Videogame Character Development - Preparing a base mesh for sculpting/UVs.

To begin the 3D portion of the character creation process, I was provided with a base mesh to work from, this would be my starting point, but would also need to be altered in accordance with any changes to the shape of the mesh at a higher subdivision count, when imported back to Maya from Mudbox at a later stage.

To prepare my mesh for export into Mudbox, I first separated the mesh into the main anatomical pieces, this helps greatly when transporting the mesh between Maya and Mudbox, keeping the overall polycount down and not giving Maya any issues in terms of production speed. This can work against me however, as transporting the model as one piece gives less chance of the mesh presenting scaling issues upon import of a higher resolution mesh back to Maya. Whilst these are not huge issues and can be fixed with relative ease, they add onto the production time of a model, and I will be trying to avoid these if at all possible.

To separate the sections from one another I selected the faces contained in the portion of mesh required, then utilised the extract tool under the Mesh toolbar option.

The sections I was looking to separate the anatomy into are as follows.

• Head and Neck
• Torso
• Arms
• Hands
• Legs
• Feet

Once separated, I needed to apply UVs to each respective mesh, for this I utilised Unwrapping/Unfolding procedures.

Prior to the unwrap itself for each mesh, I needed to mirror elements of the geometry to give myself a full humanoid body to work from.

I then began applying UVs to each respective section of my characters body, beginning with the head, then moving down the body toward the feet.

I however did not UV the feet, as my character was to wear cowboy style boots and as such, the feet would not be a required part of the mesh.

Selecting all of the faces within the mesh, I projected the UVs on the Z axis to give myself a direct frontal projection of the head. Once projected I began selecting edges I would choose as seam lines to split in order to give myself an adequate UV layout.

I split the UVs up the side of the neck , around the back of the ear and slightly up the temple, selected the UV's within my UV texture editor and used the unfold tool, I was presented with this result in my UV texture editor.

I continued through the body, laying out UVs and splitting seams on each piece until I had a respectable layout within my texture editor, and left space for he extra pieces I intended on modelling to go with my character.

My finalised UV editor, comprising only geometry which I had been provided from the start can be seen below, with space left for my characters extras, boots, hat and cloak.

Following laying out my UVs this way, I began modelling the extras for my character.