Shayna Punim!!!

[zacktaich]

Just checking if anybody speaks some yiddish.

 

I've worked on this model for about 4 hours (ok, probably closer to 6) and the outcome is only fairly pathetic.

[zacktaich]

The colors were put in so I could see the image better. The textures are very temporary

[Francois]

Hi

 

For the amount of time you spent, I must say that it doesn't look bad at all.

 

I don't know if you are going for a toony type of look but I've got 1 or 2 suggestions for you if you don't mind:

 

1. Try getting the eye lids a bit further away from the eye ball. This will make the eye seem more like a seperate object from the head.

 

2. If you would like a less squarish face, try tweaking the splines on the cheek in the top view to follow a kind of "S" shape from the nose to the ear. This will eliminate the "flatness" on the cheek an will help the mouth blend in a bit better.

 

Anyway... "Keep on keepin' on"

 

Francois

[zacktaich]

Thanks I'll try that. I've got myself a problem. I tried putting porcelain material on the face and all the 5 point patches look awful. Are my settings wrong?

 

Edit: A lot of other things look bad too.

[natess44]

Flip the normals on the 5 pointers(f key).

[zacktaich]

Ok, I need a few tips on this becuase I've been having problems.

1) When I flip the normals it does not always get rid of the problem, sometimes it just moves where the black part is.

2)It's impossible to tell which problem correlates to which patch

3)I don't know how to determine what way the normals are facing.

 

btw: The picture is just an example, I can't finish.

[AniMattor]

I can help with one of those three anyway. if you want to see the normals, go in options, under the modeling tab, and there is an check box to display normals. then if you need to flip any, just select the ones facing in and right click, then select "flip normals."

 

hope that helps!

 

mat bjerk

[Mike Lium]

In looking at you shaded mesh I think you need to add more splines where you have hooks and 5 point patches.

take a look at the rendered image and your shaded wireframe and you will see that at most of those crease coincide with them.

Have you tried to do the old Skylark tut done by jeff lew ?

This would really help you see where your mistakes are and could help in adjusting your image. Also I would look at the models on the CD and see how they are shaped and it to may help in you endeavor.

 

For your first work its not terrible but with your enthusiasm I feel you can do much better.

 

good luck.

[jfirestine]

Where can I find the skylark tute?

[Mike Lium]

Where can I find the skylark tute?

I have it ,its in pdf format its around 500k.

[zacktaich]

The skylark tutorial can be found on the arm under modeling I believe, and yes I have tried it and my results were horrendous because I was not good at all the preplanning (laying the splines for the outer nose before making any connections, etc.) For this one I used a mix of many different tutorials which I have read. Specifically the Cooper one, a bit of the skylark one (the eyes), Dan's little video, and a few others which I don't even remember. I took your suggestion though and added literally only 1 or 2 splines (along w/ Mat's tip on normals) and this what popped out.

 

There are a few creases but its a thousand times better.

[zacktaich]

And here is the current wire:

[Mike Lium]

The skylark tutorial can be found on the arm under modeling I believe, and yes I have tried it and my results were horrendous because I was not good at all the preplanning (laying the splines for the outer nose before making any connections, etc.)

Thats to bad I for one think its the best beginners head modeling tutorial out there.

But to each his own.

 

Im sorry that I cant help you. I realize you are frustrated unfortunately thats all part of the process belive there not one artist out there that hasnt gone through it .

Hopefully you can work your way out of your problem

 

Good luck

[zacktaich]

I took your suggestion though and added literally only 1 or 2 splines (along w/ Mat's tip on normals) and this what popped out.

I meant that to be positive... I added the splines and majority of the creases disappeared. I'll give another shot at Skylark, I tried it out 2 or 3 months ago.

[CRToonMike]

Here's some stuff that helped me making faces/heads:

 

Download the SAY hed (find it at the ARM) and then select points and hit the comma key to see where the spline goes. Learned a lot about construction that way. Using rotos help a lot, at least it made a big difference for me.

 

As Jim Talbot said in the thread (Alpha v11 hair, iirc) a key point in meshes is to try to keep the patches as "square" as possible.

 

Putting splines where muscles/bones are in the "real" face is a big help in getting the contours right.

 

Having a mirror handy helped me a lot in getting the nose bridge/eye socket depth-contours better.

 

hth

[zacktaich]

Thanks for the help! re-reading your post made me think that I do need to work on his eye sockets a lot. Just thought I'd post a render. My ear's are horrendous and sadly they are probably not temporary. Tell me what you think. C&C neccesary!

[CRToonMike]

Nice improvements, Zach.

 

The eye sockets could be pulled in a bit and the cheekbones could be pulled out also. And the nose, lips and chin could be "angled" a bit and pulled out so the overall shape of the head is kinda like a slanted oval with the nose being the furthest out and the lips the second.

 

Really like how smooth the model is, looks nice. There's a very slight crease coming from the middle of his eye down to the mouth, maybe with pulling out the cheeks and pullin in the eyesockets could take care of that.

 

Ears are a real biotch, for sure. I think of an ear as a sylized "C" shape set at an angle pointing towards the chin from the side. The ear angles out from the head towards the back from the top. What helped me when I was doing my Saturn Girl head was to let the splines from the front of the head, back of the head and neck converge on where the ear would be. I made a hole about the shape of the ear. Since I was working on a half-head (to use copy-flip-attach for the other half), I could change to the left view and make that ear-hole smaller when the shape was more or less finished.

 

Then I extruded once, made this ear-loop a single spline by breaking and reattaching CPs that were not contigious to the spline. This made selecting the ear-loop a lot easier and more controllable. Extruded again, to get the outer bowl shape. Extruded again to get that curved "lip" of the ear's top. While extruding, I worked on the bottom of the ear also to get the shape and size of the ear lobe and the part of the ear that curves inward. The thing that helped me was to just work on one ear-loop at a time and when it's "done" do another extrusion and move CPs around until it looked right. Once the top "lip" of the ear was shaped, extruded again, scaled the extrusion down a bit, and moved it upward to finish the inside of the "lip" and worked on the bottom part. And so it goes...

 

Helps to have a few reference works on ears around and I did a few drawings to help me get a feel for the ear. My ear took shape when I realized that the ear is *not* concentric circles,but a curvy landscape of sorts.

 

Oh, one last nit, your ears a bit high... the bottom of the ear should be just a bit below the bottom of the nose. The top of the ear should line up pretty much with the eyes.

 

Great progress, in any case.

[zacktaich]

I see *many* more creases than that. I'll see if I have time tonight for eyes, ears and cheek tweaks. Thanks for your comments

[CRToonMike]

Looking at the wire of your face, here's an idea. Sorta out of left field, but hey! we're artists here and sometimes approching something from an oblique angle can help...

 

Get a largeish mirror -- or a vanity mirror-- something that's sturdy wall-attatched or someshuch, some dry-erase markers (or something that can be erased/cleaned off from the glass easily). get a comfy chair (oh no! not the comfy chair!). Sit on the chair and make sure you can reach the mirror with the marker comfortably. Now out line the shape of your skull, ears, nose, etc. These "landmarks" will help you get your face in the same postion in case you get interrupted. Now make faces and notice where the muscles are, where the bones are. Open and close your mouth, pay attention to the jaw and such. Raise your eyebrows, close one eye.

 

Now with the knowledge of where the muscles and such are, using spline-like lines, make a wire-frame drawing on the mirror of your face. Have the spline-lines follow the contours of your face, the eyesockets and "ring" around the lips, etc. Use as many lines as you need to describe the contours of the parts of the face/head.

 

When you have enough lines, make a freehand drawing, copying what you did on the mirror. Clean the mirror off.

 

Now try to create a face in A:M using your drawing as a guide (you could even scan the drawing in and use it as a roto.

 

I hope this idea will give you a "spark" to polish off your head. I've been modeling so intensively in A:M of late that when I look a something I see black spline lines with red squares in the intersections of the lines.

 

later,

 

mike r

[zacktaich]

I might try that if I have the time, the right marker, and the comfy chair.

[zacktaich]

All my updates are currently being put on http://www.angelfire.com/ca7/zachary/head.html

[CRToonMike]

Looking real good!

 

The mouth is still a titch off. On a number of wireframed faces I've seen, the splines from the nose go downward to the lips, and there's rings of splines around the lips that connect with the nose splines to form patches.

 

Very good job!