Some reflections

Generally speaking, I have enjoyed a lot this semester!!!

It has been so excited to work on my own head modelling, as I keep the curiosity of final character all the time, which made me want to get it done as soon as possible. However, I was also a bit worried the final face would not look like me. Nevertheless, as is shown here now, honestly speaking, it doesn't really look like me, but it actually looks more like younger me---when I was around 15 years old. Therefore, personally speaking, I love my character, the face was basically created from my own face, and somehow I can still see me from it.

Some troubles:

I have been struggling with the texture; therefore, I just kept working on the texture painting in Photoshop in order to have a nice skin colour all over the face with balance. The texture has been improved in progress form clone and patch work in Photoshop by combining with setting the specular colour to pink, which made me very proud of my final skin colour. By doing so, the face looks more like a female face with blush.

 

The other problem was with the texture, when I applied it as a bitmap to 3d max, there was always a line (in the joint area) between two parts.  Finally I got the assistance from Richard and sorted it out by simply merge the vertices in chin area into one.  It is not shown perfectly, however, I discovered the problem and solved that problem at the end, during this process, I have learnt how the problem could be resolved, which is the most important to obtain the knowledge and master the skills.

 

What I could have done better

During this study process, I think I should have kept my blog update each week, so that I would have a fresh memory after each tutorial. However, I failed in doing this, which resulted in a lot of panic and pains after I finished the whole head modelling. Even though I did try to save as many screenshot as I could without any comments or reflection on it, but it was still difficult to remember everything at the end, therefore, what I did for the documents here was that I need to go back and watch the videos again very quickly in order to formulate this piece of work according to those screenshots. 

Last but not the least, thanks to  the useful tutorials as well as those people whoever have offered me help with the head modelling, time goes pretty fast, and I can feel that I am getting more familiarized with  3d max studio and have more interest in this module.

Further work – animation

I was trying to make some animation for the mouth morphing, but there was not much time left and I need to type the whole progress on the blog. Therefore, I gave up doing it this time and just ended up with a little animation of eye movements. Also, a camera show different perspective views of the head.

The video of the animation has not been done too well, as the camera doesn’t move around so continuously; I would work more on it if I have more time.

The hair

Again, this part is not covered in the video tutorial and I cope with it under the help of one classmate. The hair itself is basically formed by lots of lines. Therefore, begin with drawing the lines. Make sure that the Initial type and Drag type are both set to Smooth.  Draw several lines for one side and position them on the top of the head. Group them and copy for the other side and then ungroup both groups. Adjust the distances in four viewport. Convert the lines to Editable poly and then attach them together.

 

Create the bangs with lines as well; adjust its shape according to personal preference.

 

Play around with a variety of buttons to give some diversity to the hair, such as the hair count, density, cut length, root thick, tip thick, colours, specular and so on. In particular, the specular is very important when it comes to the rendering part. For instance, if the specular tint is set to white colour, then it will be too bright to see the real colour of the hair but white. Hence, I set it to brown colour as reduce the brightness value when I render it.

 

Finally I end up with having brownish purple colour for my hair and set the hue variation and value variation a bit higher, also, I set the mutant colour to pink for the bangs, by doing so, it gives more contrast and the hair becomes livelier.

Standard of finished model

In order to get a better appearance for my head, I create the bump map in Photoshop by desaturating the original image, adjust the brightness of it, and then apply High pass and Gaussian Blur under filter to get the following effects. And then apply the Noise material to get rid off too many details on the face Under the Fractal mode, set size to 0.101 and mix amount of the noise to 100 (or between 80-100).

 

In order to give some more details for the lips, I brush it in the middle and make it blur, the mouth now looks a bit different with darker gap in between, which actually highlight the lips.

 

By adding a simple checker pattern as Specular bitmap, change the values of Specular level and glossiness under Material editor, which makes the face look very shiny and smooth, but some areas look too shiny and some not, so I need to make a balance in between.

 

Clear away this bitmap, as I need to create a specular map in Photoshop and apply it here.

 

Open the bump map and adjust the image level until I have the following value.

 

Start to paint the areas that are too shiny and then apply Gaussina blur to it to reduce the brightness. Make sure all the bits of pieces are equally the same brightness and contrast. Keep going back and forward to check the improvements until I am satisfied with it.

 

Apply it as a specular bitmap in 3d now, which looks much better: