Materials

Ive done the materials for two of the three parts im doing the dining room was done by searching for textures, darkwood for the table and chairs, carpet for the floor and wallpaper for the walls. also another material still needs to be found for the door. the next stage is to do the material for the jam jar and then insert a camera.

For the balloons scene i did the same for the ground i found a grass texture which i put on. but for the balloons themselves i created the designs in photoshop using a mixture of the rectangle tool and the smudge tool i then imported these into max and put them on the balloons. i also created a sky light so some of the surrounding area could be seen i gave it a fairly dark texture though because this scene takes place at night. the next stage is to animate them and put in cameras.

Apart from these two i still have to take apart referance photos of the nursery rhyme house to finish the material for that scene and again put in the camera.

Head done now for the group work.

i have been assigned two scenes for our group animation, the hot air balloon scene and the house scene both outside and inside, i have just finished the modeling for these as shown:

to the left is the nursery rhyme house we are including i did this by making different boxes and using the extrude tool and by manipulating the vertices. next for this i need to make the materials that will be used to make the house look more like it does in real life.

This is the scene with the hot air balloons i did this in much the same way as the house above. i also added in omni lights which give them a glow from inside which looks like the flamer is being fired. i changed the lights colour to orange and made it an ambient light but limited the reach the light had. again the next stage of this will be to create the materials.

This is the final part of the nursery rhyme house from the inside i modeled the table, chairs, jam jar and the plate with the toast in the same way described above. although to smooth the legs of the table i used the MSmooth tool so the legs smoothed out but the table top stayed as it was which wouldn't of worked using turbo smooth. Again the next stage will be to create materials for everything.

final renders.....for now

These are the final renders that i am handing in. they are not quite finished as i still need to do the bump mapping, the specular mapping and animating it but unfortunately due to problems i have had at various different points where Ive struggled to and spent to much time on getting different parts right i have run out of time before the hand in. I will however still do these parts and hand them in later as well. apart from not being able to get this done in time i have learnt a lot about using 3DMax and Photoshop doing this project especially about more of the different tools that can be used one both of the programs like for example the patch tool on photoshop and the Unwrap UVW tool on 3DMax. overall i am pleased with the look of my model and glad it has come out as well as it has.

skin map finished and applied

This is my finished skin map i kept making little touches as explained in a previous entry and continually adding new parts as needed and blending the tones of the face to make them match and also pasting a dark enough skin colour onto the ear sections so they would match the surrounding area. also had to line up the hair so it flowed right on the head and i had to keep moving around the eyes, nose and lips until they matched the right places on the model of my head. when this was all done and lined up it was put into 3DMax as a material and droped onto my head as can be seen in the screenshot below:

eye texture

this is the eye texture map i created and used on my eyes on my head. this was made simply by using the gradient editing tool on one layer going from dark brown to a lighter brown to white and then on a higher level use another gradient going from back to transparent. this was then brought into 3dmax as a material and dropped onto the spheres used as eyes.

Texture painting

the texture painting is now just about finished i did this in photoshop using the mapping mentioned in the previous entry which i rendered and saved as a jpeg to use for this purpose. what i did next was to use the original reference pictures that were taken and started picking sections, like for example the forehead and nose and stuff, cutting them out of the photos and pasting them onto the guide map in an attempt at making a flat picture of the front and both sides of my face for fitting onto the head model to give it some texture. after i had spliced the different parts of the photos onto the painting i had to flatten the image and use the patch tools and the clone stamp tool to blend in the lines and the different tones across the face. now this is done the next step is to put it onto the head and see how well it fits and make changes as needed to get the best fit possible.

mapping out the face cont.

the next stage for mapping out the face was to do the ear which was done in much the same way as the head except that instead of using the cylindrical map parameter i had to use the planar one and then the pelt one as well though the pelt map parameter didnt really work for me as the checker pattern was already lined up pretty well. after this was done i had to put in another unwrap UVW above the symmetry modifyier which did the same for the second half of the head as what i had done with the first and allowed me to position it and attach it as shown above. after this was done i had to attach both sides of the face to the other welding the vertices where they meet. then i used the select overlap tool to find the over lapping polys and pull them around until they were no longer overlapping. the sections above which are highlighted in red are sections i could not stop from overlapping the rest was done with alot of work!

Mapping out the face

In preperation for putting the skin on my head i had to use a tool called unwrap UVW. this was done by first selecting every poly other then the ones in my ear, as this will be done differently, and putting on the unwrap UVW modifier and then aligning the box that came up so it completely surrounded the selected polys. after this i put a checker material on the head so i could see any trouble areas which were shown by the checkers being streached. then using the edit button under parameters i brought up the box shown in the screenshot above. i used this box and the relax tool within to isolate the trouble areas and sort out any of the stretched checkers until i had a nice smooth mesh surrounding all of the head like so:

lips and eyes

the eyes and lips are now done. the lips were done by grabbing the edges of the mouth and shift dragging the edges to create more polys this was done a few times so enough polys were created to give definition to the lips with the innermost row going back into the mouth to give the impression of them folding back.
the eyes were done by creating a sphere which was placed in the right position in the head and then moving the vertices's of the eye lids around until they looked right.

Attaching the ear

the next stage was to attach the ear to the head. this was done by first removing the polys on the head that were where the ear was to be placed. then i had to match up the edge vertices's of the ear to the vertices's of the head where the polys had been deleted this was made easier by using the snap function but still took a bit of time when this was done all that was left was to attach then weld the ear vertices's to the head vertices's.

modeling the ear

the ear was modeled in much the same way as the face was first by redrawing out the polys in 3d max then pulling out the vertices's until they match the layout of the ear. once this was done the ear canal and the fold in the top of the ear needed to be made this was done by selecting the edges that were to be affected and using the Chamfer tool to create additional polys which i dragged back and moved about until they looked right.

ear topography

in making the ear getting the topography of it is very important so to get it right i went back into photoshop with the reference pictures and repeated the first steps i made with the face. these were to first map out all the key features of the ear and then using these key features begin to draw in quads making sure they all flow together nicely.

attaching the face to the head

the whole thing is now one shape this was done by first aligning all of the vertices's from the head to the ones on the face adding new polys with the cut tool as needed so they all match up exactly. when this was done i used the attach tool to connect them both and the turbo smooth to see how it looked i then kept putting finishing touches to it trying to make it look a lot neater and kept pulling about the vertices's until i was happy. next will be the lips and ears.

back of the head and shoulders

Ive created the back of my head and my sholders now by first making a sphere which i lined up with the shape of my head and squashed down so it was a similar shape then deleted all the polys i didn't need which were all but the ones going over the top and round to the back of my neck and some round the side of my head.

i used the shape that was left and extruded edges of the polys so they matched the contours of the head. once this was done i then extended it down into my neck and shoulders extruding more and more polys until it had the right sort of shape i then added a turbo smooth to see how it looked and added some refining touches until it looked how i wanted it. this was a long process and I'm still not happy with how it came out and given more time i would of kept going until it was a lot better.

picking the nose

to do the nose i first had to select all the edges round the outside of the nostril and turn them into new polys then using the connect tool i split these polys in two leaving a gap in the middle. using these new vertexes i crafted the edges of the nostrils until they looked right. Finally i used the create tool to fill the gaps where the nostrils would be and the extrude tool to move these polys up to create the effect of a nostril cavity.

Smoothing the wrinkles

before smoothing i used the mirror tool on the half of the face i had done to complete the face. though because this second half is a clone any change i make to the first half will be copied on the second. when this was done a pinching effect was evident down the middle of the face which i had to fix by moving some of the vertexes. after this was done i added a turbo smooth to the whole thing to give the effect as seen in the screen shot.

adding depth

I've now added depth to the face grid i made and posted about earlier. this was done by using both the front and the left view of the face. i used the front view to select the vertex i wanted to move and the side view to pull it out so it matches the contours on the picture of the side of my face. this was done with every vertex untill it matched as close as possible.

Tedious polys

the grid is now done! to do it i used the line tool to draw a line in 3d max over every line i drew in photoshop outlining each quad turning each one into a polygon. After these lines were all drawn out i converted one of the polys into a editable poly and then attached all the other lines i had drawn to give the effect seen in the attached picture. now this is done i can now get to giving the face some depth.

making the grid attempt 2 grid finished

this is my second attempt at making the grid for my face and with alot of work i managed to get it finished and ready for the next stage. this time i started by making larger quads round the eyes which lead to larger quads round the entire face i then moved on making them smaller and smaller by adding in more and more lines till there are enough quads to make the next stage work properly.

making the grid

This photo is the next stage i took which was to first use blue lines to mark out the key features of my face and then using these as a guide draw the red lines into quads to map out the topography of my face. this was all done using the Brush tool. this photo was my first attempt but i managed to put to many quads round the eye which led to having to many quads over the entire face and also leaving my quads very long and thin because of this i shall be starting again and hopefully it will come out better.

Lining up the photos

This picture is of the two reference photos after i have finished lining them up. i did this by first using lens correction on both of the photos to make them both straight, so my head wasnt tilted for example, then taking off the distortion that was caused by the camera. after this was done i copied one of the pictures onto the same canvas of the other one but on a different layer i then changed the opacity of this photo and placed it over the top of the second one to try and line them up properly matching the eye to the eye and the mouth to the mouth as close as possible. then as a double check i used the rulers putting one through the eyes and another under and over the ear so it matches as close as possible.

Thoughts on projects

The first project seems like it will be a good way to learn the more complicated aspects of 3d modeling so i am looking forward to doing it though i would not be modeling my own head!
The second project sounds like fun as well i really like the idea of working for a real client and making a tourist video for essex will be especially good for me as i have lived my whole life here so know the area fairly well. i think this module will be challenging but enjoyble.

reference photos

Dont Laugh!

Year 3 project!

This is my personal blog following my progress through the virtual environments module first off with making a 3d version of my own head and then following the group project. this week we have taken the reference pictures we will need for creating our heads. photos to follow!