Looks good so far; but I think I'd sneak an edge loop or two in the knee and ankle, for bending.
Is there many triangles so far?
It looks like some extra ones around the ankle, possibly the double triangle set on the front of the knee could be done away with too.
Triangles probably won't hurt anything, but why use them if don't need them.

IMO (and I'm certainly not an expert) triangles right where bending is going on, e.g. right at the knee there, are a very bad idea if you ever intend to do any subdividing.  When you subdivide it's going to do all sorts of wacky stuff.

Good start there !

Though you should avoid those triangles in joint areas (like around the knee and ankle) Triangles are very bad news when you rig a mesh as they cant be evenly divided among 2 bones. So you get one vertex going with one bone, and two going with the other, which can tear your mesh. They also smooth in weird ways.

Yup, get rid of your tri's.
Old theory is stay with quads...though there was a very interesting thread at CGTalk from some top notch modelers who were actually using (with success) 5 sided polys strategically placed.

Looks like you're building her polygon by polygon... Is there a particular reason you're not using subdivision modeling method?

Attached Link: "Modeling the female figure for beginners" by Bijoy Thomas

That is a pretty good tutorial, although if you take a close look at the legs, the author's example has no triangles:
http://www.free3dtutorials.com/modeling/3d-max/female-figure-modeling.php?page=3
http://www.free3dtutorials.com/modeling/3d-max/female-figure-modeling.php?page=6

Not only will triangles subdivide oddly, they also cannot flex when you do not subdivide; so in any area where you will have bending going on, e.g. around the knee, they will very likely cause you trouble.

Quote - I working in accordance to the linked tutorial.  It's using edge clone.
DPH

  Thank you so much for this link.  :)

I'll be looking forward to seeing what you do with this one, DP.

Much better now, and i think it's great that you are willing to change your mesh like that. Too many novice modellers follow tutes slavishly and then run into trouble when they have to model something you cant find a tute for. Its very important in the beginning to understand modelling theory as well as which buttons to push.

Thank you Ghonma and Xenphonz for the words of encouragement.  While I'm not sure that I understand so much about modeling theory, but after having remapped in UV Mappre Pro the P4NudeWoman (Posette), Dork, the P4 Catsuit, and Vic 4.1, all to accept V3 skin and 2nd skin textures, I DO believe that I now know a bit about meshes.  (Remapping V4.1's feet was absolutely dreadfull!  What the heck does she, or any model need so many bloody vertices between her toes for!)
Anyway, my ideal is Posette, and what I'm aiming for is something like her.
DPH

You will need to find a living volunteer I think. Love esther PS maybe you could offer them the incentive of a free model or something

Here you go, more back dimples then you can shack a stick at:

http://www.backdimples.co.uk/DimpleGallery2.htm

You can get a rough approximation by just following the triangle at the base of the butt. Say about 1/3 from the base to the waist.

err that's definitely not work safe !! :) Nice though

That looks great David, and thank you for the link:That's a great site. I think I can also use that in Hexagon.

Regards,

Bopper.

Below are some recommendations for improvement, please take only as positive reinforcement:
1- You should clean up those small tri's as quads. Yes eventaully you will need a tri(s), but try to limit those.
2- You are beginning to squish the quads here, you want to try and keep your quads somewhat the same size throughout the mesh as a whole, however, when detail is needed...go ahead and make your quads spaced tighter (closer together).
3- Example of an area (follow those lines/edges from the butt fold up to the hip area) where you have disparity of sized quads, this might show up in your renders (suggestion 2 and 3 relate to the same subject).
4- This might be a line where you keep tight spaced quads, a detail area, the butt fold...have close spaced polys follow this line.

Modeling is hard work, I hope you don't take offense to these suggestions...as they are just that, suggestions. Ultimately, modeling something and then rendering it will tell you what is working and what isn't.
From experience these are areas that I would see as concerns.

I hope this helps.
DarkEdge

Notice the polys below and above that top red line show what I'm saying. Also notice how the butt cheek itself tries to stay with the same sized polys (as it can to a limit).

**dphoadley@ghonma
**Thank you for the dimple like, they look fabulous! (Can't get too many dimples!) ;=D

Hopefully I'm still keeping the poly count reasonably low so that this figure will be easy to pose and render.
DPH

That looks much better David, great work!

A vertex with more than 4 lines connected to it is called a 'Pole'.
You definitely want to avoid poles with more than 5 lines.

then I don't think my topology suggestion is a good one?  I'm not an expert but I thought that's how it's done, although I see what you mean again about 5 edges connecting to the bottom points of the example above.  How should it be modeled?

This is one of the articles I got my (noobish) approach to topology from:
http://maxrovat.sns.hu/subdiv/subdivmodeling.htm

Quote - You should make every effort to maintain an all-quad surface when you model. It is particularly important when modeling surfaces that have abrupt variations in detail or contain fine creases or bumps on an otherwise smooth surface. Of course, the human face is a surface that has these characteristics in spades.

The question arose as to how this technique relates to the theory that you should strive to only allow each vertex of 
your model to have 4 edges. The answer is, it doesn’t relate at all. Modeling with all quads and modeling without “poles” (non-4-edged vertices) are very different practices. If you were to follow both philosophies simultaneously, your head would explode. Nevertheless, it is possible to try to use the best of both worlds.

Yeah, pjz99, that's the way to do it. Your example is a 5 line pole.
The orginal is 7, and that would cause all sorts of trouble when subdividing.

That tutorial I linked mentions another modeler named Bay Raitt, who is a big proponent of "no poles at all" modeling:
http://cube.phlatt.net/home/spiraloid/tutorial/modeling.html

Bay Raitt is who made Gollum for LOTR movies...

I would encourage you to import the obj as it is into Poser now and take some renders.
Then take note of troubled areas, then return to that area in your modeing program for tweaking.

www.subdivisionmodeling.com/forums/showthread.php

A very good tutorial about poles, mesh geometry and edge loops. But I think the rules with all quads and few poles are more important if the model is about to be subdivided - but for a model to be subdivided this new female has quite a lot of faces already.

Since I'm not a skilled, experienced modeler, I will look and watch.
Good work so far, you can still change the geometry later, I think.

By the by, as per polys...

Programmatically, triangles are the absolute fastest in most places - except in Poser. Poser handles things so that quads work best. No, I only wish I knew why that is, but them's the breaks. (often you get way faster rendering (not what you may be thinking) in OpenGL when you break it all down into triangles before feeding it to the GPU).

All said, Poser and D|S can handle nGons* and tris... but know that each one on a mesh will slow down a read-in or calculation run by just a little bit. The more you have, the slower it all gets on a cumulative basis.

So... what does this all mean to you? Simple: If it's going to be used in Poser and D|S, your best bet is to build it with almost all quads.

• nGon = anything more than 4 half-edges on a given poly. Don't do it. All programs will hate you if you use too many.

/P

There was an interesting read over at CGTalk with a big time modeler who is actually using 5 sided polys with success. He is picking and choosing where to put them but never the less he's purposefully using them. He was in the 4sided poly camp for a very long time.

Much of the talk was above me or I just didn't care to figure out what they were talking about, not sure which one it is.

I, as well as probably 95% of other modelers agree with Pengy, keep to quads whenever possible.

I'm so impressed!

You're more than just a pretty face.  She looks pretty good!

That's good work there DP... Some areas need cleaning, eg you will probably need to redo the torso area after you add arms and boobies so that its all a better match to how the shoulder and breasts flow in that part of the body. But you're definitely on the right track there. Couple of things i will suggest though:

1. Start using the camera/persp view for tweaking your mesh now. It's very easy to get so lost in the front/side vertex matching that you dont see that your mesh has become a mess when seen in actual 3D. Remember that the ortho views are basically a lie and its the persp view that is the 'real' view and the one where your mesh should look correct.

2. Setup a basic 3 point lighting and try moving the lights around to see what the form and silhouette of your mesh is like from various angles. This will help you find problem areas in the mesh. And yes do a quick export to OBJ and check it in poser to make sure everything is working fine.

3. If you need a ref on human anatomy, one easy fix is to just import a poser model and use that. Yes many poser models have weird proportions, but they are reasonably accurate and can be spun around to see how everything is put together in the human body.

Quote - There was an interesting read over at CGTalk with a big time modeler who is actually using 5 sided polys with success. He is picking and choosing where to put them but never the less he's purposefully using them. He was in the 4sided poly camp for a very long time.

Yeh that was Stahlberg, and he's always been a little weird :p But note that he was talking about Maya, which has proper catmul clark subds. CC subds handle anything you throw at them with no problem including tris, ngons, poles etc. The real problems arise in apps (like poser) that dont use them.

Quote - No, I only wish I knew why that is, but them's the breaks.

It's because REYES renderers dont actually render triangles (or any form of polygons) They render what are called bicubic patches, which are mathematically always 4 sides. So when you load a mesh that has more or less then 4 sided polys, they are broken up into 4 sides first (tris are promoted to quads with one degenerate edge) and this translation takes time.