34 - Add knuckles & creases

Ok, to continue on with the hand we are going to add detail by exdruding faces or cutting extra edge lines to create bumps and creases.

For the knuckles, we can start by extruding the faces to raise the knuckle area. Underneath the fingers, we have natural creases which you can create by cutting the edges and moving the inner vertices inwards.

35 - Test with meshsmooth & refine

Again, check the mesh smooth to see how the creases would naturally occur with the smoothing algorithm. Make modifications to the base mesh and see how the end result changes.

Work over the whole finger, pushing vertices around until you get the look you want. Take a look at your own fingers for reference and push them to extremes for the ogre.

36 - Copy finger to others & resize

Once you are happy with the look of the finger, make three copies of it and position them over the other fingers. Use your base mesh as reference and scale the joints as appropriate.

When the new fingers are in position, you can delete the faces of the old fingers and attach the new ones to the main hand object. Note, we have detached the hand from the main arm as we work on just this section.

37 - Sew onto rest of hand & add knuckles

Now start matching and sewing the vertices together to form one mesh. You can either use vertex weld target or weld with a larger threshold depending on the situation. Add more edges to the hand if necessary to match the fingers.

When the fingers are attached, create the main knuckles for the hand by extruding faces like before.

38 - Detail thumb

We need to use the same technique for the fingers to add detail to the thumb. You could copy the finished finger over or rebuild it in situe, do whichever you are most comfortable with.

Here I did a quick rebuild because I did not need as much knuckle detail on the thumb.

39 - Add thumb web

Now the thumb is more detailed, we can continue with the more subtle parts of the hand. Note the webbing between your own thumb and finger. We can recreate this by pulling out the main edge and adding detail by cutting edges further back.

40 - Add creases underneath

We also need to address the creases under the hand where the fingers attach. Use the same technique of cutting edges and pulling vertices as you did with earlier parts of the finger.

41 - Reshape hand

Now look at the bulk of the hand. Note how the tendons flow along the top and how the palm indents a little.

Push some vertices in, adding more if necessary for the palm. Remember to keep the muscle of the thumb nice and obvious.

I have also used the wrist area to rematch the topology to the reduced density of the arm. There is a lot of detail in the hand and we don't need the extra edges flowing all the way up the arm.

42 - Add palm creases

Following on from the previous step, we can easily add creases to the palm using the same technique as the fingers.

Line up some of the edges to flow where the main creases are in the palm. Add extra edges alongside the main crease, then indent the centre edge.

43 - Re-attach to arm

When you are happy with the hand details, re-attach it to the main body.

Have a look at the overall model. Take a break from it if necessary to look at it with fresh eyes. Make any changes to dimensions, add detail where you wish.

44 - The base model finished.

The model here is created using just the few core techniques talked about over the course of the tutorial. Cutting edges and moving vertices is all you need to know. Practice these techniques and you can model anything. Keep in mind the flow of edges for muscles and creases, look at as much anatomy reference as you can.

I hope you enjoyed this first section, the rest of the tutorials will take this model further and further. The core techniques you learned here will form a very solid foundation for modelling.