I am going to use appendices and references so the appendices and references within the text will be shown at the bottom of the page under the correct headings.
For this project I have been asked to work individually and build my own head using AutoDesk 3ds Max.
The first step to creating my head was to take photographs using a digital camera of the front and side of my head to use as templates, I used three lines in the background to help line up three reference points, the eyes, nose and lips. I had to take a couple of shots until I got the ones that were inline. (See appendix 1)
I then imported these images into Photoshop and used the eraser tool to get rid of any unwanted colour bordering the head, I then used the free transform tool to align the eyes, nose and lips, I had to change the pivot point to get everything to line up correctly, also using straight guidelines to make sure the main points were align.
I used an image form the internet (see reference A) of the topology of a face to see how the muscles run through the face and get a rough idea of the topology lines. ( see appendix 2)
Once the images were lined up in Photoshop (see appendix 3) I created a new layer and used the colour blue with the brush on size 3 and started to map out the main contours of my face and all the wrinkles and lines. I also done this for the side view of my face, once all of the main blue lines were added I then created a new layer and used a red colour with the paint brush with a size of 1 and joined up the main lines and added in quads for the topology as there are more manageable and giver better flexibility. I had to make sure there was no triangles within topology lines as this would later cause trouble in the form of pinching effects whilst in AutoDesk 3ds max whilst modelling the face. Only half of the face needed to be overlaid with topology lines because this side will later be copied in AutoDesk whilst modelling.
Here is what the images look like after I had added all of the topology lines and quads. (See appendix 4)
Now all of the topology lines are drawn I imported them into AutoDesk, for this I needed to create a plane. (see appendix 5)
After the plane had been created I then had to position it so it was always behind the model I was working on, I used the top view and the move tool to do this.
I then opened the ‘material editor’ window by selecting ‘M’ on the keyboard, once this was open I selected the button next to the ‘diffuse colour’ then selected the ‘Bitmap’ button next to the diffuse colour drop down box and the ‘material/map browser’ opened, I then selected ‘Bitmap’ and another window appeared where I selected my topology image and selected open, as this was a Adobe Photoshop file another window opened asking whether I wanted to collapse the 3 layers(the images of the face and head, the blue topology lines and the red topology lines) so I selected the ‘collapsed layers’ check box and then clicked ‘ok’. (See appendix 6)
I then clicked and dragged the map onto the plane, the plane then turned to a grey colour because the default for this task is not to show the material on the object, so to change this I selected the little blue and white box in the ‘Material editor’ so that the material will appear on the object it has been mapped to. (See appendix 7)
Now the image is on the plane it looks squashed and out or proportion, to correct this I went to the modify toolbar and selected ‘UVW Map’ to apply it to the plane and the map. (See appendix 8)
I then wanted to position it correctly so I selected ’gizmo’ under the UVW Map sub object level. (See appendix 9)
Now the side view had to be created, so to do this I had to copy the present object, so I used the rotate tool and held down the shift key and rotated the object around and this made a copy of it, I had to copy it to 90 degrees, then the ‘clone options’ window appeared then I selected ‘ok.’ (See appendix 10)
Now the references planes are in place, I changed the views as I need to use the front view and the left view, this is so I can see my reference images clearly to work from.
Then I had to draw the topology lines with lines within AutoDesk, so in the create menu I selected the ‘shapes’ tab then ‘line’ then I selected the drag type as corner. (See appendix 11)
I then started drawing out the lines until all of the topology quads had been drawn.
(See appendix 12)
I then had to create the lines that I had just drawn into a surface, to do this I selected one of my shapes, then I right clicked on the shape and selected ‘convert to editable poly’ (see appendix 13)
AutoDesk then created it into a surface, with that surface selected I then went to the edit geometry settings on the right hand side and selected the box next to ‘attach’ then the ‘attach list’ window appeared and I selected all of the lines then clicked ‘attach’ (see appendix 14)
Here is a shot of the face with the surface over it (see appendix 15) there are slits in the face and I used the ‘target weld’ to join up the vertices by clicking on the 2 that I want to join to get rid of these slits as these would be very troublesome later on.
I then had to join all of the veticies by using the ‘weld’ tool again, I highlighted all of the vertices and selected the box next to ‘weld’ then the ‘weld vertices’ window appeared and I selected ‘apply’ then’ ok.’ (See appendix 16)
I then selected the vertices in the left view and dragged them out to math up with the side reference image (see appendix 17) after pulling out all of the vertices out to the correct places it look like this. (see appendix 18)
Once I was happy with the side of my face, I then had to create a copy for the other side of my face, to do this I selected the face and went to the modifier list and selected ‘symmetry’ one this had been applied I moved it into the correct positioning
. (See appendix 19) I then went onto smooth the editable poly out, to do this I went down to ‘subdivision surfaces’ and selected ‘use NURMS subdivisions’ and changed the iterations number until I was happy with the smoothness (see appendix 20) I had a little trouble with some computers crashing here due to this process using high memory.
Now to create the lips, I selected editable poly and selected edges, I then holding control selected the edges running around the lips, once all of these had been selected I held the shift key down and clicked and dragged out more polygon faces, I then used the move tool to tuck these up and under and to shape them to look like lips, I done this for the top and bottom lip. (See appendix 21)
I also used this technique for the nostrils and the eye lids, (see appendix 22) I also created a polygon face to cover the nostril and used the extrude tool and dragged the polygon up the nose to create a nasal cavity. (See appendix 23)
I then moved on to creating the back of the head, to do this I opened up my reference images in Adobe Photoshop and created topology lines for the back of the head in correspondence to the main blue lines I had drawn for the side of the face (see appendix 24)
I then reapplied this map to the side view plane within AutoDesk.
To create the head I had to use a sphere from the created menu and dragged it out onto the stage, I then used the move tool to get it into position inline with the head references then used the scale tool to create the right shape. I then selected edit poly for the sphere and clicked polygons and highlighted all of the ones I didn’t need for this stage. (See appendix 25)
Once I had the polygons selected I deleted them here is what I was left with, (see appendix 26)
I then deleted the right side of the sphere because if this was left it could mess up the symmetry later on in the process. (See appendix 27)
I then selected vertex in edit poly mode and right clicked on the ‘snap’ button on the top toolbar to open the ‘grid and snap settings’ and I made sure the only thing selected was ‘vertex’ (see appendix 28)
I then moved the sphere vertex points near the head to align with the face vertex points, some of the points were far away to the edges were stretched and at sharp angles, so to prevent this I turned on ‘soft selection’ to ease out the stress and harshness of the edges. (See appendix 29)
To make the head easier to model with fewer polygons I selected edges across the head and holding down control selected other rows to delete, and erased them, (see appendix 30)
Here is a shot after the ringed edges had been deleted for easier manipulation. (See appendix 31)
To create the sides of the head I selected bottom edges and pulled them out using the shift button to make a duplicate polygon, I then done this with all of the edges around the head and matched them up with the recent head topology reference guide lines, after all the edges had been pulled out I used the vertex tool to move them into position to fit my head and face and pulled out the vertices show the shape of my Adams apple,
I then selected all of the vertices around the face and head and weld them together to make it all one big smooth shape. (See appendix 32)
I then applied a chequered diffuse map (see reference B) to the head, after I had edited it in Adobe Photoshop to create a larger map with more checkers to help the UVW map be more detailed. (See appendix 32.25)
I then moved onto UVW Mapping for the head, first of all I applied the ‘unwrap UVW map’ modifier to my head. (See appendix 32.5) I applied the map to all of the polygons of the head apart from the two polygons I had left for the ears, I done this in polygon mode by using the control button and selecting all of the other polygons.
I then edited the face options for the modifier and selected ‘cylindrical’ then scaled it to the correct size, leaving a small border around my head, and move it into place. (See appendix 33)
I selected ‘edit’ under the ‘unwrap UVW map’ settings and the ‘Edit UVW’s’ window opened. I then had to try and find all the overlapping lines and squashed lines and move them into their original position of how they should be, and to space them out to prevent any distortion on the map. An easy way to do this was by highlighting some of the problem areas and selecting the ‘relax tool’ form the tools toolbar. (See appendix 34)
After I had smoothed all of the lines out and took time on the eyes and nostrils it then looked like this, (see appendix 35) I also had to make sure all of the topology lines still had the same flow around the face and that there were no triangles, but only quads this was to prevent pinching and distorting
Here is a screenshot of the applied map after editing. (See appendix 36)
I then created eyeballs using spheres (see appendix 37), I then scaled them to the correct size and positioned them between the eyelids. I then used a diffuse colour of a brown eyeball from the internet (see reference C) (see appendix 38) and applied a ‘UVW map’ modifier to position map so that the eyeball is visible and looks real. (See appendix 39)
I haven’t created ears as you can not see mine under the hair in the images, so I was going to add a ‘Hair and Fur’ modifier and style it to the same shape and length as my hair to make it look real. (See appendix 40) For some reason it would not let me apply the modifier where I wanted it and kept placing hair over the face, if I had more time I would try an get over this issue and solve it.
Unfortunately due to problems earlier on in the project I have not had time to add my UVW face map, but I went as far as I could with the time I had left and set up the unwrap UVW map so that if I had more time the face map would be ready to add, this was also due to my trial of Adobe Photoshop deciding to run out just when I needed it most.
Things I found hard –
Making sure there were no triangles within the topology quads lines. – It took me about 5 attempts to get my head around the topology flow of lines around the face and to apply them.
Making sure there were no slits in the polygons and all of the edges and vertices were welded, I should of made sure of this from the start as it made things very fiddly and time consuming later on. Here is one of the problems I came across including polygons and vertices, it is a slit in my cheek (see appendix 41) I spent a lot of time moving the vertices around that surrounded the area but it would always appear as a flat polygon one rendered (see appendix 42) I finally managed to get rid of this using the cut polygon tool and creating a couple more polygons so I had more flexibility to work with.
The short timescale I had to complete this project, I found it hard balancing this around my other modules as this was a short timescale and I know had to be done but had to give near equal time on other projects so I didn’t fall behind in them.
Hair and fu modifier, I had this problem last year with my calendar images, where some of the computers did not have hair and fur whilst others would just place them randomly around the scene.
I enjoyed the feeling after finally correcting a problem that had been bugging me, whether it was parts of the crease down my face, or a hidden vertex making my polygons an odd shape. I’m not overly pleased with what I have done. I feel I could do so much more given another week, I would be able to get rid of the final pinches, add a skin map to the face and add hair and fur, to get it looking real and to a high standard, unfortunately I don’t have that extra week, so am having to hand in something that I am content with but not happy with.
I do think I have learnt so much from this module over the past 5 weeks and hope o use a lot of these skills in the next project, hopefully as I now have these skills it will help a lot for the coming module and will save time on tutorials of how to model.
If I had more time I would of also liked to animate the head to wink and smile. Another idea I had was to place the head into a glass vase and edit it into an image of the head library from the TV programme Futurama with a sign under it with my name on. I also wanted the song ‘Mad World’ by Michael Andrews playing whilst the face was animated as it is an ambient song and talks about familiar faces.
I also looked at other peers projects and I especially like Alex’s and Matt’s models as these are to a good standard with all the mapping finished, I would of liked to hand in something along the lines of those models.
Intended learning outcomes:
I think I met some of the outcomes I hoped for, I researched how to do certain aspects of the head modelling and how to overcome some of the problems.
I managed to work to my set brief and timescale as best I could, unfortunately duet o the amount of problems I encountered this was very hard towards the end.
Here are some shots of my rendered head, I had to go back a few stages to get a skin colour for the render, (See appendix 43,44,45)
REFRENCES:
REF A – Topology image - httpwww.anatomyatlases.orgatlasofanatomyplate09images9-1_static.jpg
REF B – Chequered Map - httpwwwdelivery.superstock.comWI2231598PreviewCompSuperStock_1598R-187803.jpg
REF C - Eyeball - broweyeball1(httpwww.frightcatalog.comi160x1601002039.jpg)
Appendix:
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