Figure 351. Slicing Across the Chest

To build the chest surface, start off as you did with the arms; draw a projection spline down the center, turn on the ribs, and cut the slices (see Figure 351). Make sure the arms are hidden; you'll end up with gaps in the slices, but you'll see later on how to fix that up.

Figure 352. Slicing Around the Neck

Next, focus in on the neck area and draw some further slices that curve up to capture the top of the shoulders correctly. Again, make sure that the slices are equally spaced (see Figure 352).

Figure 353. Chest and Back Split Line

Next, cut a slice down the center of the chest and back, and use that to split the chest section slices (see Figure 353).

Figure 354. Join Across Arm Gap

Now you need to fix up the gap in the slices where the arms were hidden (see Figure 354). First pick the slice on either side of the gap that ends with an arrow. Type <Shift-J> and that slice will turn yellow. Now pick the slice across the other side of the gap; its start with a blue cross. Type <Shift-J> again and a new slice is created that joins the two across the gap. Repeat for all the other slices across the two arm gaps.

Figure 355. Final Chest Slices

When all the gaps have been closed, you'll have two complete sets of slices, one for each side of the chest area (see Figure 355). As always, check that the slice directions are all consistent; pick and reverse any that aren't matching.

Figure 356. Chest and Arm Surfaces Overlapping

Pick all these slices, interpolate them with splines, transfer to your modeler, and loft to make the chest surface. You'll now have the overlapping chest and arm surfaces (see Figure 356).

Figure 357. Chest and Arm Surfaces Blended

What you do next would depend on the modeler that you are using. If you're using Maya or PowerAnimator you'll probably want to trim away the chest surfaces where the arm surfaces are overlapping, and use the fillet blend tool to create a smooth transition between the two (see Figure 357).

Figure 358. Slices Used to Build the Surfaces

To finish off, Figure 358 shows an image of all the slices used to build the surfaces shown above.