Bibliography

Stahlberg, S, (2005), D'artiste: Character Modeling, USA, Ballistic Publishing

Plantec , P, (2004), Virtual Humans: a build-it-yourself kit, complete with software and step-by step instructions, USA, AMACOM Publishing

Ratner, P, (2003), 3-D human modeling and animation, London, John Wiley and Sons

Osipa , J, (2007), Stop Staring: facial modeling and animation done right , London, John Wiley and Sons

Roberts, K, (2006), Making Faces, UK, Wellcome Trust Publishing

Simon, M, (2005), Facial Expressions: A visual Reference for Artists, USA, Watson-Guptill Publishing

Loomis, A, (1970), Drawing the Head and Hands, London, Viking Publishing
 
Hildre, B, (2005), Modelling Heads and Faces in Clay, London, A & C Black Publishers
 
Halim, A, (2008), Human Anatomy: Head, Neck and Brain, India, CBS Publishers & Distributors
 
Murdock, K & Allen, E, (2006), Edgeloop Character Modeling For 3D Professionals Only, London, John Wiley & Sons
 
Russo, M, (2005), Polygonal Modeling: Basic and Advanced Techniques, USA, Jones & Bartlett Publishers
 
Danaher, S, (2008) [online], Model the Perfect 3D Face, Available from http://www.computerarts.co.uk%20accessed/Accessed on 17.02.2010

Evaluation

I was quite surprised by this brief as it went completely against my expectations, I had thought that since I had done it before the clay sculpting would be the easiest part of the brief and that making a maquette that would look like my subject would not be too great a problem. However on practice this proved to be quite the opposite and working with the polymer clay became very problematic and complicated. This brief also went against my expectations in that when I realised I would have to make a digital sculpt in Mudbox, I was apprehensive and thought that it would be extremely complex, however I found the software to be very intuitive and removed a lot of the material issues that I had with the clay maquette . At the very minimum, at least by Mudbox sculpt did not degrade over time.

Although neither my clay maquette nor my Mudbox sculpt I was perfectly happy with, I learned a great deal about proportion, the topology of the face, it's contour and working in a 3D space that gives me a greater understanding of this area of Game Design.

Back with my polymer clay sculpt things were not going as smoothly, the Super-Sculpey although superior to the clay I had previously used was not as versatile as I’d hoped it would be. Try as I might I could not get my figures overall head shape to hold once I was doing the features, shaping the supraorbital process would deform the forehead and so on. Unfortunately there was no freeze function in the real-world. I solved this by making the head shape in air-drying clay, letting it dry and then sculpting over the top of it with clay and super-sculpey later on. Though I was using two separate types of clay, I decided that it was the only way I could think of to get over the issues.


Once the maquette was finished, I applied a matt paint spray to the entire head to make it look more even.

Though my maquette was in effect finished, I was far from happy with it. Small delicate areas such as the eyelids and lips took several attempts and a number of materials to be able to get something akin to how I wanted it to look.

Still in the Mud

As I’ve now got the features on my digital sculpt as close as I can get them to my subjects photograph I have now started the texturing of the model. We have been taught UV mapping and the techniques for imprinting these, however I found the technique of replicating and transposing sections of the subjects skin onto the model does not work well enough for me. Whichever technique I use, either stamping or projecting, none of them give a particularly three dimensional feel to the skin. So to create a skin that looks like it has the ‘depth’ of real skin I have been experimenting with the ‘spray’ tool and using one of the stamp presets.

Below are examples of sprayed skin that I experimented with to try and create a skin-like texture...

Obviously I would have to use different types and strengths of these sprays for the different areas of the face, smooth for the eyes, more bumpy for the cheeks etc but this could be corrected once an all over skin tone was applied.

I eventually found one I was happy with and applied it to the skin and then began the process of painting/colouring the model. I used numerous paint layers, layering them on top of each other and altered the strengths before I got a tone I liked. In the skin on my reference model much like the issues with the hair, I found that a lot of the variants in colour were more to do with shadowing than actual coloration of the skin. However there were ample enough areas to apply variations in order to give a ‘life’ to the skin, such as a bluish hue around the eyes etc.

The eyes themselves were painted separately and with a small enough brush/airbrush so that iris and pupil detail could be applied, perhaps the detail wouldn’t be seen but it would help them look realistic.

I came across a few issues with the colouring such as the fact that once colours were layered over each other, if a new colour was applied it would react with the colour layers beneath it and create an odd hue.

After a few final tweeks I checked back on the tutorials and literature to see if there was any more detailing or adjustments I could make before I finished but alas any further detailing would require other software packages such as Lightwave, zBrush etc and I wasn’t ready to make that jump yet.

Back to Clay Scuplting

With what I had learned on my research and with my Mudbox sculpt, I returned to my clay maquette and attempted another sculpt from scratch to try and make this one more like my subject. I used air drying clay again before I started my final one in super-sculpey. I faced the same material issues as before and attempted to follow the procedures as described by Hildre (2005) regarding the basics before the details.

“There is absolutely no point in commencing with a detail such as the mouth, for instance, if you have not already prepared its background; in other words if the general supporting structure is still not right” (2005:29).

So I did my best to create a symmetrical basic face and then once this was done I worked into the details. However although this model was closer in similarity to my subject, I ended up with flaws that detracted from the realism of the head in general such as an overly prominent brow and eyes with were too far sunk into the head.

Below is the finished sculpt...

I had the same problems with the hair as the previous sculpt but this would not be an issue with Super-Sculpey as I could leave the sculpt unfired if necessary.

Wallowing in the Mud(box)

Still trying to make my model look more realistic. I’ve been practicing drawing topology lines on photos of my subject and others to get me better used to the contours of the face…

 

I've now began to make and refine my final model, the head took time to model and shape so that it mirrored my subject but after a few attempts I had a basic subject head that I could further refine over time. The features were rough but they corresponded close enough to my subject that I could work with them. Below is my final model in its early stages...

I then started working more closely on the main features such as the eyes, at first I tried using the tools such as the 'Foamy' and 'Wax' tool but found that I could not get a realistic enough sphere in the socket. So I read that it was possible to create sphere meshes to act as the eyeballs themselves.

                                                 

So I sculpted the eyelids and surrounding area as best I could and then hollowed out the eye sockets and created the spheres. There was a lot of adjusting to get the eyes in the right place but eventually they were done to the point that they looked like the subject. Obviously as these are separate objects they will be painted or imprinted separately later on.

The next thing I did was to change the lighting presets until I got one that gave the model a more realistic feel.  I also began sharpening up the ears and the other features, even though the hair (which would be modeled last) would cover most of the ears I still wanted them to look as realistic as possible so I asked people on several forums for their best ear topology images to get a feel for them and also looked at my subjects ears to see if they differed at all.

                               

I came across a few problems as I started fine tuning the features and these were issues such as the fact that my subjects head photo, although it lined up perfectly with the rules was not the same from the profile to the front view. This was mainly due to the issues of shifting to an orthographic view and the changes (although subtle) in expression and angle.

Once I had sculpted all the details of the face such as the nadilnus, 'laugh-lines' etc and the model looked accurate I began adding the hair. The hair was perhaps the most difficult part of the scuplt to get to look like the subject, this was because whereas the skin was a flat surface which could be mimicked quite easily, the hair on the other hand is constituted of about 100,000 hairs on average. There was not a sufficiently effective tool to make large masses of hair look realistically defined either. I read various ways of trying to do this but none of them applied to Mudbox. I tried using different 'alphas' to define the hair but none of them looked particularly effective. My only option was to create the hair in large portions and then sculpt it as best I could. The hair on my model looked reasonably good and perhaps once it was colored later would look better.

Proportion

I thought our lecture with Phillip Ball gave me a greater insight into musculature and proportion. Practising drawing using Ball's analytical system has helped me to place proportion more realistically and give depth into my drawings.

I began a number of life drawings, each time looking at them more closely regarding the underlying skeleton and its proportions. Making sure muscles lined up with the skeletal structure and so on. The lesson was also helpful with insight into giving depth to my drawings. The scientific style of Ball’s drawings and the level of accuracy and detail is something that I will be trying to incorporate into my own life drawings in future.
I also attended more life drawing classes with Sarah Beare. I was given some very useful exercises to work on my proportion and perspective. The exercises entailed me doing a quick succession of charcoal line drawings of the subject in a variety of dynamic poses.



The quick lines I was doing helped me to learn the proportion of the body rather than concentrate on the tonal properties. I was then instructed to quickly block out a silhouette of the subject just using chalk pastels and briefly add in dark areas with charcoal.



Again this exercise taught me to concentrate solely on the proportion of the lines.
Hopefully this will help me to improve my drawings and promote better accuracy in my sculpture work