In this video, we're going to prepare the body of our model inside of Maya so that we can make a high polygon version of it inside of ZBrush. So let's take this empty hole here and cap it off. Now, I'm going to actually remove this part. I'm going to take this little top piece that I created with all the buttons on it and I'm going to separate it because it's going to be much easier for me to add extra edges to all of this, if they're not altogether in one piece. I'll just boolean and back together just like I did with the block in. Like with the caps, I want to keep everything in quads as much as I possibly can especially on any of these curved or surfaces or anything like that, it's going to give me a lot better control over everything. Now I'm selecting the edges that run across it and connect components with edge loop. So I'm going to delete this top face as well because I know a planar face really easy to add back in. That way, when I do my connect with edge flow, it's much easier for me to just keep adding more edges to that whole loop. So I'm going to also get rid of the flat surface is the planar surface is back here. Just like with the cap, paying attention to where the curvature is and adding more connections with edge flow. I'm trying to keep it all consistent. So I'm performing this whole operation twice in all of these. I'm just holding Shift and double-clicking on each end of those edges to create a selection, going to do the same thing to these buttons. I realized that these buttons need a little bit more elevation to them looking back at my reference view. I need to make them feel more like they're coming out and they line up with the surface. So I'm selecting these edges and I'm going to edge perimeter. It's an easier way of getting all the edges on here so that I can connect them all up. So I'm going to delete this face. Then I select the faces that are on edges that make it difficult to select and then just control left clicking, lets me change that selection to edge perimeter. So I'm going to do this a second time to edges to edge perimeter and then it's easy enough for me to choose the extra edge loops. Then I can double everything up. Let's do the same thing on this button. Just get rid of the flat face. Select "Face rings" two edges, edge perimeter. Make sure I have all the edges I need. Then I can fill that hole and the one for the other button too. To help me split this, I'm just detaching the components there. Where the buttons are just to help me separate everything because I'm going to want the buttons separated from the rest of this actual unit. Then I can't just do a whole filled everything because of course it's too many surfaces. So I bridge in a couple locations and then that gives me enough room to fill everything back in. Then I'm going to use the connect tool to connect up just one or two extra edges on this. I do bridge, add an extra division in there, so I have enough verts to connect everything up on both sides. Now, I can focus on rounding out just the body and I can ignore all the stuff that goes on with those buttons on the top. Doing a quick smooth preview there just to make sure everything's fused together. There's a couple of spots where I can see I need to vert snap and merge verts to center. So even though I've got some ugly pinching, I could tell it to all one solid surface, which is exactly what I'm looking for. Some connect with a couple components up in this corner where this little round bit is and manually shift around some of the verts. This time I'm turning off enter with edge flow because I'm going to just want to just connect straight across. Looking at this shape overall, I want ZBrush to control where these little 90 degree angles. They're a little sharper than the smoothness of the bevel I have here. So I'm just going to delete these, move everything, flatten it out using my scale tool. That'll make it easier for me to line it up so that when I put it in ZBrush, it's going to give me the edge that I'm looking for. Although through this process you'll see me do things pretty straight ahead, just note that on a lot of these this might have been my second or third time testing out different edges, experimenting with things seeing what looks good going back and forth between Maya and ZBrush. I simply wanted to spare you the hours of neat troubleshooting certain curves and edges. So here just taking these edges, connecting the components together, edge flow and then I can get smoother set of edges connecting the components and then I'm manual editing him because entering with edge flow didn't quite give me the results I was hoping for. As I learned with the cap on this, I need quite a few edges running along the sides to give me enough definition to make this work inside of ZBrush. So same story. Just some manually pushing of shapes around and taking a lot of look at my reference off to the side just to make sure everything feels like the correct curvature. This is where some traditional 2D sketching skills can really be helpful as it helps you be able to more visually read out Kurds and things like that. Helps you understand what's happening with the surface just by looking at reference images. So I'm doing a poly average vertices there just to help me take those edges when I've added them together and smooth out those transitions a little bit. I'm resetting my tool here because it was performing a little strange for me for this Insert Edge Loop. Which I have done with edge flow which works similar to the Connect tool. Then just manually move inverts around to give me a nice curve. Usually Maya is better at producing curves than I am by hand but sometimes it's not sure about the curve I'm looking for. It works better if I do it by hand. Although, like I said, if I have the chance at all, I would rather Maya do it because it's computer and computers are generally better at putting verts along a curve. So using my Insert Edge Loop tool. Then I'm making a couple adjustments here because it clearly didn't understand exactly what I was going for. So I'm going to change it myself manually, make sure it knows what I'm trying to do. Then I come back to Insert Edge Loop and now it will go where I want it to more or less. So when you put a little bit more of a curve into that and then using my Bevel tool to help give that that subtle curve that I'm looking for. Really before we take this into ZBrush, I'm using a trick here where I'm spinning the edges and that is "Control" and "Alt" and the left and right arrow keys, let me change which verts those edges are connected onto. It can be something I do manually but it's just a quick workflow. So what I'm really looking for is I want it to look almost like the high poly, except for the 90-degree angles and that's what we're letting ZBrush really handle for us. So fill up the holes on either side. Let's make sure everything seems to line up properly. I'm going to fill these innermost holes and I'm going to actually extract these buttons and make them a separate object. I'm deleting the history just taking a look at all these shapes seeing how everything lines up for me. Inside it, in this corner especially, I need a few extra edges. So I'm doing a chamfer and I'm leaving the verts there not destroying them. Just gives me a few more edges to work with. So rotating around looking at different angles, seeing what it looks like it does and doesn't line up properly. I'm going to scale that whole phase together to make sure it's nice and flat. In the next video, I'm going to continue this process, finish up clean up on the body and put it into ZBrush so that we can get the actual high poly for the whole body here.
