Lesson 5: Sculpting muscles

You can also edit a muscle’s cross section curves to sculpt the muscle into the shape you want. The Muscle Creator sculpting controls let you choose which pose state and axis to edit, and provide sliders to help you adjust the muscle surface.

Note

Make sure you select the desired pose state before editing your muscle. If multiple states are selected at once, changes you make on the muscle surface are reflected in all selected states.

Open the scene for the lesson

Load the Sabertooth_Sculpt_Start.mb file.
This scene contains the saber tooth tiger with capsulated bones, a front leg muscle, and a neck muscle which has been set in all three pose states.

Sculpt muscles in each pose state

Open the Muscle Creator (Muscle > Muscles/Bones > Muscle Creator) and switch to the Edit tab.
Select the neck muscle.
The neck muscle in the current rest state needs to be thinner on its Z-axis.
In the Sculpting section of the Muscle Creator, make sure only the Z axis and Rest parameters are selected.
Drag the Sculpt slider to the left until the muscle loses its tube shape and looks more like a flat strip.
Keep the Rest parameter selected, deselect the Z axis, and select the X axis.
Drag the Location slider to the left until it is under the St parameter and drag the Falloff slider to roughly the same position.
This isolates the cross section curve at the top of the neck muscle that is slightly curved inwards.
Drag the Sculpt slider to the right until the inward curvature disappears.
Go to frame 17, where the neck muscle’s stretch state is being pulled to its limit.

Note
Before you sculpt a muscle in a desired state, make sure you scrub to a frame that best represents the muscle in that state. Otherwise, you may not properly see the results of your deformations on your muscle surface.
Drag the Location slider to the middle and drag the Falloff slider to the right. This sets the sculpting range at its maximum, so the entire muscle length is affected.
Select the Z axis and St parameters.
Drag the Sculpt slider to the left until the entire muscle is thinner.
Scrub the animation again to view your sculpting changes.

Beyond the lesson

In this lesson you learned how to sculpt a muscle in different pose states. You can find the completed file for this lesson, Sabertooth_Sculpt_End.mb, in the Maya Muscle Advanced Techniques folder.