Nose modelling.

When creating the nose I found the tutorial really hard to follow, so I pretty much created the nose by myself, I created one half of the nose and used the symmetry tool like I did with the other models, and it was a case of a lot of vertices moving to try and create the nose shape, I used the extrude tool for the nostrils, and also used quite a bit of bridging and welding, as I found that creating small sections of the nose first and then adding more vertices and edges to the nose made it easier to cope with creating. The tutorial which demonstrates how to model the nose uses the same technique, however I found that the outcome of my modelling was slightly different to the tutorial, and again because of the blueprints I just used my initiative to create the shape and referenced to the blueprints only for a rough shape.

 

Smoothed result.

 

 

The next step is to import the nose into the head file, and then bridge and weld the nose onto the face. Once the nose is attached I can look at modelling ears, and then finally attach the head to the body, and look at modelling hands and feet.

Creating the characters head.



 

Once I had the basic body shape I begun on creating the face for my model, I carried on watching the YouTube tutorials to help me create this, and to start I simply created a square and then selected the shape and used the 'relax' tool, this is a new technique I have learnt and it basically allows all of the polys to 'relax' and symmetrically fall into its self and become more rounded, this gave me the basic shape for the head, and I then begun moving vertices to align up with the blue prints, again I had to use my initiative quite a lot when creating the shape of the head as the blue prints didn't quite align properly.

I then had to work out the geometry for the face, I researched into human face topology which basically allowed me to find the best lines of geometry for modelling the face.

 

http://www.digitaltutors.com/forum/showthread.php?9365-human-face-topology

 

I found a series of images which explained which areas of the face should and should not connect, and which parts should be isolated from different areas of the face. Using the research I found really helped me understand how to model the face, I used the cut tool to give me basic insertions for the different features such as the eyes and mouth, I modelled the eye sockets and the mouth structure straight onto the head, and modelled the nose separately. It was important that I followed a structure for the face features, and therefore when I created the insertions I tried to create a circular shape. It was also important that on the corners of the mouth and the eyes I left two lines to give a 'hinge' effect so that when animated they open and close naturally. 

 

 

How it stands.



This is how my character stands at the moment, I used the blueprints from http://www.the-blueprints.com/ and used these as references for creating my character, a few parts of the blue prints are not quite exact, so I had to use my own initiative and create the shapes based on my knowledge of what the human body looks like. When creating a the shape of the bottom, I learnt a technique for deleting unwanted edges from the a model, I simply select the edge I wanted to remove and pressed 'CTRL + Backspace'. I used a lot of the connect technique when sculpting the back of my model, as I needed to add a 'V' shape line in the back to make it look realistic, here I could then round off the back side of the body, I then created another line right in the middle of the character and pulled the vertices inwards to give the definition.

 

My progress so far.

After I jumped ahead and tried to create models I started to create a model based on the mistakes and the new techniques I learnt. Although I shouldn't have jumped straight in and tried to create a model straight away, I do not regret what I did because I have learnt a lot from the mistakes I made.
I watched the series of 3D character modelling tutorial and learnt a lot of very important aspects for creating a human model.
It was very important to try keep vertices to a minimum, as this makes it easier to model as only a few vertices would have to be moved to create the shape, however if I had several which on one of my models I did, it would cause a lot of issues because most of the vertices would have to be altered in relation to the body shapes and curves I would be trying to create.
The most important thing I have learnt is using 'Quads'; modelling a character so that it has four vertices/lines for each part of the body, this also allows the body to move more naturally once animated.

A few more techniques which I learnt whilst watching tutorials;

* Connect tool - by selected a specific line, and then pressing 'loop' or 'ring' this selects the all the lines around the model, then when pressing the 'connect' tool this places a line within the lines selected, this can then be moved up or down by using the settings on the tool.

* Chamfer tool - this allowed me to not only create another vertex, it also allows the line to scale down to follow the flow of an object which decreases in size, for example an arm from top to bottom.

* Bridge and target weld - These two techniques are excellent for joining models together, I used both these techniques for joining together separate aspects of the model I created, for example hands, nose and feet. Target weld allowed me to connect singular vertices and bridge allows me to choose two edges and 'bridge' them together

My frustrating progess.

Right, basically I have 4 models of a human character as I have been trying to model the character using a variety of different techniques, I firstly watched a YouTube video for inspiration and then just started modelling from there, I secondly thought I could try model it using a square with several different edges and found that it made it too complex looking at so many different vertices.
I was then showing a colleague my models and we discussed how it would be rigged and animated, he gave me some advice which he personally learnt from YouTube videos and that was that each part of the body i.e chest and limbs should contain 'Quads' I didn't really understand what he meant by this, but did some research and found a good tutorial which I have currently been following, in the tutorial the person narrating explains that having 'Quads' 4 sets of vertices/lines, allows for a much more realistic movement when it comes to animating, this made sense so I begun modelling my character by following the tutorial.

I have learnt a variety of different techniques and short cuts whilst watching these tutorials, which include:

* Pressing the front view allows me to view purely the front vertices, this means that it is easier to see because if I was viewing in another view port I would see the front and back, which at times can be confusing.
* X-ray mode - By pressing ALT+X this means I can see through the character and view anything behind it, in this case I was using a blueprint so this was an extremely useful tool.
* It is important to try make models as close to the shape as possible without adding a smoothing group/Turbo smooth, and I have learnt that using quads and moving vertices to create symmetrical rounded shapes can do this.


This is the link to the series of videos I have been watching;

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE4693155A242C51F

Character research

This is what a google image search returned for 'policeman' I found that no matter what I searched the images gave a typical stereotype for policemen, and that was either a 'grumpy', 'goofy' or 'over weight' look, I feel that this is slightly harsh and it doesn't present a very good image to children, so I have decided to create a hero-type policeman, with a skin tight suit which will compliment his muscles and give a positive hero figure to the target audience which in this case is young children.

My inspiration has come from media groups which enter schools and inform children about specific behaviours, or events. For example when I was at school, I remember the fire brigade coming in and doing a day event about their jobs and actions by people, showing the school the consequences of actions, they were informing the school about arson and what effects it can do, I am hoping to create a similar story line to give an educational animation considering the target audience.

I then did a good search for 'Super heroes' to try and find some typical characteristics for them, this is what the search revealed: 

I came to conclusion that typical super heroes are very 'top heavy' this means that they're very muscular from the abdominal area upwards, and the muscles in the chest, arms and shoulders are exaggerated this gives them a very strong and powerful looking pose, this is also complimented by the type of clothing they wear, which is typically skin tight. I will be combining these characteristics with a policeman to give him a hero type presence. 

Character Modelling

I have begun modelling a human shaped character, to try and gain some experience. I have never created anything remotely human like, so it has been quite interesting trying to model the shapes, especially for the head and hands. I watched a Youtube tutorial to get some inspiration and try see where I should begin, I set up some blue prints in the scene which allows me to create my model based on a template, this helps a lot as it gives me a guideline to follow to keep the shapes realistic, I try to use the blue print technique where I can as I believe this allows me to create higher standard models.
I have made some good progress so far, and I am pleased with my initial model as it does look human, however I am unsure whether this model will be used for my animation.

 

This is the first model I began creating however felt that I didn't create good enough symmetry in the lines for the joints etc., so I started on another.

 

This is the second model I created I used a box with several different lines on each side as I thought that I could create a more realistic shape, I then discovered that this became far too confusing, and time consuming as I had too many vertices to work from.

 

This is another model which I went ahead and started to create, after speaking to a colleague it was explained to me that I needed to create 'quads' so I had to rethink how I was going to create my model.

First post - Facial expressions.

In the first week, we have been looking at expressions that characters use to show their emotions, in particular facial expressions, I have been looking at different facial expressions on line, and I decided that I would sketch my own to get a better understanding of how effective different aspects of the face show a characters emotion.

The face is broken down into, eye brows, eyes, nose, mouth and any other wrinkles/creases, when I started to draw the facial expressions for different emotions such as happy, sad etc. I drew from top to bottom starting with the eyebrows, I found that just slightly different positions automatically change the emotion of the character, a very slight move of an eyebrow, eye shape, mouth shape, and different creases in the face provide an emotion for the character.  I also found that to really emphasis a characters emotion, the facial expression should be exaggerated, for example if the character is angry, the eyebrows should be pointing downwards quite dramatically to help emphasis anger.

http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/296/f/a/cartoon_ish_facial_expressions_by_existtraiesc-d4drgfg.jpg