Another Character Design Tutorial

After skimming through the rest of the tutorials provided by Autodesk, I decided to look elsewhere for other modelling techniques.

I found a Youtube channel that had several different tutorials in 3DS Max, the most interesting to me being Character Modelling. The playlist can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/iwkya1#g/c/E4693155A242C51F

These tutorials were very similar to the Autodesk ones, if a bit less restrictive. They also had a strange fixation on modelling the male buttocks - while reassuring the viewer that he 'usually' models female buttocks. If you can get past that, it's a fairly decent tutorial, but unfortunately it's unfinished.

I made two models from this tutorial: One that I created while following along with the videos (blue), and another that I tried to create purely from memory (green).

Another set of tutorials from Iwkya1 shows head modelling. This uses a very interesting technique, one which I enjoyed a lot more than the tutorial by Autodesk. Instead of box modelling, the entire face is created using Planes. The playlist can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/iwkya1#g/c/C35158DC3F926507

First, two Splines are traced along the outer edge of the head in the front and left views over the Reference Plates. An Extrude modifier is then applied to the Splines, and they are converted into Editable Polys. This creates a set of planes that follow the outer edge of the head. The rest of the model is then created by extruding the edges of these planes in the shape of the face, matching the template.

Again, whilst following the tutorial I still felt restricted in what I was doing. It was at this point that I decided to not to use any tutorials, and try to model a face on my own. Using the technique above, I created a head that I'm quite proud of for my first try. It was very enjoyable, modelling without any kind of restriction; I just created what I thought would look good.

This was the result with NURMs toggled on:

The ear was modelled by drawing several splines over a Reference Plane of an ear, then extruded and shaped the way I wanted it.

Although I am pleased with the result, I am not going to use it. There are several problems I created along with this model:

• The hairline. Stupidly I drew my spline along the hair of the Reference Plate, meaning the head has an unnatural shape. This is not a huge problem, as the hair could be styled using a Multi/Sub-Object material.

• Attaching the Ear. Despite my many, many efforts, there is a huge hole under and behind where the ear is attached to the head. I did not model them both with bridging or welding in mind, and an inconvenient number of faces on each object made it nearly impossible. Frustrated, I gave up.

• Edge Loops. The downside of modelling purely what I thought looked good is that I did not follow essential guidelines for Edge Loop Flow when creating a head. Using a proper, circular flow around the mouth and eyes lays the foundations for great facial animation, and keeps the model neat and easy to work with. Mine, on the other hand, were all over the place.