Alien Body

To match with the alien head we had to make a body to go along with it. With the help of Mudbox's ready made models I had a head start. I chose the human model it comes with and got to work on deforming it.

I wanted to create a body that would flow with the head so I was looking to make a "tree man" with a long body and gangly arms. The arms proved to be difficult, especially the fingers when trying to stretch them out. This difficulty would later continue when trying to quad draw.

I ended up with this, Goat-man. I was aiming for legs to look like tree branches but after experimenting with the "foamy" tool I expanded his thighs to give the goat leg look. I also flattened the waist but gave him broad shoulders with spikes to match the head. I then used the imprinting tool to give it texture.

Later on, I also tried to make the human head compact so I could put the alien head on top. This also proved to be an obstacle as it wouldn't let me due to the high poly count but when I went down the levels it still would not let me delete the faces. So I did maybe the next best thing and just tried to make it as small as possible and turn it into a neck.

(Not one of my best ideas but I had to keep things moving along)

Next I retopologized the body so I could then export it over to Maya. It was from here that the real struggles began. To get the normal map and bake like I did with the head I had to quad draw half of the body. It was as painful as the last time I had to do it. All was going well until I hit the fingers, from there it went downhill fast. 

You may be wondering where the rest of the fingers are from this low poly model I made from the quad draw. They don't exist, after 30 minutes of trying to get the faces to attach and then deciding it wants to attach to the head, I gave up and moved on to another part of the body. The foot was less painful to do as it was mostly straight squares that wrap around. 

Everything was smooth sailing after the finger nightmare and I finished half of the body which I then used the mirror tool to mirror the body. What I got from that nightmare is a low poly model of my original body which I can then put a map onto from the high poly version. So it has the low poly structure but the details of the high poly.  

I followed the same steps as last time when baking. However, things did not go to plan. Instead of the smooth texture I got with the head I ended up with a bumpy mess. 

The chest didnt turn out the best, the arms look better but I didn't put many textures on them. 

 The legs turned out the best. They're alot smoother than the rest of the body. 

Overall I'm not as pleased with the body as I was the head. It did take along time to bake and crashed my laptop more than once so I'm not surprised the outcome is less than great. Next time I would maybe try another way to get the normal map onto the low poly. I know of another way through substance painter but I'm not confident enough to go in without knowing what I'm doing.