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Difficult Body Parts.


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Here's a semi-realistic toe I've made. It's nail even grows realistically. :D If you have/think you can do better, then post it in here. But I doubt you can. :P I'm off to bask in my glory and make the ultimate ear.

toe.jpg

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Oh well now that's possibly the best ear I've seen in AM. No point in starting it now! :D If you want to post it here it would be great.

Aha! But it doesn't look like there's an earhole! So, I might do one yet. ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here is my not so elegant attempt to create an anatomically accurate human ear (still a work in progress). Man! The human ear is a real puzzle to model! I would venture to say it has got to be the most difficult body part to model accurately.

 

My hat's off to Mark Strohbehn and others who have shown us such beautiful examples!

 

Bill Gaylord

 

BTW, Ken, I like your toe design.

MyEar.jpg

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Here is my not so elegant attempt to create an anatomically accurate human ear (still a work in progress). Man! The human ear is a real puzzle to model!

 

You're ear is coming along very nicely, Bill. Keep comparing your ear with photos as you model. Maybe even use photos for rotoscopes if you haven't already. Eventually, things seem to fall into place. It is a challenge, to be sure.

 

 

Hey Will sutton, the skin shade on your model is amazing. Very nice form, too.

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I know it's not as attractive as an "onion butt", but here is an update on the ear. Tweaked it to improve the shape. The periphery where it would attach to the head needs to be simplified quite a bit to reduce the number of patches and splines to attach to.

 

Mark, I have to say your ear has a much more elegant mesh to it. A lot of us would appreciate a tutorial showing how you put it together.

 

Bill Gaylord

MyEar01.jpg

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Nice work Yves! I am learning a lot from these fine examples. One thing I am experimenting with is the idea of laying down a flattened ear mesh first, then pulling it into shape. The advantage is that you can more easily see how to minimize the number of patches and still get the smooth, nicely proportioned curvatures you want. It may be more of a teaching tool than a practical way to build an ear. The way the ear spirals and folds into itself makes it somewhat hard to understand, since from any viewpoint much of it is hidden by its own bends and folds.

 

Another reason I am interested in accurately modeling the ear is the fact that I do binaural sound recording. I built my own "dummy head" microphone, making casts of my own ears. (Don't try this at home folks! You have to know what you are doing or you can wind up rupturing your eardrum trying to get the mold out of your ear! Don't try this at home!) I'd like to use a CG ear model to have a set of rapid prototype detachable ears made that would allow me to easily change the microphone capsules.

 

You can see "Bob" my binaural microphone and listen to some of my binaural recordings at My Binaural Recording Web Page .

 

 

Thanks so much for posting this example again!

 

Bill Gaylord

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I'm very new to spline modeling and I'm having some problems with body parts too. I'm working on a critter not unlike a raptor without the front legs. Well, I started with the head and extruded a circular shape out for the neck, body and tail, but now I've got 2 legs and I can't figure out how to attach them. I'm going to eventually animate the critter and being new to the realm, I don't know what I need to take into account when I attach them to the body. Any pointers? thanks....

 

Hurleyman <><

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Some more tweaks to the ear model. Added the ear canal, which actually led to a more elegant mesh around the ear canal. I think once I finish tweaking the mesh, I'll flatten it out to make a template folks can use as a guide.

 

Guess some day I should make a head to go with the ear. :D

 

Bill Gaylord

MyEar02.jpg

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Ears are so difficult to model... I don't like ears... ears are mean, nasty little buggars than can be covered with hair for all I care. But, of course, a model looks o' so much better with an ear, rather than without one.

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OK. Here it is patterned after real life...ear hair and all! 

 

Bill Gaylord

Im starting to think I never should have posted in this topic... :P Nice...hair Bill. Love the ear, wish I could make one as good as that one.

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wish I could make one as good as that one.

 

I bet you could. It takes a bit of determination and patience mainly. And some time studying real ears and photos of ears. The main challenge is learning how the ear spirals and folds into itself. You have to look at it from many angles to really understand how it is shaped.

 

Then I would recommend drawing out a flattened mesh. I'll try to flatten out this ear's mesh and highlight some of the key splines.

 

I spent at least a couple full days drawing a flattened mesh with colored pens to work out the basic mesh (lots of tries before I got to something workable). Then I put together the mesh in it's flat form based on the drawing and then pulled it into shape. I changed the mesh a bit here and there once I got it into the basic shape. Then I studied other fine examples like Yves Poissant's ear posted above and Mark Strohbehn's ear that I posted a reference to. I printed them out and drew flattened meshes as best I could figure theirs went together to learn from their examples. Then I went back to mine and made further improvements (still not as elegant as theirs, I would say). I still see some ways I could improve it.

 

I think with a little work we could come up with a tutorial. I think with a tutorial to help, it would be a real boost for many folks to see that they too can tackle this challenge! Once you work through a realistic ear, you'll certainly have more confidence to tackle other body parts.

 

Bill Gaylord

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Here are three pictures that y'all can use as references. Two show the flattened mesh and the shaped mesh, with highlighter markings to help you visualize how splines in the mesh relate to the shapes of the ear. The third is the flattened mesh itself you can use as a template to try your own.

 

I did not bother to add the anatomical names of the various ridges and depressions of the ear, but I did indicate the major ones with arrows and highlighted edges to give you clues about them. Note that the upper half of the outer edge of the ear curls around the top and then down into the main depression in the middle of the ear. Note also how the upper/inner edge of the main depress starts near this curl and wraps around the lower half, raising up in two protruberences that roughly face each other at the bottom, and a larger "y" shaped ridge that curls around the inside of the upper half.

 

Study the pictures and you'll get the basic idea how the flat mesh relates to the final shape of the ear. You can use the "clean" picture of the mesh for a rotoscope for building your own as "an excercise left to the student". It's a good practice. The magnet tool and the lasso select tool are very handy for pulling and pushing select groups of control points to shape the ear mesh.

 

Some of you spline wizards might actually notice ways to improve the mesh. Feel free to do so, especially if you share your "wiz"-dom with the rest of us!

 

Later I may turn this into a more complete tutorial. The best approach is to build your own ears once or twice and then just copy and tweak them for new character models.

 

Bill Gaylord

EarMeshExp.jpg

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Man, you guys are spoiling me! First Colin, now you. Soon, I'll have to create an AM Frankenstein from all the bodyparts I've found. Thnx William, I'll still try makin an ear of my own, but in the mean time, I'll see if your ear can't make some guest appearances.

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  • 3 months later...

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