sphere) that caps the shoulder joint to allow for better movement, as I want her to be able to bring her arm at least partially across her body.

 

Hey ya'll, I'm not dead! Just been super busy, and gestating a new human, which for a long time (up until today, really) made it so every time I even thought about opening 3DS Max, I'd get sick to my stomach. But I seem to have gotten a tiny spark of creativity back (especially as it looks like I'll be getting my own dedicated workshop soon!) so I hope to post an update soon. Right now I'm trying to finish up the head sculpt and figure out exactly how I want magnets or something to work so I can perhaps go ahead and get her printed up by Shapeways and put her on the Minifee body I have, to motivate me to finish the rest.

 

So I've been working pretty feverishly on my dollie the past several days... I don't know how long this creativity streak is going to last! I've been forcing myself to do the boring technical parts that I've been avoiding - insides of joint cups and the like, which may not be very artistic but are critical for the posing to work right. I've also decided I'm going to work from the toes up, as if I let myself work from the head down, I'll never get done cos I'll just be tweaking the face for the next year or so.

I have the lower legs pretty well complete - I just need to do stringing channels. I completely reworked the jointing for the feet and lower legs - I started to try to make high heel feet, and then realized that's just silly when I can add an extra joint for the toes and have her be able to stand on her tiptoes, or squat, or whatever. And then I realized that I'd have to change where the ball is for the ankle, since having the last joint of the feet in the toes with the ankle ball attached to the foot would mean an L-shaped stringing channel which would be a royal pain to drill/mold.



Not -quite- done as I still need to get the ankle area looking a little smoother and more anatomically proper, but some of that will be tweaked as I ensure the proper posing rotation can be achieved without needing to trim away any more. Not very impressive, I know, but still lovely to be making progress on something other than knitting socks.

But now she can do stuff like this:



Huzzah!

 

So much progress!! I've added hip joints so that she can do 90 degrees total of rotation at the hips, for a very natural sitting posture.

It took me at least a week to get something that would work - I had SUCH a time trying to figure out a jointing system for the hips that would allow 90 degrees of rotation and look nice and natural and smooth from all angles, but also look good while the leg was straight... and didn't require me to carve away too much of her hip/thigh... and that wouldn't create too much of a bulgy rounding to her hip as I've seen on many dolls. I actually ended up making a good half dozen very simple mockups in new documents just trying to get the geometry right. I actually still don't know wtf I did differently in the last version, but it worked! And then I was able to use it as a base to apply to my actual doll.




It meant I had to widen her hips and thighs a little bit to get both the hip shim (cup) and the actual hip joint to fit in there without colliding, but, well, I like wide hips, and I think it works pretty well for her. I ended up lengthening her torso a little bit and nipping in the sides of her waist just a tiny little bit too, as she was starting to look a bit short and stocky in the torso area, which isn't what I'm going for.

Still need to do some work on her thighs, tummy, and crotch to get everything to look nice together - I had to do quite a bit of reshaping to get everything to fit together, so some parts are a little bumpy right now.




She still has a pretty nice looking backside, but again, I'll need to do some more work to fix the reshaping that needed to be done to get the hips in place. The bottom edge of her butt is looking kinda flat, and, um, at one point I messed up and selected too many vertices... and fused the sides of her buttcrack together (ROFL) so I'll have to spend some time up in her crevices to make sure all that is where it should be. Doll-making is soooo glamorous.




I'm pleased as pie with the way she looks from the side, too - I've seen so many dolls from different companies with a massive hip ball sticking out, but I've managed to keep a fairly natural looking line in profile.


Other things that are not obvious from the pictures: She's got stringing channels and whatnot done for her toe, foot, and lower leg, and I'm really hoping the way I've done those will make it so she has utterly smooth, effortless posing no matter the angle of rotation. Both my commercial dolls tend to prefer a certain posture for each particular joint, and want to slide back into that posture (I think some of this is what people call "kicky"). I'm hoping to avoid that with my doll, but I'll only see whether that's worked once she's printed and in my hands.



Kinda wondering if I shouldn't shorten her toes a little bit. This is basically what my feet look like... but I can pick things up with my toes and operate my computer's mouse with them, so I might be biased by looking at my own feet.