A female body from a cylinder

This tutorial is best suited for those who like to see a rough model from the start and then refine into detail as you go.

The technique is best suited for those that prefer to see a rough representation of their models from the start to judge proportions.

It’s supposed to act as a guide only. Depending on the body type and muscles you want to emphasize the later structure can vary greatly but the beginning steps should still remain similar. The tutorial should be a good base for a male version as well since the structure accommodates for most major muscles.

I wanted to create a young, athletic female body. Young and female because I didn’t want to go overboard with the tutorial modelling lots of muscles or sagging, wrinkly skin and athletic because I still wanted to have some subtle defined musculature with which I could push towards a male body.

This tutorial was done in 3ds max but the technique itself is usable across any 3D software that supports subdivisions.
Some software allows for selection and splitting of edgeloops and edgerings which will speed up modelling a lot.

Knowledge of the following is expected:

- Subdivision surfaces
- Edgeloop and Edgerings
- Quad polygons

The steps are colour coded:
blue means something has been added
red means something has been deleted

Information:

I created this piece as a tribute to Metal Gear Solid. Base modeling in Lightwave, detailing and texturing in ZBrush, and post work in Photoshop.

The process:

I used Grey Fox from Metal Gear Solid as my main reference (Konami): ->

I decided to start with a sporty body type (Lightwave). There were no ears in the base model since they wouldn’t be seen under the helmet, and I didn’t want the extra polys. Then I exported the base mesh into Zbrush, subdividing and refining the body.

Next I began modeling the helmet. In ZBrush, I squeezed a transparent sphere around the head using the move tool. I masked out the areas I wanted to indent, and then used the negative inflate: