12 – 18 May, 2025 — Donita Kadharusman
Games Art Pipeline 24/25
3D — Low Poly Game Char, Week 4
Box Modelling Exercise
Extruded the legs from the waist, keeping it low-poly and simple by following the overall curve and edges from the blueprint. The daily hand sketches on spring break paid off as the steps to creating 3D hand is to create the base long cube of the palm of the hand before extruding the fingers. From this stage, I learnt that we could connect meshes together by using the weld tool on the vertexes at the end of the two meshes (also delete the faces where the two meet).
This stage of box modelling was one of the most important part which I need to apply on my own character:
What I realised from modelling the head is how the sides and the front of the head are basically almost flat. It’s also mentioned in order to animate the mouth is to make gaping lips for easier and smoother open mouth animation. As for the insides of the mouth, it’s recommended to extrude it from the lips to create a pocket (the inner mouth until the start of the esophagus). Furthermore, the edge loops around the eyes and lips are for animation purposes as it this topology creates clean deformation around them. Hence, edge loops are to be put around certain body parts that move (ankles, wrists, shoulders, neck, knee, etc.).
Character Box Modelling
Before jumping to the figure model, I decided to create the accessories first (just an excuse cause I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of modelling and shaping of the figure’s detail). I tried to create the skirt, yet I failed miserably as I didn’t know how to create the folds of the skirt.
I was a bit disappointed at how I modeled the first character head, so this time I poured more effort and time into creating a stylised head similar to the League of Legends (2009) models (like Gwen’s).
At first, I wasn’t satisfied either with the topology so decided to search for face topology guides which I could apply on Eleanor and noticed that it has patterns. A circular motion on the mouth part that is separated by another circular motion to the chin before the ‘mask’ like topology circles around the eyes. The eyes themselves have edge loops around each of them (separated by the nose bridge).
Feedback: very serious concept. For a stylised character you’d want the fluffy part of her shoulder and socks to be bigger. As for the advice of the skirt, you can extrude it and manually model it. Also don’t forget to model the corset, etc. You can use a diamond shaped mesh to create low poly laces. -Mike
Another comment: this is a better than perfect screenshot, you know why? There’s another screenshot at the bottom -Mike (haha)
Thicker fluffy parts would strengthen the silhouette of the character, especially when it’s stylised and I needed to face reality where I had to manually model the skirt. However, I’m not extruding either the short or longer skirt from the main body as Amil said that it’d create non-manifolds and potentially glitches the nCloth applied to the longer skirt.
Feedback: there are many ways to create the hair, like creating a cap-like base hair. Extruding it from the head would be difficult as it disrupts the clean flow of the head’s topology. -Amil
I manually bent and extruded the cube then tried to create the swirly bangs by extruding it and I failed miserably. So I stuck with the plain hair cap and created a separate helix for the long separate sideburns and ponytail before welding both together. I had to shorten the ponytail as I was afraid it’d disrupt of the scarf’s nCloth. Looking at Lux Magma’s model, the artist used a cylinder for her floating metal accessory on her forehead. It’s shaped to create in illusion of a swirly effect, hence I applied it to the curly bangs on Eleanor.
Feedback: to create a double sided nCloth you need width on the plane. -Amil
So I had to test it out why many tutorials suggested on using a plane (a 2D mesh) for nCloth simulations and found out that faces on 3D meshes tend to glitch out from the other side when it is animated. In the end, I found out that if the width is thick enough (not too thick though), it would lessen the glitch. (also nCloth crashes and freezes Maya a lot. Particularly when I tried to move the model (the flag) after applying nCloth. So please save your files a lot future me)
I found another reference from sketchfab as I remembered that Genshin Impact’s (2020) characters tend to have lots of folds. Fortunately, I found Nilou’s 3D model by X9_YT (2023) and the wireframe suggested to insert cuts in the section where the skirt folds. This creates a flat surface where the skirt starts, allowing for a smoother edge of the skirt.
I encountered many error attempts in creating a decent nCloth animation (where the inner side of the mesh shows up and wiggle like crazy). And as Amil said and advised that there is a gap between the shorts and the short skirt in order to prevent the long skirt’s nCloth glitches, as nCloth would often stick to the passive collider. I got super excited when I finally fixed the vertexes where the nCloth simulation just sits right and decided to push forward where I also applied nCloth simulation for the short skirt above. Through trials and errors, I managed. This was done because the short skirt extended to far to the side, the nCloth hhellped it drape downward more naturally.
Applied the same technique as the curly bangs on Eleanor’s buttons and used Mike’s advice on using a diamond shaped mesh to create low poly laces.
Character Box Modelling Progress
Bibliography
Intro to 3D – 60125 (2025) Topology reference/guide. Available at: https://cmuanimation.weebly.com/topology-referenceguide.html (Accessed: 12 May 2025).
MiHoYo (2020) Genshin Impact [Video game]. HoYoverse & MiHoYo. Available at: https://genshin.hoyoverse.com/en/home (Accessed: 28 September 2022).
Riot Games (2009) League of Legends [Video game]. Riot Games. Available at: https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/download/ (Accessed: 21 April 2025).
X9_YT (2023) Genshin impact – Nilou [Sketchfab]. 11 December. Available at: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/genshin-impact-nilou-28b5a8cc25a24bcabd35a647821980bf (Accessed: 17 May 2025).