Model Editor Tutorial

Creating a Simple Robot Model

I am going to keep this part less detailed than the axe modelling section, since most of the actions done here is explained in the axe modelling section. For instance, I will assume that you can do it when i show an image and say "Get this shape by extruding a cube and moving some vertices".

The Body

We are building the mecha like robot shown in the screenshot above, let's start with the body. Pretty simple.Follow the steps below(side view):

The robot body is ready:

The Legs

Leg will be 3 parts; foot, upper leg,lower leg.

For upper leg and lower leg we are going to start with this shape:

You can create this shape by extruding sides of a cube and scaling it or moving faces/vertices.

First the upper leg:

Position the shape next to your robot body, and extrude sides down.

Now for the lower leg:

And for the foot:

First add a box like this:

Then extrude it so it looks like this from top:

I selected the marked area, extruded twice, then selected sides and extruded once for both sides. Then switched to the side view and moved vertices down:

And then selected the tip of the foot and scaled it(top view):

And here we have our complete leg:

Now that it looks a bit arkward and we still do not have the other leg. Move and rotate the parts so it looks less arkward:

Great! Now we can copy it for the other leg. Select all parts of the leg. Remember that you can select some polygons of the leg and click on Select Connected to select all polygons connected to current selection. If you are selected the parts, copy them by pressing CTRL+C and paste by pressing SHIFT+INSERT. These are the default keys, if you changed them use your hotkeys. MED will paste them exactly on the same position and select them. So do not lose your selection and move it to the other side:

You can add weapond to top or sides of the robot, or you may want to add more detail, but for simplicty sake i will finis modelling here and move on to the unwrapping and skinning section.

Skinning The Robot

Again, since same actions taken here is explained in the axe tutorial, we weill keep this short for the robot. Let's start.

To make it easier to unwrap, i am going back to this pose:

It is easier because, when it's horizontally aligned like the screenshot above, the projection to 2d space will also be horizontally straight. This will make preparing the uvmap and painting the texture alot easier. We are going to unwrap the leg once and copy the unwrapped leg to the other side. As explained in the axe skinning tutorial, select faces accordingly and apply 6-sided mapping from front,back,left,right and top. Quick reminder, for example: Select polygons of upper-leg that are facing to front and go to Edit-> Create 6 Sided Mapping click on Front and click OK. Do this for all sides of all parts. Note that you do not need to close the 6-sided mapping window to select other faces. I ended up with something like this:

There is still plenty of uv space, it could be used more efficent, but that is good enough for this tutorial. Then i quieckly painted a skin using the skin painting tools in skin edito. Final result:

Great! The model is finished, we can now add bones and animate it!


Next: Adding bones and attaching vertices