Prosthetic Breast [NSFW]

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It all starts with a need. So who am I to say no? Personally I have a ton of needs so when I see there’s somebody with one that I can potentially do some good for, it’s hard not to want to be involved in some capacity. When you’re in a wheelchair, specifically with the level of disability that I am, you’re always looking for ways to make up for the incredible amount of help that you need. It’s kind of like wanting to make up the difference. Similarly maybe somebody treats you to something a few times, and you want to treat them back. But the difference when you’re disabled is quite huge. I mean if you’re not physically capable there’s a lot of things you miss out on when somebody is in need. I use the comparison that friends Ask friends to help them move, that’s not really something I can do unless you need me to cheer you on from the sidelines or keep reminding you to lift with your legs.

So anyway, my friend Andy has been working on a few prosthetics for close friends of his and one of them happened to have a mastectomy. If you’re unfamiliar with that term just Google it. So Andy had downloaded a statue and basically cropped out the chest area to make a specific size breast prosthetic but was worried about the fact that it could be under copyright because he wasn’t the one who originally made or uploaded the statue content. That’s where I come in.

Initially it was an imported STL. There were a lot of strange fragments as well as unorganized Edge Loops which if you know anything about modeling organic structures, it’s really important to have organized and flowing Edge Loops for smoothing and deformation. Preferably for modeling I want four sided polygons, not three sided which it looks like all of these are. However if it’s a static model that requires no squashing or stretching the topology isn’t that important unless you’re throwing a smooth down on it. But we’re just using this for reference, I don’t like the small polygons, the middle size polygons and then the huge polygons on the back so all signs point towards us being better off using this as a reference and creating our own from scratch.

Not too bad right? For a quick import and rearranging the polygons to reflect an easier workflow, sure this works perfect. However, what about adjustments? What happens if the person in need, or maybe a person after who finds out about this prosthetic makes a request and has a different size or shape? Andy was specifically going for a one size fits-all, rather a one size fits just this person attempt, but if I can supply this for somebody who could use it I want to make sure that it could be resized relatively quickly for whoever needs it. That’s going to take a lot of time sculpting every single adjustment if people request this in the future so I decided to remake it in splines. That’s why we should really only use this as a reference and create a set of splines that follow the surface so we can get that natural shape of the body.

From this point it was easy to create a surface from each spline using two modifiers. First make sure that all the splines are combined into one Editable Spline object. After that add a CrossSection modifier as well as a Surface modifier to basically create a surface that spans the distance between and across each one of your splines. From there you have your option to convert it to an editable poly, or if you want to keep your stack in order you can just add an Editable Poly modifier on top and keep going. That’s the preferred way but a lot of people like to convert, duplicate, and keep iterating from the spline model because it’s a milestone of where the base shape is going to come from. Those editable splines will have a much bigger impact on the overall shape then going in there with any kind of sculpting tools. Not to mention it’s easier to keep that circular shape and speeds things up quite a bit. So for efficiency sake if you’re doing something similar to this make sure you keep the splines intact, you can always keep them hidden on a separate layer or something out of the way. But from there you can refine your shapes, keep the edge loops consistent, and start adding smooth modifiers.

That’s about it. It’s really just a starting point. We could easily get a lot more in-depth or have a lot more detail but when you think about this being hidden under a shirt and possibly in a bra there’s just not much of a need to get much more detailed.

The fact that this could possibly help somebody is great, I mean it feels fantastic that I could be helping somebody feel more themself. Everybody deserves to be comfortable with themself and what they look like in the mirror, so if this prosthetic helps with that, that’s literally the best feeling from creating this. However…the other part that feels super good is that the upload was under my buddy’s account…so if you look closely at the details posted below you’ll see that this is his most popular upload by far. Not only does it have more views but it also has more downloads making it the most popular item under his entire account. Good times.

There’s always an inherent interest by people for [NSFW] content especially when it involves nudity but I’m taking it as a win! In your face, Andy! I’m sure we’ll continue this feud when it’s time to create prosthetic wieners where you’ll obviously knock my socks off with your highly detailed, in depth, and generally incredible knowledge of male genitalia. Andy just loves wieners.

-mh