Learn how to use topology effectively to create complex shapes and components.
This tutorial focuses on modeling a BMO character from Adventure Time, demonstrating techniques for creating proper topology, adding supporting edges, and extruding faces to achieve desired shapes.
The tutorial also covers using symmetry, merging vertices, and ensuring proper connectivity.
Follow along to enhance your game geometry skills and achieve cleaner, more efficient workflows.
- Workflow
The first couple of steps should be known by now when starting a new Maya project.
You need to make a new Project in the Project window and input the reference images inside the project file in source images.
Then inside our workspace, we set up Free Image planes with the images we put entice of our main project folder, making sure everything is set up correctly in all 3 viewports, front, side, and back.
Now that our project and images are set up we can begin working.
The instructor starts off with a cube, making sure the scale is correct on all 3 sides.
Afterward, he bevels the edges to give the base of the body edge supports.
These extra edges will make the sides of the cube not only smoother but it will keep their form in the Smooth Preview
The next few steps are setting up edges using the multi-cut tool to split the body into different parts.
By doing this we will have more control over the topology of our character and it will be easier to reconnect the topology once everything is created to keep things organized and clean.
There are different ways you can split the character into parts.
One of them is using the Extract Faces option.
You select the face you want to separate from the body and Shit Right Click to open up the options menu and select the Extract Faces option. The other way is by using the Detach Component.
You select the edge of the part you want to separate and detach it from the rest of the body but it will not fully separate it and make it a separate object inside of the Outliner.
To finish up the separation, in Object Mode Shift Right Click for the menu to open up, and choose Separate.
A group will be created with the parts inside.
To reconnect parts together you first need to Combine the parts into one and merge the vertices together.
To check if everything is fully connected use the Smooth Preview.
Since the top part of the head is symmetrical the instructor will delete half of the face and mirror it afterwards.
For the head, they set up edges around the face using the multi-cut tool and move around vertices according to the reference.
Once the shape of the face is achieved the instructor will extrude the feces of the face of the character inward.
But there will be an issue since in the Smooth Preview the edges around the face are smooth and not maintaining the form of the character.
To fix this the instructor will demonstrate how to add supporting edges to prevent the form from deforming when it’s in the Smoot Preview.
The supporting edges are added using the Extrude Faces tool.
The tool provides more options when the Extrusion is added.
The instructor gives instructions on how to use these extra tools inside the Extrude to add supporting edges by adjusting the thickness and offset of the extrusion.
Once the supported edges are added in the Smooth Preview you can immediately see a change in the form.
The extra supporting edges are keeping everything together to create nice clean lines.
Before mirroring the head the instructor deletes the faces on the side that have appeared because of the Extrusion.
If you mirror it without removing it will appear in the middle of the face and cause problem for your topology and it will not look good.
After removing the faces the instructor makes sure that the vertices in the middle are all straightened. This will make the mirror and topology better.
They select those vertices and by using the deform tool they drag on the red axis towards the center of the gizmo, causing the vertices to align in a perfect vertical row.
To assure once again that everything is fully in the center, they select the vertices and use the move tool while holding X to snap them on the center line of the grid.
Now that everything is fixed they mirror the face on the other side.
Because of the supporting edges that we added on the other half they also transferred to the other side because of the mirror.
Moving on to the rest of the body, the instructor repeats the same process on the face by adding edges using the multi-cut tool around the form of the button.
They then Extrude the faces of the button to create a hole where a button will be added later on. Just like with the face, they add supporting edges using the Offset and Thickness when Extruding the faces.
After the instructor is done there is one problem.
The edges around the hole aren’t supported resulting in a deformation in the Smooth Preview.
Not that serious of an issue the instructor moves on to the other shapes of the character and will return to fix the issue afterward.
The instructor splits the bottom of the character in another half where he has to make the hole for the other button.
By doing this they will avoid the extra edges from interfering with the topology on the other parts of the character.
They go on to add edges with multi-cut to make the form of the other button on the character. Same as before they Extrude the faces and use the Offset and Thickness to add supporting edges.
The same issue will happen like the previous hole the instructor made which will be fixed later.
We’ll move to the bottom half and Extract the selected faces.
Just like before using the multi-cut tool, we’ll add in some extra geometry to create the holes for the buttons.
Using the vertices we can move them around to create the shape from the reference image.
We’ll repeat the same steps as before, extruding the faces to make supportive edges inside and around the holes.
When we’re done we should have the same results as before.
We’ll move on to create the other holes in the front panel of the BMO.
We’ll make sure some of the edges are still in the same place as the other parts of the front panel so we can connect them better after we are done. We do this by moving some of the edges to be the same length as their neighboring part.
To make circles in Maya we first need to add 6 more edges around the circle.
It should have 8 vertices around it.
We’ll do the same thing to the other circles, adding edges with the multi-cut tool or using the already given topology and just moving around those edges.
For the triangle, we don’t need many edges to make the form.
We’ll merge these two vertices to create a triangle.
We don’t usually want triangles in our topology but having one or two won’t be too harmful.
Going back to our circles, we’ll select the four faces and use the Circulise Component tool on each circle one by once since each circle has a different size.
You can scale down the faces if the circle doesn’t fit the reference image.
Now that we have our circular holes we can Extrude the faces and create supportive edges.
In the end, it should look like this.
We’ll repeat the same thing for the triangle.
Going to the side panels we’ll use the same method we did to make the circles on the front.
Using the multicut tool start adding edges around the circles.
Select the four faces on each circle and use the Curculize Component tool.
Then using the small menu adjust the Radial Offset to scale all of the faces down. And make sure the Normal Offset is set to 0.
We’ll move on and Extrude the already selected faces to create the holes and supportive edges.
Afterward, mirror it on the other side.
- Fixing up our previous extrudes
Before we move on to the back of the BMO we first need to fix up the previous extrudes we’ve made.
When we turn on our Smooth Preview we can see that the form is kept but the geometry isn’t looking right.
We need to fix this issue because it will cause some problems when we reconnect the parts together.
To fix them we’ll be deleting and reconnecting edges.
To fix up the form we need to Bevel the 4 edges in the corners.
We’ll start with the edges at the corners, deleting them will delete the edges in the middle but we can always add them back in using the multi-cut tool.
Using the multicut tool start reconnecting the edges with the rest of the geometry.
We want to avoid triangles and polygons with more than 4 sides at all costs.
Because we have a polygon with more than 4 sides we won’t be able to use the multi-cut tool like we usually do so we need to hold down Shift and drag a cut across then reconnect the edges to make normal 4-sided polygons.
We also need to reconnect the inside as well.
The other edges in the bottom corners need to be deleted and reconnected with the rest of the geometry.
When we’re done the geometry will look way better and less messy.
We’ll move on to do the same to the rest of the holes in the model that need to be fixed.
First, we select the corners and bevel them.
In the Bevel menu, we will fix up some of the values.
Once we got the edges we need we need to delete and reconnect them so the geometry is good.
The reconnection on the outside should look like this.
Once we are done with the outside we need to fix the inside.
Moving on to the triangle.
Select the corner edges and bevel them, repeating the same steps as in the previous fixes.
Delete the edges we don’t need and reconnect the topology.
We won’t be able to fix up the topology inside the triangle so we can just delete those faces, extrude the outer edges inward and merge them in the center.
If some of the topology still has incorrect polygons you can always go back and fix it up.
- Combining everything
Now that we fixed our topology we can start to combine all the parts together.
We need to start slow and go two at a time instead of merging everything at once.
We’ll select two parts and first Combine them.
After combining them we can see that there are gaps in between the borders of the two parts.
To fix these gaps we need to drag and select those vertices that are overlapping each other and merge them together.
To check if you have holes click 3 to open up the Smooth Preview.
Instead of adding more edges in the middle to connect with the recipes below, we can instead merge that row of vertices into one.
Select those vertices and merge them together.
Don’t worry about the triangles, it won’t cause any issues to the model.
Now we can add one edge in the middle and merge the bottom vertices with the one holding the triangles.
Our work isn’t done here since we need to reconnect the rest of the geometry to have proper topology.
Moving on to the other part below, we’ll grab the newly merged part and combine it with the one below it.
Since there are enough edges and vertices we can go ahead and merge the bordering vertices together like we did with the first two parts.
We can use the V + Move Tool to snap vertices on top of one another before merging them to help us with our work.
Using the multicut tool add and reconnect the topology.
We can move some of the vertices to be directly on top of the neighboring ones before combining the two parts together. After we align them all we can add more edges on the other side to match the vertex count of its neighbor.
Also fixing up some vertices on the other side we can then combine them and merge the vertices together.
We can start preparing the bottom front part to be merged with the top front part of the BMO.
We’ll move some vertices around and merge some of them together.
Once we have all the vertices and edges set up we can combine the two parts and merge the vertices.
We’re only going to connect the sides with the front panel of the BMO.
We still need to make holes in the back and fix up the topology.
On the back faces add some edges using the multicut tool to create the shape of the hole and repeat the previous steps from the class.
Extrude the faces.
Don’t forget to delete the side faces before mirroring them.
Make sure you straighten the vertices by selecting all of them and using the scale tool.
Bevel the edges of the holes.
Start fixing up the topology by deleting and reconnecting edges.
After you’re done you can mirror the part.
If there are strange deformities lower down the Merge Threshold.
Start preparing both parts for merging by aligning edges and merging vertices.
End Result.
- Adding in the face features and buttons
We’ll be adding the facial features on the BMO from the previous class.
Add a Taurus into the scene, scale it down, and move it up to where the eye of the BMO would be.
Adjust some value in the Inputs inside the Channel Box. Scale it down a bit if necessary.
Delete the bottom half of the Taurus.
Fix the bottom holes by extruding some of the edges then merging the rest in the center.
Add supporting edges on the edge loops.
How the BMO should look so far.
Add a cylinder got the mouth, using the reference to guide you to where the mouth should be and scaling it to its size.
Delete the Top half of the cylinder.
Bridge the two edges.
Make a hole in the cylinder for the mouth cavity using the Extrude Faces tool.
Make sure you add supporting edges as you extrude just like in the previous class.
Add a supoprting edge outside as well.
Delete the back faces.
Place the mouth where it needs to be.
Bevel the two corner edges of the mouth.
Delete the edges inside the mouth and reconnect the topology.
Add a cylinder for the tongue, scale it down, and delete the back faces.
Add supporting edges using Extrude Faces.
Use the Lattice Deformer Tool to make the shape of the Tongue.
Duplicate the same shape using Ctrl + D to make the teeth.
Delete the top half of the duplicate.
Move the pivot using D + V.
Use the Scale tool to scale the teeth.
With Soft Select on (Press B) make the Soft Select Area bigger (holding B and Middle Mouse Button and moving the mouse) and select the middle vertices to move them up and create a smooth bend.
For the Letters on the Side, we’re going to use the Type tool.
You can adjust the topology of the letters indie the Geometry tab.
We’ll also turn on the Bevel Edge option.
You can change the font too.
Using the scale, rotate and move the tool place where the BMO Text needs to be.
We’re also going to delete any extra edges to lower our polycount as well as delete the back faces of the letters.
FINAL RENDER
