My first female model
 

Here is the source image for a new model I am working on. This is my first time modeling a person so I hope to learn a good deal. The ideal person I would like to model is Jackie Johnson from WSVN channel 7 in Miami, she does the weather (I lived in Miami for two years, Dave_Baer I imagine you know of her since you live in Miami). But I can't find a good bunch of source images for her and I want my first modeling of a human to have as good sources as I can find. So I decided to use this set of images, which I got from www.fineart.sk. (I hid the sensitive areas just to be more decent of this site)

I am modeling in NURBS and then I plan to convert to polys to join the various parts and add more detail. So far I have done the torso and legs, I still have to do the feet, arms, breasts, and head. Any suggestions on my technique? How do you tackle modeling a human? I have spent an hour on each part so far and I am happy with the rough shape so far and how quickly it is coming along. When I was doing my suit of armor one thing I was not to sure of was how certain parts interacted with each other and overlapped, etc. But humans seem to be nice because they are all one skin, but I know that I and others will be more critical of human models since we all know very well how people are suppose to look.

Since I now have a new awesome job as an audio video specialist, I will have less time to model, but hopefully I can still continue in my spare time.

Comments and crits are welcome, please be honest. Thanks.

A couple of pics.

looking good so far. ive never modeled a realistic female model before so ill be keeping track of your wip so i can learn as well. right now, the only thing i notice that looks weird are the kenes. from the looks of it, on your side view (pic on the right), its a little bit pointy. just a little bit.

Real nice start. Nice shaping on the legs and knee area.

great start !

Great . cant wait to see it finished

Very cool dude. I too will be keeping track of your progress because I've never done a female model either. by the way.. I really like your avatar icon Contrast.

It's great to see so much interest in my work.

orgeeizm: thank you for the crit, I will try to touch up the knees and pay attention to those. Also it feels cool knowing that others will be tracking my progress, it's a great motivator.

lonepig, dragonsfire, and RisTar: Thanks for the encouragement

Darkware: Thanks as well, I am very happy with how my avatar came out also, glad others like it too. :)

Here is my most recent update, it took about an hour for the arm and maybe about the same for the foot. The foot was really done freeform without much model reference since the image is not very usable to see the foot in correct angles. Lots of details will need to be added when I convert to polys, unless anyone can suggest a better way of going at creating the foot, I will have to read some tutorials on foot creation, I found it fun trying to work out some of the complexities of the foot shape.

The armpit needs a lot of work, I think it is to high, also I need some more detail added to the elbow. I found it hard modeling the arm since her arms are at her side, the flesh under her arm is pressed against her body so I wasn't sure how to get an accurate shape for that area. Comments and crits are welcome as well as suggestions for techniques.

Your might want to consider modeling the arms extended instead of down to the side.

It will make binding and modeling the under arm and side of the body area easier as well as make socking the arm to the torso easier.

ctbram, that is good advice, perhaps I will try to find similar arms extended and use them as reference. Does anyone know of good sites off hand where models may be posed in the best "3D ready" pose? I guess I could also take a picture of my wife's arms extended and composite it as best I can. Any other suggestions would be great. Thanks.

Here is the head, I have gone into detail as you can see. The top right is what the head looked like one hour into modeling, scary... But I am happy with the progress I have made since then, I think a problem I had initially was that I was over exaggerating the features. It still doesn't look like her, but I hope that will eventually come in the minor details, once I get it looking like a person then I can make the very subtle changes that create her face.

Any suggestions? What areas should I look out for? Any tips on making her look feminine? Thanks.

Actually, you have already done a swimming job of modeling the arms. I would simply take them and rotate them up and then free model the shoulder arm connection when you sock the joints.

More updates on the head.

Here is another update.

Here is the hand. I used poly for this (CPS to be exact), following this tutorial:
http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials...arc/glove1.asp

Any suggestions? Does the hand look to masculine? I used my own hand as reference many times.

Does anyone have experience modeling a number of humans, if so do you tend to reuse hands and just modify their size a bit to fit other characters? Thanks.