Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
a couple more edge loops brought me closer to the
shapes I needed .
After joining the two cubes into the same object
in Object mode ( ctrl -J), I applied the Subsurf
modifier at subdivision level 1 to give more geom-
etry to play with , but I copied the modifier first
to further subdivide the mesh. When a modifier is
applied, changes it makes to the mesh are applied
to the mesh and thus converted into geometry you
can edit. This allowed me to extrude some of the
new faces from the front of the body to create a
bump for the head . With the extruded faces still
selected, I pressed ctrl - + to grow the selection,
fattened it a bit with alt -S, and then smoothed
it a little to complete my base mesh for sculpting
the body.
For the legs, I began by laying out my plan for
the main part of the leg, consisting of long, flat-
tened, bone-shaped pieces for the long segments of
the leg and shield-shaped pieces for the knee and
foot segments. I created two slightly different varia-
tions of the long segments, one for the first and last
pairs of legs and one for the middle two pairs . To
create these pieces, I began with a plane, added a
Mirror modifier to make the leg symmetrical, and
then extruded one edge and added loop cuts to cre-
ate the top-down plan of the leg. Next, I selected
the whole thing ( A ) and extruded it out along its
normals by first extruding ( E ) without moving the
new faces. I then moved the new faces along their
normals ( alt -S) to give the leg segment a uniform
thickness. For now, I created only one copy of each
piece; after sculpting and retopology, I'll dupli-
cate the finished parts and position them to make
the legs. This completes some basic parts for the
Spider Bot.
Figure 4-29: Flat and Smooth shading modes. Smooth
shading blends between the normals of a mesh's faces
to make it look smooth. You can switch between the two
modes using the Shade Smooth and Shade Flat opera-
tors in either Object or Edit mode.
Creating the Spider Bot
To block in the Spider Bot, I needed only the basic
parts of the body and legs. To generate more detailed
ideas for the main parts of the body, I used sculpting
and then retopologized the results and added more
mechanical parts with traditional modeling.
Beginning with two cubes, one for the abdomen
(back segment) and the other for the cephalothorax
(head and body segment), I scaled them roughly to
the correct proportions, as shown in Figure 4-30 .
By adding a Subsurf modifier ( ctrl -1), I was able
to get a more rounded shape without having to add
and manually adjust lots of edge loops. Just adding
Figure 4-30: Creating base meshes for the Spider Bot
Search WWH ::




Custom Search