One area I usually don't put enough time on is the hands and sometimes feet of my models. Why? Because they are a pain in the butt. And I don't have fun making them. But looking at my own hands today. Something struck me. Fingers and toes don't flow from another body part like everything else does. They're just plopped there on the end of an otherwise smooth flowing creature. I model relying on things to flow together efficiently. That's probably why they give me so much trouble. They don't make sense. Look at a skeleton. The fingers and toes are not connected by any bones. They are actually extra pieces being held on to the hand and feet by cartilage. Other bones do this too. But they line up much better in the flow of things. Ther is a logical sense of direction with them. EXAMPLE: Line up two rectangles with space between them...flows ok Line up two cylinders with space between them....flows ok Now line up a cylinder(finger) with an oval(hand)..that doesn't flow at all. Look at the way your skin connects the fingers with your hand. It's actually quite a mess. It's not logical or smooth at all and it's only possible due to skin being elastic and pliable. It's almost as if fingers and toes were an after thought to a creature during creation. No wonder it's so hard to create meshes of them. They don't have any logical flow from them to the hand area. What the heack was GOD thinking anyway? ;-) ScottA

Attached Link: hand bones

That's a good picture. It illustrates a bunch of cylinders trying to connect to a spherical bone (or collection of bones). Not to mention how the skin has to stretch itself in such and odd way to wrap around everything. That's one of the hardest things to do properly in a modeling program. It's like a tree trying to branch out all in one place instead of one branch at a time as you go up. Definately an odd and inefficient way to arrange body parts. I'll have to spec. up a better design and show it to GOD. If and when I see him. ;-) ScottA

ScottA: Let me know if and when you come up with something. This is also a problem for me. Chest into the collar to shoulder to forearm to hand to "how the hell am I supposed to do that?".