'3D Studio MAX'

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"Low Poly Character"by Matt Marshall


Once more just moving the vertices forward in order to get the face fleshed out some more. As you can see it's definitelly taking shape.


And there you have it. The basics of a head that represents me. Just for interests sake, lets apply my face front map to it and see what it looks like.


Firstly, we will need to use smoothing groups to make the mesh smooth. To do so select the polygon tool in the modifier ( ) and select all the polygons in your model. Then, scroll down the Edit Polygon modifier until you get to the smoothing groups section depicted by a grid of 32 boxes. Press on the number 1 box, and you have now applied smoothing groups.

You can use different numbers to make different smoothing groups, where two different smoothing groups are together a crease is formed. For example, select the eye of the face, and apply smoothing group 2 to it. Make sure you take smoothing group 1 off though. As you can see, the eye now seems as if it is a separate element.

Another example is under the nose, I would like a bit of a crease between the forelip and nose. Select the polys underneath the nose and set them to smoothing group 3, and not 1. To make the crease go away where it meets the front of the nose, select all the faces that meet the group 3 and then reapply smoothing group 1 and KEEP group 3. As it has both smoothing groups it blends the two, but the Group 3 only ones underneath keep the crease at the base of the nose.

This is a valuable tool in creating quality characters and I will be using it quite a bit throughout the tutorial. So get to know it, play around with the possibilities of mixed smoothing groups and other things. It really is handy to know :)



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Apply a UVWMap modifier to your model, acquire the coordinates from the Plane that displays the front image after you unfreeze it using the Acquire button at the bottom of the UVWMap modifier. Use Absolute option when asked to do so.

Open the material editor and select the front image map and apply it to your model.

Mirror ( ) the face along the x axis with an Instanced copy from the top toolbar so that if you make any further changes it will continually update your second model at the same time.

In the end ou should have the face, scarily, staring you down. Here is the rendered version. Freaky huh! :) OK, so it's a bit rudimentary. But with a little more work...and the rest of the head and proper mapping you'll have yourself a head to be worthy of.

I'll be going into this more later on. But what is also very cool, is adding a Meshsmooth modifier after the UVWMap. This will smooth out your character once you put the iterations up to 1 or 2 (shouldn't need more than that). Scroll down the modifier options to the Surface Parameters section and then select separate By Smoothing Groups. What will happen is where you have added the smoothing group differences, the creasing is still intact. So the eyes have a definite border around them, for example, rather than being all smooth. This will be one of the main methods when creating high poly models. But here it's just for a bit of fun.



Here is the head after a little bit of playing around. Adding the mesh smooth, some lights, joining the middle and some other things to make this up. I didn't edit any of the vertices mind you, the model stayed as it was.

The next tutorial is putting in the mouth where we still have easy access to it. It is REALLY annoying trying to make an interior mouth with a full mesh around it...however you could just hide polys on the head if you do. If you aren't making a useable mouth on your model feel free to go to the tutorial after that which will be taking what we have learned and working it into the left axis (side of the head ) first and then the front (or back) to complete the main element. The end result being the basics of one head ready for final tweaking.



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