Conclusion

I have learned a lot of completely new things about 3D modelling and 3DS Max whilst doing this project. Not only have I learned new skills with the Hair and fur and UVW mapping, I have also learned about good practice when modelling. In earlier 3D projects I did not pay attention, for example, of keeping quadrilateral polygons and found I had problem with smoothing and pinching of the model later on. I also did not know how to unwrap a UVW map and often had problems texturing my models due to the fact that polygons were either scattered over the entire map or they were overlapping.

I particularly like the idea of spline mapping I learned during this project. It makes modelling organic type models much easier that box modelling, which was the first technique I learned for creating 3D models. I can see it will have a big use in later projects and will make modelling some things much easier.

During this project I encountered many challenges and problems. The biggest of which was creating the hair using the hair and fur modifier in 3Ds Max. It was a very difficult tool to get the hang of at first, but with perseverance I eventually worked out a way to make an effective looking hair texture. All other problems I encountered I made sure not only they were fixed but also to try and understand as best as I could what the cause was, so in the future I would not make the same mistake again.

Overall I am happy with the face that I created. Even though it does not look entirely like me I feel the model looks quite natural and I feel I followed Eric Maslowski’s tutorials as closely as I could where helpful to good effect.

If I were to redo this project I would spend more time on the hair as I feel the shaping is not quite right and I could learn a lot more about how best to use it. I would also like to spend more time creating a more detailed skin for the face as well as looking at adding bump and specular maps.

Creating the Hair

Instead of texturing the hair onto the UVW map I decided to try and use the Hair and Fur modifier, something I had never attempted to use before. To create the hair firstly a preset hair type “Wet Brown” was loaded from the presets menu. Then in “style hair” mode the hair was trimmed using the cut and comb tools, then using the hair brush tool, the hair was lifted into position. After a lot of time and experimenting with the hair tools the hair style was finished. The hair colour was then altered and hue variation property with turned down as the default setting made the hair look too bright.

UVW Texture Map

Instead of using Photoshop and following Eric Maslowski’s tutorial for this part of the head I decided to use Adobe Fireworks CS4, a piece of software I know much better than Photoshop. Once the UVW template was rendered and saved I started by cutting and pasting the key parts of the face from the photos onto the template. I then used the clone stamp tools in Fireworks to fill in the rest of the skin texture and fill in any gaps. It was difficult to blend one part of the face into another but after enough time a good result was achieved using the clone stamp tools and blending tools. Finally a texture for the eye was created and assigned to the eye spheres.

UVW Unwrap

To start with an Unwrap UVW modifier was added to the face. Using the face sub selection tool all faces apart for those in the ear were selected. The division was given a cylindrical map property and the cylinder marker was scaled up and aligned with the midpoint of the face. A chequered pattern material was added to the model to help identify problem areas of the UVW map that would be stretched when the UVW skin was added. In the edit UVW dialog box the relax tool was used to help sort out these problem areas. Then the “select inverted faces” and “selected overlapped faces” tools were used to identify any areas that could also cause a problem with UVW map. These were then amended.

To mark out the ear area the polygons that made up the ear were selected. Instead of a cylindrical map like the head, Eric Maslowski’s tutorial suggested a technique called pelt mapping. This was attempted however Eric Maslowski’s tutorials were composed in 3DS Max 8 and I was using 3DS Max 10. The older version did not match the new version and made the confusing technique even more confusing. In my opinion it was over complicating a problem that did not exist for the ear on my model. It was decided that as the ear only really needed a simple skin texture and it did not matter about unwrapping it perfectly. Therefore I decided that the ear could be split into two parts (front and back) and it would not compromise quality in doing so. Similar to the face the “select inverted faces” and “selected overlapped faces” tools were used to identify any areas that could also cause a problem with UVW map. These were also amended.

The final part of Unwrapping the UVW map was to apply another Unwrap UVW modifier on top of the symmetry modifier. This meant both sides of the face did not have to be identical with the texture. Using the edit map tool the opposite sides of the head and ear were mirrored. The joining vertices on the face were then stitched and welded together to complete the map.

Creating the Ear

To create the first I went back into the Adobe Photoshop topology file and added in the topology lines for the ear. Then back in 3DS Max the same technique was used to create the face with splines to match the ear topology. Once all the quads were traced they were converted to editable polys and attached to each other then welded. The vertices were then manipulated into the correct place. Symmetry and turbo smooth modifiers were added to mirror the ear on the other side of the face and to smooth it over. Finally some more definition was added to the ear as the turbo smooth modifier smoothed the detail over and the back and thickness of the ear were adjusted.

The trickiest part of this process was to stitch the ear onto the head. As the number of vertices on the head had to match the number of vertices on the ear where it would join the head a number of polygons had to be adjusted and redrawn. Once done it was a case of attaching the ear to the head using the attach tool. Then using the snap-to-grid tool to join and weld tool the vertices were connected together. I felt that the way the ear was made in Eric Maslowski’s tutorial made the ear creation over complicated by using subdivision and isolation mode. It was not needed when creating the ear for this model and still gave a nice result.

Creating the Rest of the Head

To create the back of the head the same technique was used as Eric Maslowski suggested. This involves creating a sphere object and matching the number of cross sections in the sphere with the topology on the face. This helps form the back of the head and also helps to keep a steady quad polygon formation. This object was then attached and welded to the rest of the head using the appropriate tools. From this point it was just a case of adding more geometry to create the rest of the back of the head and eventually the neck and upper torso.

Creating the Eyes and Eyelids

The eyelids were created in much the same was as the lips. Using the Shift + Left Mouse to add geometry and then manipulating the vertices into position. The scale selection tool helped to move all the edges into the eyelid shape at the same time. A sphere was then created for the eyeball and positioned accordingly. It was hard to move the vertices of the eyelid to exactly fit the sphere of the eyeball and a lot of time was spent trying to. The problem is most likely due to the fact that the sphere has a lot more vertices than the eyelids and so the eyelids can not bend as tightly the sphere can. Finally a symmetry modifier was added to mirror the eyeball to the opposite side of the head.