topic Re: How did he make this? in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

How did he make this?

crpikeinportland — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 18:38:10 GMT

I downloaded this human model https://grabcad.com/library/human-body-model-joints-for-fusion360-1 .

I've been using for a couple years, and I know it pretty well. What I would like to do is make the trunk more feminine. Right not it is pretty boxy. However, I can't figure out how he made this. I have studied Fusion 360 Forms, and am continuing to learn about forms, but I can't see to get this kind of shape with forms alone. Do you know how he made this?

Re: How did he make this?

TrippyLighting — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 13:57:37 GMT

This might have been created in Sub-D modeling (similar to Forms in Fusion), but then converted into a NURBS model.

Without the original Sub-D model this is difficult to edit.

Re: How did he make this?

crpikeinportland — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 16:52:43 GMT

I have been working on recreating this with forms. It has been very hard, but I 'm making progress. My follow up question is whether there are other programs that might make this job easier than Fusion, for this purpose.?

Re: How did he make this?

TrippyLighting — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:40:33 GMT

@crpikeinportland wrote:

... question is whether there are other programs that might make this job easier than Fusion, for this purpose.?

Yes, but that depends on your experience.

Form modeling in Fusion is very intuitive, but sometimes can be clunky for people that have experience in other tools.

I have used Blender for almost 20 years so I am comfortable with many of it's modeling tools and keyboard shortcuts. For beginners or for occasional users I would not recommend it, because it has a significantly steeper learning curve than Fusion.

Also, a lot of people assume that "a different software" will make things easier, but ignore the limitations in their skill set!

If you can share your model, I can analyze it a d perhaps provide feedback on what to improve.

What you are attempting to model falls under the category of character modeling. You'll find excellent tutorials for this looking for character modeling tutorials for maya, MoDo, Blender and others. Different tools, but similar modeling concepts. THe key word here is topology. That is what most users new to Sub-D and Form modeling struggle with.

Re: How did he make this?

crpikeinportland — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:51:19 GMT

Here is the step file of the torso.

I think I understand what you mean by topology. I realize that I need to plan where the faces of the form will be. Currently, my strategy is to create every face separately as a form that extends far beyond the final shape, and then I will do a lot of trimming. My goal is give it some feminine curves.

Re: How did he make this?

TrippyLighting — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:53:21 GMT

I need to see the native Fusion file in .f3d format. Obviously!

Re: How did he make this?

crpikeinportland — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:57:35 GMT

Here is the fusion version of the whole body. The history of this model is that it was first made available as a step file, I think. Then someone brought it into Fusion and added joints, which is what you see here.

Re: How did he make this?

TrippyLighting — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 18:02:08 GMT

I need to see YOUR modeling attempts with Forms in Fusion native format.

Re: How did he make this?

crpikeinportland — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 18:09:47 GMT

Here is where I am at, but it is a mess. I'm really learning forms as I go. It really is pretty bad. It is just a sketch pad right now. I peck away at it every few hours.

You will find the original torso, which I have have hidden, and the canvas images of a female, which I have hidden.

Re: How did he make this?

TrippyLighting — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 18:34:21 GMT

I stand by what I said. Watch tutorials on how to model a human body.

Maya is widely used, so is Blender.

Don't focus n the tools. Focus on the mesh layout, the arrangements of vertices, edges and faces, otherwise also known as mesh topology.

You might start with a cylinder and then push/pull vertices to the desired shape. Model 90% in box view mode.

Re: How did he make this?

crpikeinportland — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 18:42:09 GMT

I'm not disagreeing with you. However, I don't think the original version was made starting with a cylinder. If you look at his vortices and edges (topology) I don't think you can get there from a cylinder. At least I wouldn't know how to. What do you think? Could you get to his topology by moving around vortices and edges of a cylinder?

Re: How did he make this?

TrippyLighting — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 18:46:22 GMT

You need to start walking before you can start running!

You can start with a cylinder and see how far you get with that. You have not even scratched the surface of form modeling and a cylinder is fine for a start.

I had linked to a tutorial in my post under "mesh topology" . Watch that 😉

It goes over the torso topology for a male and female body.

Re: How did he make this?

crpikeinportland — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 18:57:08 GMT

Thanks for the video. Do you think the original version made this with a mesh? (I have doubts.)

I take your point about walking before you run. However, the mesh approach in that video looks more complicated than my current strategy, which is making individual faces with forms, and then trimming. It looks to me that the original version contained about twelve faces (we could count them). That seems doable.

Re: How did he make this?

TrippyLighting — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 19:17:37 GMT

@crpikeinportland wrote:

... my current strategy, which is making individual faces with forms, and then trimming. ...

That can work for certain things, but I would anticipate that you'll run into limitations with that approach.

@crpikeinportland wrote:

Do you think the original version made this with a mesh? (I have doubts.)

What are your doubts based on?

It is possible that the initial shape was created with NURBs surfaces, by directly manipulating the NURBS control points. However, that isn't possible in Fusion.

That's possible in Rhino, or in Plasticity.

There is a nice Blender quad-mesh model of a female torso on BlendSwap, a community exchange site for Blender models.

This does not require any Blender specific tools and can be modeled wit the Form modeling tools in Fusion.

Re: How did he make this?

crpikeinportland — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 19:33:29 GMT

@crpikeinportland wrote:
Do you think the original version made this with a mesh? (I have doubts.)

What are your doubts based on?

I should say that I"ve never worked with meshes, so my comments are getting out of my scope of knowledge. But if you were to try to recreate the original version with a mesh, would you put four vortices where I have arrows? Dont the faces of a mesh have to be flat?

Re: How did he make this?

adam.helps — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 20:13:24 GMT

Hi, I work on the backend for the Form tools in Fusion. @TrippyLighting is giving good advice--Form modeling is a deep topic that requires an entire different skill set and way of thinking compared to traditional solid modeling. You can take multiple university level courses on the specifics of subd modeling ("subd" is short for "subdivision surface"). There is virtually no limit to the kinds of shapes you can make. It is the primary tool used to make CG objects in movies, for example. It can be used to do hard surface modeling like machines or buildings, but it really shines when used to make living creatures like animals or humans.

Although they are powerful, it's a completely different way of thinking from traditional solids. Trims are generally not used because they become too difficult to control as the model becomes complex. Every face is curved--you said "don't the faces of a mesh have to be flat," but that guess doesn't apply because forms are not meshes. The primary method for creating a form is to lay out a topology, extrude and cut faces, and sculpt the shape by using Edit Form a lot. For a typical workflow, you'll be spending 80% of your time inside the Edit Form command.

Being told that you have to take hours of materials is probably hard to hear, as you probably didn't want to put that kind of time in. Unfortunately, that's probably the only realistic approach to doing this all by yourself. Learning the art of topology flow is hard. An alternative would be to visit one of the massive libraries of subd models on the Internet and download some examples--Fusion can import FBX or OBJ files as a form (follow these instructions: https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=FRM-INSERT-T-SPLINE -- most instructions elsewhere on the web are wrong and will give a worse result).