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.

Low-Poly Character

Trying to keep up with a "Post something every day" system at the moment; it's past midnight, so technically I've already messed that up. But no-one will know. Except you.

Next stop on Autodesk's set of tutorials is "Modelling a Low-Poly Character". The idea behind this is to create a character model that has as few faces as possible. The tutorial itself states the following:

"Conservatively speaking, a low-polygon character ranges between 500 and 2,500 faces, depending on the platform the game is aimed for, the game engine used, the number of characters onscreen simultaneously, the level of detail, and so on."

I find the idea of the tutorial fairly misleading, however. Modelling a "Low-Poly Chracter" and modelling a "High-Poly Character" is pretty much the same process, minus applying a smooth at the end. I believe the idea is to try and get the student to use as few faces as possible, but even when modelling an extremely detailed character that you might see in a Pixar film for example, it's always better to keep the face count as low as possible.

Now that my (most likely foolish) ranting is over, I'll talk a little bit about how I created the model. By the end, my model had approximately 1100 faces. I'd expect any other to be a little bit higher however, as I did not finish the facial modelling (due to my own frustration at the learning - or lack there of).

Creating the Model

The first step was, again, to set up Reference Planes. All the reference images used in the Autodesk tutorials are shipped with the software itself. Once the planes were set up, I started at the lowest point: the boot. Long story short, the entire lower body and torso was modelled from a small Box at the foot, converted into an Editable Poly and Extruded piece by piece upwards. Of course the positions had to be adjusted and scaling / rotating was required at for nearly each extrusion. It's worth mentioning that only the left side of the image was modelled - a Symmetry modifier was applied to form the other half, keeping everything symmetrical. (See-through mode is necessary to be able to follow along with the reference planes. It is easily toggled using the shortcut Alt-X.)

The arms were done in the same way, only starting with a Cylinder with a very low amount of sides (six). The hand was then added as a Box with several segments, converted and modelled as above.

The head had it's own Reference Planes to use, so I created it in a seperate project, and Imported it into the body scene later on. The head - again - started with a Box, converted to an Editable Poly. It was then literally a case of following exactly what the tutorial said, word for word, image for image. The different segments are adjusted, new ones Cut, as per the instructions in the tutorial. This was a very, very lengthy process.

Once the head was modelled and Imported into the body scene, the Smooth modifier was applied to each body part. Some parts worked better using the Autosmooth checkbox in the modifier parameters, others worked best with just a Smoothing Group.

My Thoughts on this Tutorial

It was around this time (I believe when modelling the mouth, to be precise) that I realised that following along with these tutorials were completely un-beneficial to me. In fact, I'd go as far as saying they were detrimental to my learning curve, as I lost any confidence in being able to carry out 3D modelling that I had, and it took me a while to get back on the horse.

Don't get me wrong, they are good tutorials, and I believe that there are a lot of people who would find them very useful. I just did not feel like I was actually improving my own skills. It got to a point where I realised all I was doing was following the tutorial bit by bit, while in the back of my head thinking "There's no way I could do this without the tutorial". It offered exact values for modifier properties to input, and at times just said "Adjust the vertex so that they match the templates nose". This would be fine if it wasn't for the handy little screenshots the tutorial provides for (nearly) each step. Apparently the author's idea of a nose is some form of abstract triangle. If I were doing this without the tutorial, I wouldn't have the numbers to input and I would probably created edges a bit more nose-like.

Writing this out has made me realised that it's not the tutorials that are to be faulted; it's myself. I took on an assumption from these tutorials that the models needed these exact instructions in order to look right or function, which is absolutely wrong. So, in a way, I'm glad I completed this tutorial, as it (along with several others I'll be discussing in upcoming posts) made me realise that I should be a lot less constrained when it comes to modelling. Not only is it supposed take some form of creativity, it's also not supposed to be perfect. I'm a beginner, and I should not be trying to learn how to create the absolute perfect nose without any kind of help.

Airplane

Continuing on with the Autodesk tutorials, the next chapter instructs the user on modelling an Airplane.

The tutorial is split into the following sections:

1. Setting up Viewport Backgrounds
2. Creating the Wings
3. Adding the Satbilizer and Rudders
4. Creating the Sponsons
5. Creating the Gondola
6. Finishing the Plane

I'll write a brief description on how I modelled the plane.

First job was to set up the Viewport Backgrounds to contain the reference images for the plane. Once this was done, the largest objects were created - the wings.

Wings

The wing object started as a Box, and sculpted into the right shape after being converted into an Editable Poly object. After they took on an acceptable shape, a Bend modifier was applied to give the wings an accurate curvy look.

Stabilizer

Simply created from a flat Cylinder, converted to an Editable Poly, and stretched to the right size.

Rudders

Started out with another Cylinder / Edit Poly combo, this time turned on Soft Select in order to shape the tip of the rudder quickly. Once done, it was positioned correctly inside the stabilizer, and duplicated by use of a Symmetry modifier.

Sponsons

Another Cylinder, this time a Taper modifier was applied in order to create a gradually scaled down shape. The Propeller base was then added to the shorter end of the Sponson by creating a Sphere with Autogrid turned on. This allowed the sphere to be created directly on the surface of cylinder. The sphere's Hemisphere setting was changed to convert it into half a sphere.

Inevitably, the objects were attached and converted to an Editable Poly. Several carefully selected Polygons were selected along the side of the Sponson and Bevelled to create two extractors. Finally, the finished Sponson was Cloned by holding down Shift and moving it to the correct position.

Gondola

Yet another Cylinder! Immediately converted to an Editable Poly, Soft Select was applied in order for quicker creation of the planes nose when manipulating the Verts. Once the general shape of the Gondola had been formed, the Cut tool was used to create additional edges that form the window.

A Multi/Sub-Object material was finally applied to the Gondola, allowing separate materials to be applied to the Window, giving it a slight blue tint and transparency.

The propellers were taken from the Fan project I created a month or so earlier. One propeller was placed inside the hemisphere on the Sponsons, and Cloned as an Instance using the Rotate tool.

Once all the parts of the plane were created and in the right place, they were linked to each other using the Select and Link tool. This makes sure that the parts of the plane move along with the parts they're supposed to (i.e the propeller blades rotate along with the spinner object on the sponson).

Consult the below image to see the way in which the objects were linked.

Reference Planes VS. Viewport Backgrounds

In my previous post I mentioned setting up reference material to draw splines over. There are several ways to go about this. Some find it easier to create the spline in an external program first, such as Adobe Illustrator, then import it for use into Max. However, when working on a large project, it's handy to have some form of reference image inside of Max to work with.

There are (as far as I know) two ways to do this: Reference planes and Viewport Backgrounds. Lets start with the latter.

Viewport Backgrounds are quick and easy to set up, providing you already have an image to work with. You can access the dialogue box either via the "Views" menu, inside the viewport itself, or using the shortcut Alt+B. Once the menu is open, you can choose an image to display in the selected viewport only by hitting the Files... button. There are further settings you can configure to set it up how you want, the most notable being Match Bitmap under the Aspect Ratio box (this sets the size of the background to the same size as the image you select) and Lock Zoom/Pan (prevents the image from being moved when you zoom or pan).

Pros

• Quick and easy to set up
• Can be applied to individual or multiple viewports
• Aren't affected by settings such as Wireframe mode, allowing easier modelling
• Easily turned off or on

Cons

• Do not align properly with multiple images
• Incredibly fiddly to try and get alignment to work
• Can produce inaccurate results

Reference Planes are more widely used, due to the precision that can be acquired when using multiple images. The idea is to create a Plane object, Clone, Rotate and Move a second into position, and then apply a material consisting of the reference image to each (typically a front image and a side image).

The planes would usually be frozen, so that the modeller would not accidentally move or disrupt them. The setting Show Frozen in Grey would have to be un-checked inside the objects properties.

Pros

• Customisable, allowing for superior accuracy. Can change any number of settings in relation to materials, positioning and size

Cons

• Takes a little longer to set up than Backgrounds
• Awkward for a new user
• Are affected by Wireframe mode etc

Although it has more cons than pros, Reference Planes are more popular because the inaccuracy from using the alternative is too much of a price to pay when modelling. However, if you are modelling an object that requires only one reference (a front view such as the chess pieces for example) then Viewport Backgrounds are the way to go.

Windows 7 Users:

If you are having texture trouble when using Reference Planes (the materials are pixelated, or not as detailed as they should be) make sure you are opening 3DS Max in Administrator Mode.

Chess Pieces

The first few modelling tutorials in Autodesk's training (accessed via Help - Tutorials in 3DS Max) walk the student through modelling some simple chess pieces - A Pawn, a Bishop, a Rook and a Knight. I misplaced the project containing the Knight I created, so I'll just list the first three.

A template was set in the Viewport Background for these pieces. I'll explain how to set that up, along with Reference Planes, in a later post.

Pawn

1. Draw a spline in the shape of half of the chess piece. (A mix of Smooth, Corner, Bezier and Bezier Corner vertex types were used in this splines creation. )
2. Apply a Lathe modifier to the spline.
3. In the Lathe parameters, select Min from the Align group. ( This sets the lathes axis of revolution to the splines left side, rather than it's pivot point. )
4. In the Lathe paremeters, increase the Segments. ( Gives the Pawn a smooth look. )
5. In the Lathe paremeters, turn on Weld Core. ( Combines all the vertices at the center of the Pawn into a single vertex. )

Bishop

1. Follow steps 1 - 5 of the Pawn tutorial, drawing a Bishop shape instead of a Pawn shape. Ignore the hole in the Bishops head.
2. Create a Box matching the size of the hole in the Bishops head.
3. Move the Box into the Bishop, where you want the hole to be.
4. With the Bishop selected, create a Boolean. Click Pick Operand B in the Pick Boolean section, then select the Box. ( Boolean can be located under the Compound Objects dropdown menu in the Create Geometry column. )
5. Choose Subtraction (A-B) from the Operation section.

Rook

1. Follow steps 1 - 5 of the Pawn tutorial, drawing a Rook shape instead of a Pawn shape. Ignore the battlements at the top of the Rook, finishing your spline underneath them. When increasing the Segments, make sure you set them to 36.
2. Convert to an Editable Poly. ( Easily found in the Convert To menu when Right-Clicking an object. )
3. Click the Vertex button in the Selection section.
4. Select the Vertex at the top-center of the rook.
5. Holding down the Ctrl key, click the Polygon button in the Selection section. ( This will select all the Polygons that are connected to the Vertex you selected before. )
6. Click the Settings icon to the right of Inset, located in the Edit Polygons section. Set the Inset Amount to 100. Click OK.
7. Select four adjacent Polygons in the outer ring you created. ( Press F4 to turn on Edged Faces mode if necessary. )
8. Skip the next two Polygons, and select the next four. Do this all the way around the ring.
9. Click Extrude located in the Edit Polygons section. Click and drag upwards until the extrusion matches the height of the battlements. Click the Polygon button again to exit Polygon mode.
10. Apply a Smooth modifier to the Rook if necessary. Turn on Auto Smooth.

That took much longer to write out than I anticipated, especially considering I created these models months ago. The following posts will be a simple description of how I created the models, rather than a step-by-step guide.

A wooden material was applied to all three models. The Bishop and the Rook both used Tiling.

My Progress

As mentioned in a previous post, I've been terrible at tracking my progress via this blog. This is something I plan to rectify in the coming weeks, starting by showing what I've been doing with my time in regards to this module and 3d work in general.

I have watched countless tutorials on the subject. Hours and hours of Lynda.com tutorials, youtube videos, online articles and manuals (including the built in autodesk training). These tutorials have covered areas related to:

• Essential training (getting to know the program itself)
• Basic Geometry and Modelling
• Sub-Division Modelling
• Modifiers
• Character Modelling
• Modelling theory and techniques (Edge loops, topology, poles, quads etc)
• Cameras, lighting and rendering

As well as the tutorials, I have spent a large amount of time attempting to create models myself without any sort of tutorial or guide to follow (with the exception of reference plates of course!).

After studying more into areas such as theory and detailed character modelling, I have decided not to use any of the models I have created so far in my project, as they contain many mistakes that will give me more trouble when it comes to animating.

My first step is to post up what I've done so far, with a bit of information on how I accomplished the work. After that, I'll be going a bit more in depth into the topics I mentioned above, then I'll start documenting my progress on my actual models.

Moodboard

Decided to do a physical Mood Board, to go alongside my Research Board. This is made up from many different pictures that I cut out of several magazines and newspapers.

My understanding is that a Research Board is a collection of media found and put together while researching a particular subject or idea.

A Mood Board differs in that you are not researching any particular subject - it is purely a collection of images / text that is seen and grabbed while looking through a variety of media, because it might relate to said subject.

Picture isn't great, however it is just a reference - the actual board will be handed in.

Path Constraint

After learning the basics of Animating in 3DS Max, we learned how to use Path Constraints. This allows you to use a Line (drawn either in Max itself or imported from an external program such as Illustrator) as a path that an object can follow.

Once you've set an object to use a Path Constraint, you can adjust several options in the Motion panel to customize your animation. For example, you can make the object 'Follow' the path, which will keep the object facing forward along the path at all times, giving a roller-coaster type effect. You can also use 'Bank', which makes the object tilt when it turns. Finally, you can speed up or slow down certain parts of the animation with a combination of Autokey / Set Key and the '% Along Path' scroll.

One great use for Path Constraints is related to Cameras. You can set the Target of a Target camera to have a path constraint, which will make the cameras focus point move along the path, perhaps to follow an object that is also moving along the path (as shown in the video above).

Bouncing Sphere Animation

Learning how to animate in 3DS Max, we learned how to set frames using Autokey and Set Key, as well as how to manipulate the Curve Editor and the Dope Sheet.

Autokey

Autokey is a toggle, which tracks all changes you make to the selected object without having to set each individual keyframe manually. The downside is it is harder to get accurate control over exactly what type of animation you want starting at a specific point.

Set Key

Also a toggle, although in order to create a new keyframe you have to hit the Key symbol located next to the toggle. This gives you greater control over your animation, allowing you to set different types of transformation (Movement, Rotation and Scale) at different starting and ending points.

Curve Editor

The Curve Editor allows you to control aspects of your animation such as easing, creating the 'slow at the top' speed effect for the bounce.

Dope Sheet

The Dope Sheet gives you control over all the objects in your scene, and allows you to change their position, length and type of animation. This can also be done in the Curve Editor, however the Dope Sheet gives a much easier to use interface.

Lightscreen (Windows application)

So far I've been pretty terrible at this whole blogging thing - I haven't been posting step-by-steps of whatever 3D work I've been doing. I usually get caught up in the work / following tutorials that I sit there for hours modelling and forget to take screenshots and notes on what I'm actually doing.

So I figured one of the reasons for this is how tedious taking screenshots is. You have to pause whatever you're doing, take a printscreen or use the Snipping Tool, then save it manually before you can get back to your work. Not that big a deal, I know, but when you're doing step-by-step blogs, it gets tedious.

So, after some research (thank you wikipedia) I found Lightscreen. This is a program that sits in your system tray, and allows you to set a hotkey to take and save a screenshot with just one button. Oh, and it's free. I thought I'd post this so that anyone else doing step-by-steps can give it a look and lighten their workload a bit!

http://lightscreen.sourceforge.net

Materials!

I've been playing around inside of 3DS Max, specifically on Materials and Mapping. I'm slowly getting better with practice! It is quite a simple process once you have tried it a couple of times.

The part that caught most of my attention was the "Unwrap UVW" modifier. The possibilities from using this modifier are endless - it simply lets you map any part of any material to a specific Face of an object.

What better way to demonstrate this, than some om-nom-noms!

Random Models and More Thoughts on Module

I've been watching some video tutorials in order to obtain a better knowledge and understanding of using 3DS Max, and 3D modelling as a whole. After looking at some other students blogs, I realised I should probably have been documenting the pieces of work I've been doing while watching these tutorials.

I only have a couple of finished models, and in the future I'll make sure to take notes and screenshots as I'm going, so that I am able to provide a more in depth description of the modelling process.

An Apple from the first module tutorial:

Strangely proud of this little thing. Although I think the main reason I like it is because of the oddly accurate colour 3DS Max gave it automatically.

A Fan:

Honestly, after looking through other students blogs and seeing the amount of work that has been produced, I feel very disheartened. For the first time since I started university, this module has really peaked my interests, and I thought I'd easily be able to give it 110% purely from enjoyment. Looks like I need to put a lot more effort in!

Research Board

As you can see, my chosen bond film is 'Goldeneye'. This has always been one of my favourite movies, as well as one of my favourite video games. Therefore, creating a 3D animation of a trailer based on this, should be both enjoyable and rewarding to myself.

The Research board was made of images gathered entirely from the internet, from many different websites. Each image was then edited in some way using Photoshop, so that they would blend well together in the finished Research Board.

Personally, I have trouble understanding the difference between a "Research Board" and a "Mood Board". I hope that this piece of work will fit into one of those categories, and if not, I can easily work on the file at a later date.

3DS Max - First Attempt (White House)

Initial Reaction to Module Brief

The Assignment for 3d Modelling and Animation is to create a 30 second animated trailer for a James Bond film of my choice. I am looking forward to starting work on this project, as I am keen to learn some 3D Modelling and Animation techniques.

I am also enjoy James Bond movies, so the Assignment itself should keep me interested. Choosing a film in itself will be enjoyable for me, as it gives me an excuse to sit and watch through a few of them.