I'm
writing this tutorial mainly to point
out a common mistake made by beginners
when modelling the mouth. The problem
occurs when modelling the corners of the
mouth. Here is an example model by a friend
of mine who let me use it in this tutorial.
image
1
image
2
See
how all the polygons of the mouth end
up in one vertex resulting in a number
of problems. First of all a crease will
show when smoothing out the mesh due
to the high amount of polys all ending
up in one point.
A
second problem that occurs is when trying
to animate a model like this, it lacks
flexibility and geometry where the mouth
needs to stretch ending up in a crease
that is even more visible.
When
we look at a real mouth like in the
image below
image
3
when
we draw a grid of poly's over the mouth
it should look somewhat like this rather
then poly's ending up in a corner point.
A
other benifit you see here is that there
are only quad poly's this will make
it easier to create a smooth surface.
Modelling
the mouth
Now
down to the real work. Actually making
the mouth. I've chosen to create this
mouth using polymodelling technique in
3dsmax. This technique can be used in
most 3d software so you should have no
problem following. I will however explain
how to model like this using 3dsmax 4.2
and editable poly 2 which can be downloaded from the
site.
I also use 2 scripts namely, meshtools
and cspolytools. Both can be downloaded
from http://www.scriptspot.com/.
I'll show some of their features shortly.
If you prefer another technique like boxmodelling,
spline modelling or even nurbs just model
a simular structure as shown in image
3.
INCORRECT
CORRECT
-
in the front viewport create a box or
any other primitive.
- convert this primitive to an editable
poly by rightclicking it and choosing
"convert to" -> "convert to editable
poly" from the quad.
-
Now create 10 new vertices like I did
in the example on the left.
- Select the first 4 verts and use the
"Makes poly out of the selected verts"
function of the csPolytools script as
shown below.
If
you often use this function as I do
I suggest setting a keyboard shortcut
for it. I use the "p" key myself to
create poly's this way.
-
Create all poly's this way until you
have half of the upper lip shape finished.
-
click "element" in the selection dialog
and select the primitive you created
in step 1. Delete it as we have no need
for it any longer.
-
go to perspective view. The poly's may
flipped backwards, if so you select
the entire mouth element and click "Flip
Normals" under Surface properties.
-
Exit sub object mode and mirror the
mouth so that we have a full mouth to
work on. Create an instance so that
when we work on one half the other half
gets modified in the same way but mirrored.
-
create the lower half of the mouth in
the same way.
now select all the outer edges as shown
in step 1 in the image on the left
-
use the transform gizmo to shift pull
the edges along the y axis. If you have
edit poly 2 installed the edges will
have extruded in doing so
-
now pull all the verts into a better
position as show in step 3
-
do the same thing for the inner edges
of the mouth
Now
we can see that the mouth is rather
flat and unatural becuase we were working
in front view and never really looked
at the side view to shape the mouth
more natural.
Lets
remedy that.
The
meshtools script has two nice functions
called grow and shrink selection. I
have those set up on the plus and minus
keys on my numeric keyboard for ease
of use.
Now
follow the steps as shown on the left.
-
select the corner of the mouth
- grow selection (press plus key)
- grow selection again(press plus key)
- pull the verteces backwards
- shrink the selection (minus key)
- pull the verteces backwards a second
time
- shrink the selection (minus key)
- pull the verteces backwards one last
time
now
the mouth has a more natural shape.
If you don't like it just tweak some
of those verts until the shape is perfect.
TIP
: Modelling with a background photo
is perfect for using this technique.
You can press Alt-X to make your model
transparent so you can see the photo
in the back and model on top of it.
one
fnal step to complete this model, the
small indent above the upper lip. Lets
model that
-
first extrude the outer edges once again
so we have the entire mouth area modelled.
-
select the edges as shown
- use the meshtools connect function
to devide these selected edges. a keyboard
shortcut will speed up your work.
-
select the button two edges as shown
- connect
- tweak until the indent looks good
you
can model about anything this way, be
it an eye, and ear or even a full squirrel
:)
Well
that's it for today, I hope you learned
something or at least enjoyed my typo's
:)
be
sure to drop by at my personal artpage
at http://www.3dluvr.com/setherial
for tons of 3d, 2d and maybe more tutorials.
Also visit my studio at http://www.artdwarf.com/
a fantasy art and story page I'm sure
you'll appreciate.
