I got as far as placing the thigh section last time. I’ll just keep moving down the leg of this mannequin.
The knee is just a sphere I had created as part of the initial rough in. I moved it into place and scaled it so that it fit the bottom of the thigh section. Then I created the lower leg. Actually, I recreated it. I originally created it like all the other cylinder shapes, I forgot to include sections on the caps. So the end is on big polygon sort of thing with no modeling possible. As before, to fix this, instead of fiddling with what is there I just created a new cylinder and made sure to add sections for the caps. Now I had something I could work with.
Shaping the lower leg was much the same as the thigh. I scaled the whole thing to the size the top needed to be. Then, using the soft select and point selection I selected the center point of the cap and set the soft select radius so it would impact only the points to the outer edge and transformed or moved them in the z axis to create a concave surface to hold the sphere for the knee.
I used soft select again and selected all the edges of the bottom cap as well as the bottom
edge. This time I adjusted the selection radius so that it worked it’s way up the cylinder. I wanted it to taper at the bottom. With the selection made I scaled the bottom to what looked like the right size. Then I selected the center point of the bottom cap and again used the soft select setting the radius so it would only impact the points to the outer edge. I transformed them in the z axis to create the concave surface for the ankle sphere. I scaled the ankle sphere so it would fit within the lower leg area created for it.
Time to work on the foot. This is a little trickier. I was originally going to start with a box shape but when I got to thinking about it I decided a cylinder was a better choice. I had to make sure to create it laying on it’s side and also to add the cap segments so I could do some adjustments. The relatively easy part was flattening the bottom. The idea being that the mannequin should be able to stand on the feet. I selected the edges along the bottom of the cylinder and then used the soft selection tool so that it would ease out the transform since it’s a cylinder not all edges need to be moved as much.
I also wanted the foot to be a little pointed. To get that I selected the center point on the toe end of the foot and used the soft selection so that the taper only went part way down the foot. Then I scaled pulled the point out a little and I also did some scaling to get a nice taper. I had to transform all of it some in the z direction to get it all to sit flat again. I didn’t do much with the back of the foot. I did create a small indent in the top at the back to hold the ankle sphere. I made sure it was all positioned properly so it looked right.
I’ve got the first leg created and I didn’t make any adjustments to the foot to indicate it should be one side or the other, so, I decided that I would go ahead and select all the components and create a copy of them and position them on the other side. I did this out of convienence and practicality. I will be working on the arm next and it will help to have the other leg in place for spacing reference. I will also use it for setting the proportions of the arm segments against the body. So now it’s starting to look like a proper model.
Here’s another angle so that you have a better view of the shape of the mannequin.