Adding the Fingers and Wrist
As you’ve realized by now, modeling hands is quite challenging and it’s difficult to get them right. Follow the steps shown in the Figure 7.22 to add the fingers and wrist, and finish the hand modeling. From time to time, it’s a good idea to add a Subdivision Surface modifier to take a look at the smooth shape that results.
10. Make a few cuts in the finger to define the articulations. Join two vertices at the top to convert the n-gon into two quads. You can also delete the n-gon at the bottom, as you won’t need it.
11. Add some more loops to the finger and define its shape.
12. Select the whole finger (you can select groups of connected faces with L) and duplicate it three times. Move, scale, and adjust the duplicates to fit on the hand.
13. Activate AutoMerge (on the 3D View header near the Snapping options or in the Mesh menu), and use the vertex snapping tools to drag the vertices at the bottom of the fingers to the corresponding vertices at the top of the hand. Then, adjust the vertices to make the fingers look natural. You could also add another loop at the base of the thumb.
14. Extrude the base of the hand down to create the shape for the glove’s wrist flap.
Tip
The extruded edges may not be as circular as they should be. If you activate the LoopTools add-on, you can use the Circle tool to select that loop and it will be converted into a perfect circle. Then, you can scale it and adjust it to become an oval that is more typical of the wrist shape.
15. Add two loop cuts to the flap to define the shapes a little more.
16. Remember those unfinished cuts from step 8? Go ahead and use the Knife tool (K) to arrange them, making some cuts similar to the ones shown in this step’s image. Then, if the shape gets a little messy, you can select the whole area and use the Smooth Vertices option.
17. Select the bottom loop of the flap, extrude it slightly to add some thickness to the glove, and extrude it up again to the interior of the wrist. This is just to prevent an empty space between the arm mesh and the glove.
18. Add a couple of divisions to the interior of the flap so in case you need to deform it, you’ll have enough geometry.
At this point, you may want to adjust the overall shape of the hand. Unhide the rest of the models (if you hid them previously) and scale, rotate, and move the hand to place it where it needs to be according to the arm, and make sure it has the right scale. Once it’s in place, you may want to mirror it on the other side. You can do this with the same procedure you used for the eyes: select the hand (in Object Mode; you can also use Ctrl + A to apply the rotation and scale to assure that the hand will mirror as expected), place the 3D cursor in the center of the model (press Shift + C), press . (period) on the keyboard to set the pivot point to the 3D cursor, press Ctrl + M to mirror, and then press X to select the mirror axis. Finally, press Enter to confirm. Figure 7.23 shows the results up to this point.
