Ed's head WIP

[mediaho]

I finally freed up some time in my schedule and began updating the "Ed's head" model for the 2005 CD. I wanted to share my progress and get feedback as I went so here is the first update:

 

project

render

(the animation is horrible but that's beside the point)

 

My goal before submitting the final model is (as well as general clean up) to include some sliders for the hair style. I have no idea how hard this is yet but I guess I'll find out. But if there's anything else you think might be helpful, let me know. I'll see what I can do before the CD is mastered.

 

BTW, I did the hair after reading through the excellent Colin's Loft Cooper hair tutorial. Go through that and play around with this model, I guarantee you'll be adding hair to everyone. Thanks Hash for such a sublime implementation of a cool feature!

[jamagica]

I think you should add a body to it then it'd be excellent

[cfree68f]

Ed,

 

Looks great! Thanks for the props too. Glad it helped.

 

C

[hypnomike]

Nice work Ed!

 

The hair works really well.

 

If I model my own head I'll add some myself (artistic license!!).

[mediaho]

Nice work Ed!

 

The hair works really well.

 

If I model my own head I'll add some myself (artistic license!!).

Thanks! Feel free to hide the group "cap" for this:

 

 

 

That reminds me, the hair isn't a part of the main head model - it's a seperate mesh "skullcap" so it can be easily brought into other characters. It's made up of the groups "cap" and "side."

[ZachBG]

Sublime!

 

I might add a little more creasing and cheek-puff to the smile pose, but that's all I got in the way of suggestions. Nice work as usual.

 

Zach

[mediaho]

project

render

 

Some slight mods. Mainly the teeth/inner mouth. I also added some groups for the eye. I plan to add some more groups and clean up the groups folder.

 

As for the hair sliders -- I don't see that happening. I tried a few things but they either didn't work or slowed the project down to an unuseable crawl. So instead I may do some UV mapping and make an easy template for you to make your own face map.

 

Anyway, if you find some time to mess with it and have some better settings for the hair, let me know. Two problems I'm having are ( a ) I can't get a nice, non-uniform specular highlight, and ( b ) there's some funky artifact in the back of the hair. If anyone has any fixes, it would be appriciated.

 

Oh - one more thing -- I was trying to gat the hair to change stiffness over the length of the hair (i.e. stiffer by the root and less stiff at the tip). Is this/should this be possible? I couldn't get it to work.

[mediaho]

beta 0.4

 

project

render

 

Added a couple bones for the head and eyes so I can test more realistic action. Added "fat_face" pose to make the character fatter. Other minor tweaking. I think my new plan is to add some sliders that change the shape of the face so it can be easily used for other characters. We'll see how that goes. I'll also do the face mapping I mentioned in the above post.

 

 

** edit: fixed link to project **

[ypoissant]

Excellent results. You did a very nice hair job. And the expressions are a nice addition to this model too. You on a good start for a gallery of expressions. Do you intend to add phoneme poses too?

 

One observation: I don't know why but in all the poses, the mouth seems a tad too small. Like the pose don't reach all its latitude.

 

(BTW, Colin, your hair tutorial is very well done and easy to follow).

[starving4rtist]

Looks great! Are you planning on texturing it?

[mediaho]

Excellent results. You did a very nice hair job. And the expressions are a nice addition to this model too. You on a good start for a gallery of expressions. Do you intend to add phoneme poses too?

I hadn't planned on it since I never use them but if people think it will be useful, I will.

 

One observation: I don't know why but in all the poses, the mouth seems a tad too small. Like the pose don't reach all its latitude.

I'll mess around with that and see how much I can fix without screwing up the already made poses. I've been having a lot of luck with that so far.

 

Looks great!  Are you planning on texturing it?

Yes. As I stated above, I plan to add a texture. I'll also make a grid texture like William Zandoria did for the Balrog in his UV tutorial. That way, you can create your own textures without having to do the whole unwrap thing.

[hypnomike]

Great progress Ed, it's really coming to life.

 

Just keep it away from your credit cards!

[steve392]

This is great ,I have the model from a while ago and have had a lot of fun and learning from it ,now I will get a lot more ,thanks Edd this is very generous of you

[mediaho]

Well, here's the final for the 2005 CD.

 

model and textures

QuickTime render

 

 

Did some decaling but nothing like what I had in mind. The sliders that change the face shape will have to wait for another CD. Hey - you get what you pay for. I added some more poses to move the mouth up, down, left, right and also angle. This will help break up the symmetry in the poses. I also added phoneme sliders if you want to use dopesheets.

 

Anyway, thanks for your comments and enjoy. I hope people find it useful and/or informative.

[Rodney]

Anyway, thanks for your comments and enjoy. I hope people find it useful and/or informative.

 

Hehe... are you kiddin'! That is most awesome.

I didn't expect to see it look much better...but you've raised the bar yet again.

 

Thanks for your contribution!

[ZachBG]

Ed, that looks amazing--I can't wait to see it so I can play (and learn).

[ypoissant]

This is a fantastic job. The texturing adds a lot to the character. I like your poses you are showing here. Nice attention to details to have asymetric poses.

[nerrazzi]

I agree! The texturing is fabulous! I can't work A:M's texturing system to save my life but you've seemed to have tamed it well. I love the expressions too, hope they come with the model.

 

I didn't read all the replies here, just kinda' skimmed through but are you planning on building the body too?

[mediaho]

I agree! The texturing is fabulous! I can't work A:M's texturing system to save my life but you've seemed to have tamed it well. I love the expressions too, hope they come with the model.

 

I didn't read all the replies here, just kinda' skimmed through but are you planning on building the body too?

The expressions are just about the same as the last posted .prj file. As far as animation is concerned, I just added some asymmetry in the last pass. I just wanted to make something that a newbie could open and start messing around with right away without having to navigate a more complex project. Maybe next year, as people start getting the new CD, I'll start making some phoneme/facial expression libraries and encourage other people to do the same. Maybe make a repository of actions. But that's for another project.

 

As far a body, I did make one for him but I'm not giving everything away!

 

Thanks for all of the great comments everyone. It's 100% royalty-free but I'd love to see/hear about any project he ends up in, modified or not. And if you see anywhere improvements can be made, let me know. Maybe I'll make a v3 if Anzovin's head maker thingie hasn't put me to shame by then.

 

Enjoy.

 

I just did a render with (1x) raytraced shadows. Render times went from about 1:40 to 50:00 but they do look better. Multipass with multiple rays would probably rock but the render times would kill, I think.

 

[JTalbotski]

Wow! Fantastic head model, Ed. He's come so far and he was very good back when you first started him. The expressions are great, too.

 

Jim

[nimblepix]

Thanks for being so generous Ed.

Can't wait to play with this guy and learn from him!

[higginsdj]

Great head Ed....

 

How long did it take you to render those images? I've tried to render it at 320x240 in v11 and it's been over 20 minutes and still stuck at 90%! (I'm running a P4 3.4ghz with 512mb RAM)

 

Cheers

[mediaho]

Great head Ed....

 

How long did it take you to render those images? I've tried to render it at 320x240 in v11 and it's been over 20 minutes and still stuck at 90%! (I'm running a P4 3.4ghz with 512mb RAM)

 

Cheers

At 640x480, it was around 1:35 - 1:40 with z-buffered shadows. It averaged 40 - 50 minutes when I turned on raytraced shadows. I have a 3.2ghz machine so your numbers should be better.

[Zaryin]

That head looks really good. I like the hair too.