drewantarctic
03-31-2006, 02:55 PM
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Latest Update:
http://bushheads.com/steps/images/Digital01B.jpg
-end update
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You might be thinking, "Robotic transformer President. Sweet!" like some strange political derivation of the popular kids TV show. Well I'm going to let you down in a sense because what I am working on is more of an "oraganic" transformation technique. Namely I am using blend shapes to blend a semi-realistic poly model into several exagerrated caricatures. By using the same geometry for each model I'll be able to keep all of my original blend shapes (phonems and expressions) for each caricature. This is a psudo step-by-step guide proccess in making the head blend shapes.
Before I get into the technical, I'll explain why I'm doing this. The premise of the project is to create an animated political cartoon starring the President of the United States, George W Bush. I plan on keeping to a strictly inadherent theme which would require a different look and subject for each episode.
Proccess:
The original task was to go about creating clay (primo, sculpey) sculptures for all the caricatures and the realistic head target model. I created casts of all of the better looking ones because i didnt feel comfortable drawing on original models. Using a theory on how the most exaggerated caricatures would deform, I carefully devised and drew out a wireframe on my realistic head sculpture, keeping in mind the greatest deformations it would be making and yet trying to keep the poly-count minimal. The data was Microscribed into the computer. In Maya I combined the polys and continued tweaking this model until it was ready to use (though not completely realistic). Using this realistic model wireframe I drew a wireframe of a density of about half on the clay caricatures. These would be scanned in with a microscribe also, though not poly-combined as before. Instead I used the scanned caricature models as a poly template and deformed duplicates of my finished realistic model to fit the wireframes of the caricatures. These ended up being the blend shapes.
The rest is too much detail to get into just yet. I will answer any questions you may have and could get into more technical details if you desire. Since this is still proccess I appreciate any comments or critiques you may have. I'll be keeping this page updated with my progress.
This is what still needs to be done:
-Ears textured
-Face textured (I need some sound advice on eyebrows)
-Models tweaked
-Blend Shapes
-Rigging
-Hands Textured
-Suit Textured
-Hair Tweaked
-And whatever else you can think of.
ps: Please keep in mind that the realistic head is as done as its going to get for now. Aside from textures I wont be touching that model until later. However, I will still entertain your critiques.
You can see the complete proccess with several models at my website, www.bushheads.com (http://www.bushheads.com)
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http://bushheads.com/steps/images/Digital01old.jpg
http://bushheads.com/steps/images/Digital08A.jpg
http://bushheads.com/steps/images/Digital04A.jpg
http://bushheads.com/steps/images/Digital10A.jpg
Latest Update:
http://bushheads.com/steps/images/Digital01B.jpg
-end update
___________________________________________________
You might be thinking, "Robotic transformer President. Sweet!" like some strange political derivation of the popular kids TV show. Well I'm going to let you down in a sense because what I am working on is more of an "oraganic" transformation technique. Namely I am using blend shapes to blend a semi-realistic poly model into several exagerrated caricatures. By using the same geometry for each model I'll be able to keep all of my original blend shapes (phonems and expressions) for each caricature. This is a psudo step-by-step guide proccess in making the head blend shapes.
Before I get into the technical, I'll explain why I'm doing this. The premise of the project is to create an animated political cartoon starring the President of the United States, George W Bush. I plan on keeping to a strictly inadherent theme which would require a different look and subject for each episode.
Proccess:
The original task was to go about creating clay (primo, sculpey) sculptures for all the caricatures and the realistic head target model. I created casts of all of the better looking ones because i didnt feel comfortable drawing on original models. Using a theory on how the most exaggerated caricatures would deform, I carefully devised and drew out a wireframe on my realistic head sculpture, keeping in mind the greatest deformations it would be making and yet trying to keep the poly-count minimal. The data was Microscribed into the computer. In Maya I combined the polys and continued tweaking this model until it was ready to use (though not completely realistic). Using this realistic model wireframe I drew a wireframe of a density of about half on the clay caricatures. These would be scanned in with a microscribe also, though not poly-combined as before. Instead I used the scanned caricature models as a poly template and deformed duplicates of my finished realistic model to fit the wireframes of the caricatures. These ended up being the blend shapes.
The rest is too much detail to get into just yet. I will answer any questions you may have and could get into more technical details if you desire. Since this is still proccess I appreciate any comments or critiques you may have. I'll be keeping this page updated with my progress.
This is what still needs to be done:
-Ears textured
-Face textured (I need some sound advice on eyebrows)
-Models tweaked
-Blend Shapes
-Rigging
-Hands Textured
-Suit Textured
-Hair Tweaked
-And whatever else you can think of.
ps: Please keep in mind that the realistic head is as done as its going to get for now. Aside from textures I wont be touching that model until later. However, I will still entertain your critiques.
You can see the complete proccess with several models at my website, www.bushheads.com (http://www.bushheads.com)
_______________________________________________________________________
http://bushheads.com/steps/images/Digital01old.jpg
http://bushheads.com/steps/images/Digital08A.jpg
http://bushheads.com/steps/images/Digital04A.jpg
http://bushheads.com/steps/images/Digital10A.jpg