Week3. Extending Head

At this point the face excluding the eye and mouth part is finished. The next step involved extending the face to full head model. Which includes creating the skull, bottom of the chin and area around the neck. First I have started to create the top and back of the head. To speed up the process I managed to use standard sphere primitive. I created simple sphere in front viewport and moved and rotated it around to match the head. Then I reduced number of sphere segments in modifier panel and scaled sphere using scale tool to match the shape of the head. Afterwards I converted sphere to editable polygon and removed the polygons that would not be appropriate for the model as well as polygons that would be duplicated by the symmetry modifier after connecting it the existing face mesh. Then I moved vertices that are going to be welded to top off face mesh using a soft selection tool.

The created part had to many polygons. This issue was solved by selecting every second edge of the polygon set nearest to ear and looping them around. Then in edit geometry rollout I selected collapse tool which removed selected edges and connected edges nearest to each other. This simplification of the mesh helped to save a lot of time in future extension of the mesh.

The extension of the head continued with going back to reference image and drawing few more guidelines for the neck. Then I have kept on creating new polygons by selecting and dragging the edges while holding shift button. I was adjusting new polygons in vertex mode by moving vertices to keep polygons flow and match them with already existing face mesh. I have switched back to the original face mesh after I finished creating side and top of the head. Creating new polygons from the original mesh appeared to be an easier because of the flow and position of vertices. I started from the chin to the neck using same method of selecting edges, copying them and then repositioning. Then I continued to extend polygons on the neck and match them with new head mesh.

Once finished with moving all the vertices and placing edges I connected the two separate meshes with the attach tool from element edit geometry rollout. Now i had the full head model with neck as a single mesh object. The final step was to welded the duplicating vertices from the connections points. This was done using target weld and weld tools from the vertex edit geometry rollout.

Week2. Symmetry, Subdivision and Refining Nose

To get other half of the face I have used symmetry modifier with flip checkbox selected. Then I moved in the symmetry mirror subtree to align the other half with the original one.

Then I applied the turbosmooth subdivision modifier.

Afterwards I started to refine my nose and add the nostrils. I selected all open edges around the nose and scaled them while holding shift key. This created extra polygons for nostril area. Then new polygon was created using create tool. Then created polygon was extruded to the nose to make the nostril. I tried to refine my nose a little bit more but could not get it shaped as in the tutorial. Still planning to refine it more later.

Week2. Creating Mesh

First, I had to upload my new topology images to the 3d Max. Then I set up the front and left viewports from views/viewport configuration/layout menu. This step removed two unnecessary viewports and maximized my workspace. At this point the modelling began. I started to create splines from create/shapes/line with initial and drag type set to corner. I had to create all of the drawn quads of the image independently to each other. During this process I used snap to vertex tool to snap new splines to already created splines corners. Below images show the progress of creating the splines.

The next step was to convert one of the splines to the editable poly. then by selecting the created polygon i attached all the splines using attach tool in edit geometry rollout. This transformed all of the splines to single mesh.

All the polygons in the mesh are individual, the polygon vertices are not attached to each other. To fix this I had to select all the vertices and weld them together using weld tool in edit vertices rollout with weld threshold set to 0.1.

Then I had to align the right vertices using tools in edit geometry rollout. Then I switched to see trough mode by pressing alt+x. After this I was able to start giving volume to my model. I switched back to the front and left side viewports and began to select and move vertices from the right side to match the left side of the face. I kept on doing this for long time until all vertices where matching the reference image. Below are couple images of this process.

I had found it really hard to figure where each vertex is suppose to be. The most difficult part was eye cause it is not possible to see the inner part of it on reference image. My updated nose topology appeared fine, however after giving a volume it looked very pointy and unrealistic. Therefore, I decided to not follow the nose topology and tried to shape it just from the image to give it more defined volume. I believe there are still space for improvements, but it have taken me a lot of time already, therefore I decided to move on and fix any visible face feature deviations further on.

New Topology

I was quite satisfied with the topology that was created previously. However, I thought it could be even better, so I have decided to do it again from scratch. I started again with drawing new key lines around my face. When doing the topology I added more polygons on the chin, around the eye and managed to create some topology on the nose. In the previous topology I have found the triangle around the nose, therefore this time I took a very good look to make sure there are no hidden triangles anywhere. This is my final result that I am going to use as reference for making a 3D model. Personally topology looks all in order, I am satisfied now with the flow of polygons and the nose part.

Week1. Preparing for modelling

The first task was to follow first three tutorial videos of the organic 3D modelling. Videos were focusing on the preparation stage of the modelling. The pictures of front and side view of the face were taken in the classroom. After that they were opened in Adobe photoshop. Then I had to remove the distortion that was created by the camera. The distortion tool in filters menu was used for this task. Then front and side view images were put together to one file next to each other using selection and copying. The next part was to align the images together so all parts of the face would be in one line. This was done using rulers and transforming and moving the images. The print screen below was taken after all these steps were finished. The one problem was ears which will have to be taken into account during the 3d modelling part. The misplacement is not very visible but ear on the front view image is slightly higher then ear on the side image.

The next step was to create a new layer. It was used to draw a key outlines of the face. Using the brush tool I started to draw lines around my eyes, nose, mouth, chin and cheeks. The marks are supposed to ease the process of creating the mesh. It was quite disturbing as I felt like a plastic surgeon marking my face for the operation. It was not very easy to notice all the features in the face but eventually i got something similar as in the picture from the tutorial.

The topology creation starts at this point. It was pointed out that preparing the mesh is vital for the future success of the actual 3D model. The topology was created in new layer using the brush tool. I started around the eye by following key lines. With the topolgy I have tried to recreate the face muscle structure as suggested in the tutorial. From the eye i draw lines trough the cheeks and down to the chin. It took couple of tries erasing and redrawing to ensure the natural flow of the lines. The difficult part was the nose tip which was not finished to the end. Below is the image of my created topology.

The preparation stage is all finished. Now the final image was exported from Photoshop. Produced image was used for a reference planes. First in 3D studio max I had to create a plane and apply a UVW map modifier. Then I imported the image into the material editor by assigning bitmap material to the diffuse section and importing the image. The image showed up in a low quality and was stretched out. In order to fix the quality issue I had to tick the "match bitmap size as closely as possible" box in the customize/preferences/viewports/configure driver menu. Then in UVW modifier submenu i pressed bitmap fit and selected the same image. This made image on the planes appear in its original size. Then by selecting gizmo from the subtree i managed to center the face part for the front view. For the side view I have copied the already finished front plane and turned it around by 90 degrees. Then again in gizmo mode i moved the image to get the side view of the face.

Week1. Reflection on the Brief

The first part of the module would focus on creating a 3D version of my own face and head using spline modeling. This is going to be an individual task which consist 40% of the overall mark of this module. The given time constrain of 5 weeks seems to be enough time for completing the assignment. The main idea of creating my own head does not sound very amusing, because this means that I will have to look at myself for those 5 weeks and notice all the flaws of my face. Nevertheless, next semester I will have the character modeling module which should be much easier to cope with after learning new techniques of creating the actual human head. Therefore, after creating my own head I should be able to recreate the face of anyone else. I have tried to make a human head before by using primitive box and then redefining it to the reference images, therefore, the spline modeling approach is going to be something new for me and I hope that it will be challenging and stimulating process.
The second part of the module consists of the group project. We are expected to form groups of 3-4 students. In the group we are suppose to create an animation of the Finchingfield Guildhall using 3D Studio Max 2011 software. The choice is between animating how the building was utilised in the past or how it is going to be used after the reconstruction works. This part of the module does not have specification on which modelling or animation technique we have to use. Therefore, this gives a lot of freedom, which gives space for our own creative ideas. It will be interesting to see the final works which as I expect will be quite different nevertheless the fact that all groups are going to construct the same building. The task looks complicated so working in groups should let us cope with the work load. It appears that the task itself will be challenging and there will be enough space for improving my modelling and animation skills.