I use Lightwave. It has clone, but not like the one you described. It sounds as if I could do the same thing simply by copying the target area and moving it.

Sounds like I haven't drunk quite as much as you tonight, so I'll play around with it a bit. Troublesome though it is, I'm going to draw some better reference material for the hand.

Thanks for all your help.

http://fineart.interweb.cz/LoomisBooks/heads/page_01.htm

Take a look.

I did these WIP http://hometown.aol.co.uk/blewp1977/myhomepage/coat%20collection1.jpg?mtbrand=AOL_UK clothes using the cylinder method (although in max, not LW- naughty me!) All you do is get a cylinder with a number of vertical segments and just manipulate it round the body (or arms). Delete the segments near the arm, and do the same cylinder for the arms as well, manipulating the sleeve and deleting the unwanted bits that connect with the body- weld it all together (not shown in this pic)and bosh! One nice coat! (mines about 200 tris)To get double sided, copy the section that needs X2 sides, shrink it a little, reverse its normals and weld it to the outside- this way is nice but it costs tris, so use it sparingly! (Some other engines understand double sided textures, but 3DGS doesnt so )


Why dont you copy the section you want and paste it to a new layer in LW? (button on the bottom row and then click to paste a fresh layer?) This approximates Clone to Element (sort of). Also, you might want a plugin Lscript called Spin Poly Pair from Flay- it allows you to spin tris (LW only spins quads- annoying and silly oversight from Newtek). This will make your life easier when an edge is wrongly aligned when the mesh is triangulated, giving your model a good convex volume.

And before anyone asks, I havent done the head yet either.

That was a very cool, matrix style jacket, Brimstone. Yeah, it would look better with a head on it. I'll check that plugin too. One of the most useful plugins I've found for Lightwave so far is "add faces." It's invaluable, I can practically draw where I want my lines with it dirrectly on the mesh.

I was happy with the feet and arms, but looking closely at how I'd joined the legs on, I could see I'd made a mess. So, I deleted the whole thing except the arms and feet and have started rebuilding the body from scratch.

This time it was much easier and I was more able to intuitively position the points. I've been working around her backside to get the legs to mesh up to the body.


A firmer, better shaped bottom


A nice, low poly bottom, showing a bit of snatch

I still have some work to do around the front to get all the lines right. Then back to the hands. Thank you all for your photo and illustration resources, they have given me lots of good material to draw from. Hands will be particularly difficult seeing as how they are rounded when relaxed. Perhaps making them flat then using a magnet on them is the best way to go?

So much for budgeting myself for four hours a week. Today was a national holiday, and I've been working on this withoug eating since morning.

This is the body, basically finished. I might find something I need when I come to animate it -not sure. I think I can probably stip a few more polies off it later on too. Frivolities like nipples and fingers can be removed if need be.



1504 tris so far.

I'm working on the head.

What does "unify or hide duplicate polygons" mean?

This is hard



First I tried modeling from a box, but that was such a disaster I won't even show a screen shot.

Now I'm trying a spline/ make points and join em up type method. Still looks stupid and way to0 many polies.

I'll look at some other peoples' wire frames and start again tomorrow.

This is very hard.

Try 'face extrude' then manipulate the faces into place using your reference to guide you.
To start. extrude down the profile (edge of face from side on sort of) then fill in.
Cheers.

I've labored over this head for longer than bears thinking about, and it still looks crap.

Although it looks okay against the backdrop, the whole thing just seems too long and drwn, not to mentionthe contours of the face look strange.

656 polies

Now I'm getting all hot and bothered. I'm going to go to the fridge and pour myself a cold drink -something with horns- then I'm going to come back and see if anyone has posted any advice before I erase the whole thing and start again.

Don't be so hard on yourself dude.. this looks GREAT!