My First Face

[Montanto]

Hi All

 

Since the main reason for my getting A M was more as a suport tool for my 2D Illustration and Cartooning then for the animation I jumped right into the modeling tutorials perhaps biting off a bit more than I could chew.

 

Anyway wanting to start right away to create 3d versions of my own characters I started trying to do the faces using my own design instead of a photo

 

Anyway It went easier then I expected I do a bit of real sculpting so the transition from papermache and clay to a view screen wasn't too dificult, other than an inability to smooth out some of the creases and don't get me started on the nostrels. Anyway this is what I've gotten so far.

 

My only problem so far is that I can't really get the mirror flip function to work the way it's supposed to even when I get it to copy in the right place it doesn't seem to want to merge the way the tutorial says it should even when I've smoothed the edges the way the instructions say. Also The color refuses to be anything other than the dark olive you see here even when I've set both the materials and the objects group to a nice light brown. But anyway see what you think and all advice is welcome.

[KenH]

First thing.....we're going to need a shaded wireframe view to be able to see where you've gone wrong.

[Montanto]

First thing.....we're going to need a shaded wireframe view to be able to see where you've gone wrong.

Oh... Right... Sorry

 

Here you go.

 

[Caroline]

Is the centre spline being continued around the chin?

 

Click a control point along the spline and press the comma key, and the centre spline should be selected. The centre spline should ONLY run from top to bottom.

 

These are the steps that I take:

 

1. Save the project and model.

2. Click the central spline.

3. Press the comma , key to select the whole spline.

4. On the top toolbar, click on Show Manipulator Properties.

5. Click the Scale manipulator.

6. Change the X scale to 0% - this aligns along the x axis. I also changed the X pivot to 0 - This step is supposed to be unnecessary, but I do it as part of my ritual.

 

If you have a right half to delete:

7. Select the left half of the model up to and including the central spline.

8. Press Ctrl C to copy.

9. Press Ctrl A to select all

10. Press Delete to delete all.

11. Press Ctrl V to paste.

end if

 

12. Shift click the middle spline.

13. Right click and Copy/Flip/Attach.

 

I don't know about the olive green - are you using that colour anywhere in the project?

 

Good face, by the way - maybe a few hooks needed in the forehead area to reduce splinage?

 

Oh, and there is a 5 point patch to the left of the nose that would be better as a hook. And one on the left view on the chin too.

[Montanto]

Is the centre spline being continued around the chin?

 

Click a control point along the spline and press the comma key, and the centre spline should be selected. The centre spline should ONLY run from top to bottom.

 

I don't know what I'm doing wrong when I follow all of the instructions (a mix of yours and the tech manual) I get this

 

 

I don't know about the olive green - are you using that colour anywhere in the project?

 

Not at the moment earlier on I made the mistake of putting it in when that was one of my two choices of materials for "flesh" but it's still that color even after I deleted the shortcut to materials and set the difuse color to a light peach/brown

 

Good face, by the way - maybe a few hooks needed in the forehead area to reduce splinage?

 

Oh, and there is a 5 point patch to the left of the nose that would be better as a hook. And one on the left view on the chin too.

 

Thank you very much. I wasn't familiar with hooks when I did this piece but I'm reading up on them.

[largento]

I can at least help with the olive green bit. Make sure you don't have any CPs selected in your model. Look at the Properties palette and check the surface properties. You've most likely set the surface properties for the model rather than for a group. Change the surface properties back to the defaults and your olive green color back to white.

 

Unfortunately, I do the flip/attach manually, so I'm unfamiliar with how the copy/flip/attach works. Just a guess, but it looks like it's pasted the face before you aligned all of the center spline control points.

[Eric2575]

First off, you must have a group setting with the transparancy set to something other than 0. Why don't you delete all groups and resave the model. If you still have the ghostly green surface, then you must click on the models properties and check the global settings there. Set the transparency to default by right clicking and selecting - default. Resave.

 

Next, make sure you don't have mirror mode on when you are trying to copy/flip/attach. Mirror mode is the blue happy face icon with the line down the middle. Make sure that is not on.

 

Now you have to make sure all splines running toward the center spline end there, and do not continue down the center spline. The most obvious places for a mistake here are the top most and lower most splines intersecting the center spline. An easy way to tell if you joined the horizontal spline with the center spline is to select a cp on the top or bottom horizontal spline and then hit shift right bracket or shift left bracket. This will highlight the selected cp and then move on to the next cp in line. Once you get to the center spline cp, the next shift right/left bracket click should stay on the center spline cp. If a consecutive cp up or down the center spline gets highlighted, then you know you must break that continuation. It's a bit hard to put into words. See if the illustration helps.

 

You also must make sure that all center spline cps are aligned on the x axis. Do this by selecting all center splines, then go to "scale" in the project work space and enter "0" in the x-scale.

 

After that, select the whole model, hold down the shift key as you click just to the left of one of the center cps. Once you did that, right click and hit copy/flip/attach.

[Montanto]

It's a bit hard to put into words. See if the illustration helps.

 

Indeed, and this time I think I got it (mostly). The remaining problems seem to be changes I have to do in the model itself and not the technique itself. I realize this is part of the learning curve but I haven't figured out how to rework the splines in the five point patches you itemized.

[largento]

One thing to be mindful is the symmetry of your rotoscope. The left side of the face (from the viewer's POV) on your drawing is noticeably wider than the right side. I suffer from this same thing. Something to do with one eye being stronger than the other eye. To get around this, I've been taking one half of the drawing and flipping it to see how the whole face will come out. Helps to see how the whole face will look. I make adjustments based on that.

[jon]

unless you're going to model a very old man, you don't need all those splines.

 

try removing two-thirds of 'em, and the model will be easier to work with, and you'll have much less creasing.

 

you might need most of those splines for the nose, but use hooks to trim down the splinage once they leave the nose.

 

a good first step!

-jon

[Montanto]

I decided to dust this one off and since I was worried about virtually destroying the original by trimming it I decided to try again from scratch with consciously less splines. I'm fairly happy with it so far though the art of smoothing the flesh out is something that continues to allude me. Despite having read the page on it several times I've yet to figure out how to do hooks.

 

On a side note while doing this and other models I've been having trouble with what I think is a memory issue. As I started out for the first three hours of this everything went fine. But as I got closer to completion the system became increasingly sluggish until unless I switched to wire view I would get 30 seconds of spinning pinwheel and I almost have to give up as it becomes unworkable. I had this problem with the original and I assumed it was a size issue so I made a point of making this one smaller. At the moment this one is 4.5 MB the first one that was giving me the identical problem was only one MB. Since I wish to remain productive with making these I would like to know if there is something incredibly stupid I should stop doing or if it is a technical matter.

 

Thanks in advance

[Montanto]

I decided to dust this one off and since I was worried about virtually destroying the original by trimming it I decided to try again from scratch with consciously less splines. I'm fairly happy with it so far though the art of smoothing the flesh out is something that continues to allude me. Despite having read the page on it several times I've yet to figure out how to do hooks.

 

On a side note while doing this and other models I've been having trouble with what I think is a memory issue. As I started out for the first three hours of this everything went fine. But as I got closer to completion the system became increasingly sluggish until unless I switched to wire view I would get 30 seconds of spinning pinwheel and I almost have to give up as it becomes unworkable. I had this problem with the original and I assumed it was a size issue so I made a point of making this one smaller. At the moment this one is 4.5 MB the first one that was giving me the identical problem was only one MB. Since I wish to remain productive with making these I would like to know if there is something incredibly stupid I should stop doing or if it is a technical matter.

 

Thanks in advance

[Montanto]

Sorry about the multiple I had some problems with the attachments

[thefreshestever]

you have to avoid non-continuous splines, this are the places where you get creases that can´t be fixed with just movin the cps in the right place.

also try to avoid 3-point patches, you can make a whole face with only one 3-point patch (per side)... try to use this 3-point-patch on a flat area that won´t be animated, maybe the side of the head or something like that. i´m missing some 5-point patches in your model, you´ll want to make some of them around the eyes, mouth, later the ears etc...

 

also try to make your model as smooth as possible from the very beginning, otherwise you will get mad moving all your cps in the right place and adjusting bias handles...

 

did you do the baby-face exercise in the TAOAM? i recommend that, it will help you a lot.

 

here´s a link to a thread with an almost 100% perfect face-mesh, try to do your splineage more or less like this, it helped me a lot...

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...&hl=african