with Subdivision Surfaces
By Rich Suchy
Part
2
Between-Toe Depressions:
Diamond shaped quadrangles serve a duel purpose around the toe area. They increase the geometry density so that you have enough detail around the toes, and they can help control depressions between toes. Alternately they can be used to raise tendons from the toe knuckles.
By pulling one point down (or up, in the case of the tendons) the quad becomes non-planer. That is to say, with a subdivision of one, the surface will be subdivided for rendering into 2 triangles, split between the translated corner and it's opposite. Adjust the points until you get the desired effect.
Prepping the foot to Grow Toes:
We will be Smooth-Shifting (extruding) toes from bases at the front
of the foot. Create a face for each toe using the foremost point of
the diamonds delineating the groove between each toe as the natural
boundry. The top edge of each toe, stretching back toward the heel
of the foot will form the bulge of the toe knuckles. Later, if more
definition is desired as it might be on a man's foot, it can be generated
by Smooth-Shifting out more geometry from the current knuckle/ tendon
bump.
Grow
a Toe: We will be Smooth-Shifting (extruding) toes from bases at the front of the foot. Create a face for each toe using the foremost point of the diamonds delineating the groove between each toe as the natural boundry. The top edge of each toe, stretching back toward the heel of the foot will form the bulge of the toe knuckles. Later, if more definition is desired as it might be on a man's foot, it can be generated by Smooth-Shifting out more geometry from the current knuckle/ tendon bump.
Knife in Some Detail:In, Lightwave use the Knife tool to slice up the toe into as many segments as are needed to shape the toe. Three or four cuts aught to do it. Other packages, such as Imagine which has a tool called Slice have thier own equivilents to the knife tool. The large Toe is more solidly anchored against the base of the foor than are the others. The rest of the toes generally have a longer span or arch before decending toward the ground. Two types of the smaller toes seem to be common. One has a nail angled sharply forward while the other lies more horiontal. I suggest finding reference for the type of toe that you are interested in building.
Shape
the Toes: Translate Move points into apropriate locations to define the toe's shape. It's helpful to look at the toe in the y axis frequently to confirm that the toe has the right shape in cross section. In Lightwave Polygons with more than 4 sides are not treated as subdivision surfaces. You cannot view them smoothed without first tesselating them into triangles. After the toes have been created, you may delete the front faces from which we extruded our toes.