1]
The self portrait seen here was a project
that I undertook to try and acheive
a level of realism I had never done
before. From the initial modelling to
the final touch ups the project was
very much a learning experience. I might
also add that I have have a BFA in painting.
I belive anyone making, or interested
in making figurative 3d art would greatly
benefit from traditional training. Anyway,
this tutorial is more of an overview
of the the whole process of building
a self portrait. Though I do explain
some of the basics in the different
phases of modelling and texturing. Every
artist has there own approach to doing
things. And so this tutorial will probably
be different than others. Even so I
believe exploring as much as you can
and trying many different methods of
doing things will only make one stronger.
Also for newbies that are looking for
the very basics of the UI in max make
good use of the Max Help. Therein you
will find very in depth explanations
of who the specific tools of the interface
work.
And
now the tutorial!
2]
To start with I had a photographer friend
of mine take two digital photos of my
face with a 6 mega pixel camera. These
photos proved very resourceful for the
photogrammetry process that followed.
Photogrammetry is basically the process
of using 2d photos projected onto 3d planes
as a reference for polygonal modelling.
Some artists will make spline drawings
of the defining lines of a photographed
or painted reference. Then they will build
the model based on those spline drawings.
Again, every artist has there own way
of doing things. For this project I did
all of the modelling using the actual
photos as my reference. These pictures
would later be the jumping off point for
much of the texture work. I will get into
that later.
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3]
To begin the modelling procedure I created
two planes in the front and side view
to line up perfectly with the photos.
I then used sub-object operations to move
the lines making up these planes to trace
the dominant parts of my face. If you
are starting with planes like I have "edge
chamfering" is one of the cleanest
ways to add segments to the planes. I
would select one or two edges all the
way accross the plane. Then I would chamfer
them to create two or four new edges.
I could then use the standard transform
tool to move those new edges around. Once
this was done I had a 3-dimensional blueprint
of all of the peculiarities of my face.
This proved a very effective starting
point for all of the modelling.
4]
I then created a sphere that I roughly
modelled to fit the shape of my hair.
This was also the easiest way to begin
to define the shape of the cranium. This
moch up hair piece would later be replaced
by the actual hair model. I will explain
this later.
5]
Once I had this general reference for
the shape of my head I began to become
more intricate with the sub-object operations
on the face to further define its shape.
I simply cut in lines where I needed them
to define all of the major contours. In
conjunction with adding segments I pulled,
pushed, rotated, and scaled all of these
polygons to form very closely to the defining
structures of the head. This process was
the bulk of the modelling job. However,
I will refrain from going any further
in depth here. I think that if I do I
would be delving into an entirely different
tutorial.
6]
After I was pleased with the structure
of the model of the face I welded together
all of the verts that needed welding.
The head was then one mesh. Up until now
I was working on the different parts of
the face separately as I started with
two planes instead of a box. Finally,
after creating spheres the size of the
eyeballs and placing them where the eyes
are I cut out the polygons around the
eyes.
7]
A mesh smooth modifier was added to the
stack with two iterations in the render.
(the lower right hand head in this picture
is what the final model came out looking
like with one iteration on the mesh smooth
level of the stack).
