I Intro


This is a high-poly modelling with subsurfaces hand tutorial. Well not so high, that's the whole point.
The detailled hand is around 900-1100 verts depending of the complexity of the joint folds.

But rather than giving solely a step by step process, I will first explain how and why I proceed the way I do.
So you will be able to adapt the method to your own needs and models.

There is many technics for modelling. The most well known are box-modelling and poly-extrusion.
Many tutorials are available for this on the net.

The method I present here is neither of those and focus on giving a very light but yet fine and detailled mesh.
To achieve this, we will see that topology is the key.

A nice by-product of the method is that the mesh will deform correctly and should be easy to animate.

Topology : how to be good to your mesh.

Edges (not vertices) of the base mesh have a special role in a subsurface. they control the place where curvatures change.
That means that few edges well placed are more efficient than a great number of them misplaced.

Also blender subsurfaces are simple Catmull-Clark ones and behave much better if you use only faces with 4 vertexs (quads) and no triangle. True Ngons could be useful, but blender can only fake (yet), and you should never use them in that case.

Lastly the more regular the grid is, the smoother the results. By regular, I dont mean equally sized quads but progressive changes and no odd shape.

To understand why, the best analogy is to consider the base mesh as a wire skeleton on which you push a thin cloth.
If the wires are evenly spaced the small elasticity of the cloth will allow it to be smooth, but in some limits. beyond this, wrinkles appear.

the human (and animal) body is (mostly) smooth due to sub-skin fat layer. so we will place our edges in a continuous flow forming a loop around reliefs (bones or muscles). These loop allow a clean animation too.

When our edges are well placed, the correct shape will follow naturally.

Then workflow will be then as follow :

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