Good luck with everything, Andrew. Here’s my latest WIP. I tried to cut down on the spline count.
Check out the steps involved:
Dark Angel W.I.P.
Modelling Heads
SplineGod
#142
Miyazaki,
Oh yes, big time. I still have stacks of comics going back a long ways. I did those images before there were forums like this. I used to hang out a bit on #lightwave on efnet.
Allen,
Cool! Thats pretty minimal I think. 
Ramon
#144
Hello again Larry.
Hey, I just arrived at this thread from another thread’s link and I saw your post about Patchit plugin- http://www.hurleyworks.com/
Man, this is what I have been hoping LW splines would be like - INTERACTIVE EDITING of the patches. That’s sweet! Thanks for posting the info to make us aware of it. I hope Newtek buys his plugin and incorporates it into LW 8 or 8x.
SplineGod
#146
Originally posted by Ramon
Hello again Larry.
Hey, I just arrived at this thread from another thread’s link and I saw your post about Patchit plugin- http://www.hurleyworks.com/
Man, this is what I have been hoping LW splines would be like - INTERACTIVE EDITING of the patches. That’s sweet! Thanks for posting the info to make us aware of it. I hope Newtek buys his plugin and incorporates it into LW 8 or 8x.
Ive seen the movies Steve has posted. Im waiting to see how free form it is. One reason I dont use the autopatcher in modeler is because the way youre forced to use splines I find very constraining and you end up with a lot of splines…to the point where its about as easy to use polys and SubDs. I would have to see a real advantages over using SubDs. Right now what I like about manually patching is that I use very few splines to get the basic Subpatch cage. Its a lot like sketching.
SplineGod
#147
I remembered another thread that Proton had going where people were modeling from pictures of Irene King at Newtek.
Heres the first picture I made from the photos. I made sure that the basic landmarks from her face were lined up properly.
I had to ignore the smile in the front view because you cant use it to get the corners of the mouth. Luckily knowing more or less where the corners of the mouth go really help. I think it took me
around an hour or so to get this far.
From there I created my spline cage.
Heres how it looks like patched and SubDs turned on.
SplineGod
#148
Heres another view of the patched and SubD version.
and yet another view.
This was done for fun. I would still do some tweaking around the forehead and eyesockets to soften them up a bit.
SplineGod
#151
They certainly are one way to go thats for sure. Its a very good way to model something off reference without covering it all up with polys.
Its not the only method I use but its a great way to quickly
layout a model. The vast majority of LW users seem to ignore them because they arent able to figure them out. Part of that I think has been due to the lack of good information about developing a workflow around them.
Another thing thats useful about modeling this way is that I can predict and plan where textures will go before I even have any polygons laid down. You can see from the spline cage that I can divide the head into a front and back part.
SplineGod
#154
Originally posted by AndrewE
Hey Larry, how do you keep all your splines in quads?
When I layout the initial splines for the basic proportions and contours I dont care if they even form correct patches or not. That goes pretty quickly. My next pass is to add splines and do minor tweaks to get them to form correct patches. I would try and couple of things; print out or create a drawing of what you want to patch. With a pencil trace out where you think splines should go. Erase and change any curves that look out of place.
Use that as the basis to layout down where you splines should go. You can also do the same thing on your spline cage. Layout the splines and see where you can change one or two to get those quad patches. Its not too hard and each time you do it you get better at it.
tpe
#155
A very quick way if you need your model to look like someone is to make a single flat plane with your refernce pic in the background and subdivide it, then pull the verts and add edges untill you think you can accomodate all the features that you need. then pull the verts out on the z axis untill you get the right 3d shape
Not as elegant as many but very easy to get a quick start
tpe
Oh yeah and you get a free UV map in the process
SplineGod
#156
Hey tpe,
Interesting approach. Its got a little in common with a method I teach that starts with a single polygon. Check it out in the free tutorial section of my website.
The only problem I would have with this is the polygons are very dense in some areas. Its the same kind of issue I see surface sometimes when people detail out a model (point by point).
The head looks good though, kind of reminds me of boris karloff.
5TEF
#157
i’m definitely falling in love with Spline…
i don’t know why i’d never used them more before !
thanks larry !
cool thread !
