HMC #21 - Nancy, Queen of the Rocketmen

#21

Man, way too busy at work, haven’t had time to really think. I had to switch references, the Gala mode is very good but its off just enough to be giving me fits. So I scrounged for about 10 mins and found a good front pic. That’s why the reference didn’t line up Airflow, I kept having to move it around to get a good line.

Base mesh so far. I may need to tweak it a bit more in spots. I won’t be modeling ears as those are under her aviators hat.

A few minutes sculpting in ZBrush and I can already see a major improvement. I can also see spots I can improve the base mesh so it’s looking up. No pun intended. :smiley: Head is too wide I think.

#22

Hey Wyatt.

I thought I’d share my technique for lining up orthographic images. I use Photoshop but I’m sure you can accomplish the same using any image editing app. The following pictures are from 3d.sk , an invaluable resource for references.

After bringing in my images, the first thing I do is create a new document that is twice as wide as my largest orthographic, then I copy both images into it. This gives me a little leeway on both sides and ensures I don’t inadvertantly ruin my original by saving over it (something I learned the hard way many times over).

Then I grab a guide from the rulers (CTRL-R to show rulers if they are hidden-click inside the ruler and drag to pull out guides). I also turn snap off (view menu). The first guide I lay out runs along the center of the front ortho. Using the Transform tool, I rotate the front view so that it is as vertical as possible.

From there, I line up the horizontal landmarks of the front ortho(eyes, ears, chin, top of head, etc). No face is in perfect symetry, so in the front ortho I focus more on the side that corresponds with the side ortho. In this case the left side of the face.

Now that my front ortho is set up, I start to tweak the side ortho using a combination of transform/free transform, liquify brush and perspective tools to match the landmarks as accurately as possible. I always end up with a tiny bit of distortion, but sacrifices need to be made because of perspective distortion.

One thing to note is that, depending on your orthos, you may need to do some editing on the front ortho beforehand to get it as symetrical as possible.

Before finishing this mini-tut, I’d like to credit the technique to my former teacher, Malcolm MacCleoud. I believe he learned it from Alex Alvarez personally over at The Gnomon Workshop where he did his studies.

Hope that helped.

-Rage

#23

Thanks Rage. I can keep trying to blame it on references but the fact is this is just a crappy job. I need to start over and try again. Poly modeling is like pulling teeth to me so by the time I got the mouth, eyes and bridge done I started rushing through the rest and it shows. Not the way to do it.

Thanks Brainsample for the smack in the face, I needed it.

#24

Thanks for replying to my question Wyatt. I started the thread hereif you want to take a gander. Your work is looking pretty good so far. Anxious to see further progress.

#25

I love the tut, but definitely would not use distortion to get a good fit. You should be able to do that just with scaling and moving. And remember that nobody has a symmetrical face, so always use the correct side of the profile for the correct side of the head on face.
W, your cheek was the problem. Look around for good head wireframes and copy the edgeloops.

#26

Scrapped the first attempt and went back to good ole “Inside Lightwave 6” by Dan Ablan and used the excellent tutorial in there. Obviously I’m still not quite ready to wing it. I feel a bit better about this job. I wish I hadn’t posted that other mess now, oh well. :smiley:

Again, no ears or neck detail as that will be covered by her hat and helmet.

Test render: HDRI washed out the shadows too much, setup eye target, and messed around with some endomorphs.

Okay, ready to continue. I’ll model the rest of the suit and then off to ZBrush.

#27

Wyatt, that looks much better! I have an earlier version of that “Inside Lightwave” book, it’s really helpful. Haven’t used lightwave since…oh version 7 probably. I remember when I first started back in 2000 I had LW5.

The eye area looks a bit bumpy, for example the lower right corner and above the middle of the eye. i’d suggest smoothing them out or pulling out the rest of the area slightly to make it smoother

#28

wow…i still don’t get organics. This looks cool. Love the eyes:applause:

#29

Srillygood, but you can prolly make the tearducts less indented and more prominent, give her some thickness to the eyelids, and form the top lip better. Also check the corners of the mouth, they look pretty tight.
Great stuff.

#30

Thanks guys, I’ll handle these issues in ZBrush. If I fiddle with the base any more I’ll likely find a way to screw it up. :smiley:

#31

Finished modeling the cap. Well except the buckle and clasp. I’m going to sculpt everything at the same time.

#32

Looking great ~! try smoothing out the strange bumps on her cheeks, taking the eye veins down a notch. Also, try giving some ridge to the brow - it looks like nothing is there, even without the eyebrow the forehead leads back into the eye socket, then out with the eyeball creating a little ridge. Best of luck!

#33

Nice start man … you always got soo long threads . .so many replies … hehe …
anyways … waiting to see more …

#34

Jeeze, why does work have to get so busy.

Thanks Sanket, Tim. I’ll add details to the face in ZBrush. Right now concentrating on finishing all the elements.

The more I work on this thing the weirder it looks. :smiley: Fishbowl woman!

Hehe, not exactly what I was going for but uh… there’s the wireframe. :smiley:

#35

Wyattharris the second one looks like an abstract art. really weird and beautiful

#36

whoa cool…howd you do that effect on the second pic? :D, maybe you’d like to add some bubbles inside to make it look more of a fishbowl hehe

#37

Woah what a cool render…lol it looks like it’s a finished piece of art like mentioned above. Kick ass way to show your wires!

-Rage

#38

Hehe, thanks guys. Pretty good response for a goof up.

I was actually trying to duplicate this effect Japetus did on his tank. But Lightwave has no such function that I could figure out, at least not exactly like it. It does have render edges, and wireframe mode. What I did is render outlines which gives the effect shown. So I rendered at sub-d lvl 1 on everything and used a mask in Photoshop to blend it with the standard render. Nothing too difficult. I suppose I could’ve used some targeting to do it in frame but the control is better in PS.

#39

Hey Wyatt, I comped mine together in photoshop as well. Max has a Composite material where you can overlay materials onto one another. So I had a white material as my base with another material with wireframe turned on and added on top and then another render with just a white material. I blended the 2 with a mask in photoshop. I wonder if you could achieve the same thing by turning on Backface Culling or whatever it is called in LW so the backside of the geometry doesn’t show up, then render black wires on a white background, then you could multiply that on top of a color render. Been so long since I used LW I can’t quite remember…

Looking good! I love the helmet!

#40

Thanks Mike.

I could achieve the result by making it a matte object or rendering occlusion and turning on edge rendering. I realize now the problem is the sub-Ds. Edge rendering achieves the effect you made but with sud-D it renders wireframes for the subdivided mesh. Which means a wireframe of 100,000 polys which is too dense to be effective. I want to simply render the wireframe cage. I may be able to do it if I tell it to apply the sub-D after shaders. If that’s possible that is. :smiley: