Low Poly Character: Modeling a Geisha in Maya

Posted by: Kakes on: April 25, 2010

• In: Maya | Modeling
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Concept Art - Punk Geisha Azusa

Above is my concept art I whipped up in photoshop: A punk infused geisha named Azusa.

First, two planes were made orthogonal to each other to place the front and side outline of Azusa.

Modeling one half of Azusa is enough as I can mirror her later. So I started with a cube on her left half.

Horizontal edge loops were added to where I want to have geometry, and vertices were moved to trace around her left side.

In the side view, vertices were moved to trace around her front and back.

Vertical edge loops were added so that she is no longer boxy but round. The highlighted faces were extruded to make her Obi sash.

I’ll be putting an alpha map on her kimono so her left leg can be seen. So I modeled her leg starting with a cylinder.

Like her body, her leg was modeled by adding horizontal edge loops and moving the vertices from the front view…

…and from her side view.

So this is what it looked like in the perspective view.

To model her arm, vertices in the area were first moved so that it makes a rough shape of an arm in kimono sleeves. (Hitting the extrude button after selecting faces, scaling it down, then moving the new vertices works well if it’s difficult to move the vertices to make an arm cross section without altering the body geometry too much.)

Arms were extruded in full length, then vertical edge loops were added to shape it. (Extruding it all the way first then adding edge loops is easier than continuously extruding and shaping each section of the arm at a time.)

Shaping the sleeves and adding the neck, she looked like this.

Similarly, her hand was created by extruding, adding edge loops, and shaping vertices. Her thumb was extruded from a part of her palm. A plane was created separately for the hanging bit of her kimono sleeve.

Her neck was extruded to model her head. A mirrored instance of her left half of her body was created so that it’s easier to shape her head.

Like everything else, edge loops were added and vertices were moved to trace her orthographic outlines in the front and side views.

Her Obi bow was created separately. The bow was made from a six sided cylinder, and the hanging part of her sash at the front was made from a cube.

For her hair, edge loops were added to planes and the vertices were moved. UVs were made before the vertices were moved so it’s easier to UV-unwrap her later.

Her back of her hair was extruded from edges on her skull. Six sided cylinders with their caps deleted were used to make rolls of hair on her head.

So Azusa was now looking like this.

Her instanced half was deleted and her geometry was mirrored. Now I could model an arm band on her left arm without affecting the other half of her. Her left shoe was also extruded from her left leg, and duplicated. (When using Duplicate Special to duplicate a mirror of an object, freeze the object’s transformation first so the scaling values work as expected.)

And here’s my first 3D character :D

Tags: 3D, Character, Maya, Modeling