What went well? What didn't go well?

Throughout this project i have learnt a vast amount of information and techniques within 3Ds max. My aim is to keep using this skills to benefit me in life. I feel that my topology - quadrant relationship was very good, as i am very happy with the overall structure of my model. I was particularly happy with the structure of my mouth and nose. These areas were quite fiddly to get correct. I am also happy with my UVW wrapping skills throughout. I was able to flatten my face so that i could have a good base layer for creating the skin image.

Now on to the areas which didn't go so well. These are from the middle of week 3 onwards. It all started from the ears section. I found it extremely difficult to sew it onto my head. Therefore i have just used the JPEG image of my ear to represent where it should be on the final model. This does let the image down somewhat. I am also not happy with the skin image i created in photoshop. I admit i did not spend enough time on this and it was rushed.

From this extensive project i have learnt that i need to keep to a serious time management structure in order to succeed in the future. On a positive note i do strongly believe that my modelling skills have improved dramatically.

The finished model

Here is my finished model of my 3D head.

Week 5 creating and fitting the eye

For the eye all i did was create a sphere, and applied a material to it of an image of a an eye. I had to tweek the tiling slightly in order for the image to only fill half of the sphere. Below is an image of the eye.



When fitting the eyes to the head i realised that the sockets were not completely spherical, this gave me a problem of not being able to easily fit the eye into the socket itself.

Week 5 creating and applying the skin

Using photoshop and the uvw render map i was able to create a flat image of my face. This was then used for the bitmap for the skin in 3Ds Max.



Along with the above image i also used a high pass feature (within photoshop). This brought out all the definitions within my face and was used with the bump tool in the material editor section.

Week 4 Unwrap UVW Modifier

This is the stage where i prepare the model ready for my image to be placed upon it. As for the entire project i was only working on 1 half of the model as i can apply a symmetry modifier afterwards in order to create a copy.

I started off by applying a checkered pattern to the model. Using this i could see what areas were stretched. Once the UVW modifier was applied the quadrants needed to be layed out flat. No edges could be overlapping. The different types of the relax tool were used to space out the quadrants around the eye, nose and mouth.



Once the symmetry modifier was applied, i then welded the verticies that met one another, together. The image below shows the final version of this.

Modelling the ears

In order to create the ears, i had to draw on the topology in photoshop, and create a mesh in the same way i did for the head. Once this was created i pulled the vertices around to their correct positions. Different techniques such as insert and extrude were used to show the canals/tubing of the ears.

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For the time being i have decided to leave the ears as they are (they are in an un-finished stage) as i dont want to lose marks by not being able to complete the uvw mapping etc.

I also tried sewing my ear onto my head, but this created many more disruptions and obsiticals for me to overcome, so i decided that it is for the best to leave the ears off the model at the moment.

Week 3 Modelling the back of the head and ears

I started off with a sphere to resemble the rear of my head, this was manipulated and transformed by using the rotate and scale tools. A rotation of 90 degrees clockwise was applied to the sphere into the front viewport, then the scale tool was used to give the sphere a more realistic look.



Once the sphere was positioned correctly, I used the snap tool to align the sphere with existing forehead. I then used the paint selection region to select the polygons that were not needed to create the back of the head.



I then selected every other line (as shown in the image below) and clicked on the collapse tool. This took out the selected sections and joined up the others to give less polygons to work with.



Now the general shape of the head has been created, i then had to create the throat and neck by using the same technique as i did for the nostrills. Creating the throat has definately got to be the most difficult thing i have had to do so far.

Week 3 Creating the Features of the Face

Once the head itself had been produced, I was now able to focus on creating and defining features such as eyes, lips and nostrils. I first looked at the nose, and as there were holes where the nostrils were meant to be, I selected the inner edges and held down shift and dragged the duplicate edges downwards. I made a few amendments to the edges' positions in order to make the nostril area look more realistic. I then had to cut up the polygons in order to make them into quadrants.

As there was still a hole where the nostril was I created another quadrant, but this time used the extrude polygon tool giving it a negative value. The final thing to do on the nostril area was to position them correctly in relation to the nasal cavity.

Next on the agenda were lips. I found these fairly tricky to manipulate. I created these by using the create polygon tool. Once all the polygons were created welded the vertices and then placed them into the appropriate positions by moving each vertex respectively. As you can see from the screenshot below, they do look very good and I am extremely pleased with the way they have turned out.

The most difficult thing so far is definitely getting the eyelids to look realistic. These took about 4 different times until I got a creation that I was happy with. I used the same technique as I used on the nostril in order to create the lids. As you can see from the image below I created another 2 loops of quadrants.

Throughout the creation of all these features I was using the original side of the face as anything I did on this side occurred on the other side of the mirror.

Week 2 Modelling the Head

Using the 3Ds max file i created previously I was able to begin creating the model of my head. I started off by selecting the line tool and in the front view port i was able to click on the quadrants of the reference plane. Once a complete spline (in this case each quadrant) was formed i clicked yes to close spline.





I did this over the entire face, and once this was complete I selected one of the newly formed quadrants. In order to convert a space into a editable surface I clicked on "convert to editable poly". In order to convert all the quadrants into this form, I scrolled down to the "attach" button and selected all of the lines. The obvious problem that I had at this point was that the surface was completely flat. In order to resolve this i began by selecting all of the vertices along the vertical centre line of, I then aligned them to the X axis, this made the centre line perfectly straight and would make it easier to mirror at a later stage. At this stage all the quadrants are seperate and independant sections at the moment (in other words at each corner of a quadrant there are 2 vertices). In order to join them all up together i selected all vertices and clicked on the small box next to "weld". This brought up a small dialogue box and with that i was able to select the appropriate threshold for which the vertices joined together.



Still in the front viewport i selected all the vertices to the far right. Once these were selected I moved over to the left viewport and pulled them all out to their respected positions by lining them up to the reference plane. I then carried on doing this until i had all the vertices in the correct place other than the eye (as this was the trickiest part). As you can see in the turbo-smoothed image below the eye socket still needs a little work in order for it to be representive of my face.





After a while of manipulating my eye and cheek bone i was able to create a model of my head that i was happy with. I realised that the cheek bone needed to cbe pulled out a little more in order to fill out the face, this also made the eye socket look flush as apposed to sticking out alien-esque.



When mirroring my face i did it with the x-axix. As this is the axis that goes vertically down the face. When cloning the side of the face i did this as a reference because the clone will always do what you do on the original, but not the other way round. Once the cloned had been created i moved it slightly to the left in order for it to match up with the other side of the face.