Back to the torso plate I have worked on finishing the front half of it off. Depending on the end poly count I would like to actually have the dip into the torso to accomodate the shoulder joint. Otherwise I will have to make it a texture and overlap the two. Here I added and cleaned up the side area a bit.
Which leads me to the next issue. The back. I have no real reference for what I want the back to look like. SO I'm going to have to draw that too.
Here is the sketch I have done to base the back of my character off. Things to note : Cables are cool (although hell to do in low poly environments), the ying yang symbol in the middle represents something that corresponds to the world he is in, so there is reason showing it's head once more.
Personally I don't know if this will be the final back, it could do with some work I think, but I'll see it in 3D before I pass final judgement. Once again, this is only rough reference. I'm not even going to put it into max to use it as actual reference. Although that's just my preference.
By using both our model and our new sketch for reference we can get a good idea as to how it all comes about. Unhide your character and tweak as you need to in order to line up the vertices as you see fit. In my case I had to move the area under the arm out a bit to suit the chest area, and then move the bottom of the collar area (and respective vertices around that) to the middle. Other than that it was good to go.
I'm not worried about the arm as such as soon it won't be there :) It's just the main torso/chest area and top of the shoulder we need to use as a base.
By shift / moving the areas around the bottom of the chest and the shoulder I can start making some polys in order to build the rest of the back area.
If you also look closely you will note I have joined a lot of the vertices at the bottom that go through the body tho the rear. As the area between the front and the main character is small, there can be slight deviation of direction (not straight back) but it's good to get close so try and line them up as well as you can. Seeing as you can't see this area you don't need the extra information and this saves a lot of polys.
Once again by using Shift / move edges I have created the edges of the back area that I can now continue to fill in. I find this a good way to work as it gives you an opportunity to work with the easy areas and the areas that you can easily assume, and then get to the details after that. It also gives you an idea of the volume that needs to be created.
From here I can continue and add the details as I go along, Or we can add the basic mass of the back, and then add the details from there. I'll do the latter, as it will give us an opportunity to use some of the other tools available to us within the modify panel.
So It's a bit of a jump, but if you select the image to the right you'll have all four views to help you out as a visual guide as to what I created. As you can see in comparison to the last step, I have moved the back in towards the body somewhat. It was getting too big otherwise.
Basically what I did was create one side of the 'backpack' by using the centre back as the building blocks and then flipped it over to sort the other side out. Then I filled out the remaining areas so that it looks like it does now. Things to note were the reference to following the curve of the original character, as tit is moulded around him initially, and also the fact that I have the shoulder and pad to consider (hence the reason I brought the back in significantly).
And at 2948 polys so far, we are definitelly within reach of a good poly count.
