Hi All -

I decided to try and tackle 11.5. The giraffe was a piece of cake next to Cooper. That kid has me licked thus far! I have some really naughty splines going on. I tried to follow using the book and the online tutorial and I just couldn't get it perfect. I modeled his face three times. Each time I improved a bit more. Finally I got it to a point where I felt I could try and complete the head. So here he is - the whole head, sans teeth and eyes - there comes a time where you say - ENOUGH! But I'm not done with Cooper - I want to apply what I learned while trying to model his whole head.

As you can see in the screenshots - it looks like a human head, but there are lots of strange wrinkles that I need to "iron" out.

Anyway, I noticed no one had posted a Cooper attempt, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Name: Michael Fortunato
Assignment: 11.5 Making a Face (or in my case, a head)
Instructor: Das Book and Web tutorial
Comments: See above.

Thanks.
- Michael

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AWK!

You better keep working on that, Mike, or Colin's gonna come to your house and beat you up.

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Please don't take this the wrong way....but I've become obsessed with your son (well, his head ! I have been working on this head for three or four days now. As soon as I get home, I fire up the computer and continue to tweak points. This is my first foray into modeling a human head so I have really been trying to understand it. I've learned a lot about modeling in A:M with this tutorial. Thank you for putting this tutorial together.

It's tough, but I have been having a really great time with it. Truth be told, I think I may have to restart it from scratch. I've got lots of splines that meet like )( - I haven't quite figured out why some of them do that. I think a tutorial on making clean connections would be great! I've read and gone through a few, but they didn't detail why a spline connects the way it does. I've tried to keep to 4 point connections with the exception of some 5 point where needed. I have some 3 point in the nose and around the ear. But I don't believe I have any more of those elsewhere. I'll keep tweaking and repost .

I recommend that everyone working through the Art of Hash Animation Master work on this exercise. This will really test your modeling skills!

- Michael

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You just made my night. I have started detaching those splines with the issue and realized they had connected in an "S" shape, not a " ┼". Sometimes I have to detach or break quite a few, but then what I do is create a straight spline and connect it a few patches down, it's final destination if you will. Then I draw the cross section lines and finally I connect the two and for the most part, it's working and they are connecting correctly. You have put me on the right path. Thanks so much!

Here's an update to the work in progress.

- Michael

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The title of the modeling section is "Modeling Takes Talent". What it should be called is "Modeling Takes Patience"! .

Anyway, Coop is looking a bit smoother. I have broken so many connected splines and reconnected them it's making my head spin! While this model needs more work, I feel it's time for me to move on to other exercises. Thank you so much for your (and Cooper's) help. I learned quite a lot about modeling with A:M doing this tutorial.

Here is my final version (for now .

- MichaelClick to view attachment

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Thats a good effort. You have some peaking going on in places so it might be advantageous to render shaded with splines so we can see what is going on.

Cheers

Thanks Colin and David!

I've uploaded a shot with the render lines option turned on. I changed the color of Coop's face so that you could see the lines better - they didn't show up very well with the flesh color I was using.

First comment should be - you don't need so many splines! I have a sneaky suspicion this is common for people who are new to modeling with A:M. Your comments are most welcome. Thank you both for taking the time to help me through this.

EDIT: After I wrote this, I deleted the spline going down the center of Coop's face. This got rid of the peaking in the center of his face. It's now nice and smooth. I think that's what I'm going to start doing with the entire model. Evaluate where I do not need the splines and simplify the model .

- Michael

I'll tell you right now, it took me about a year of modeling to get a head to look this good. It takes time and practice to model with no bumps and creases (at least bumps and creases where you don't wan't them). You're doing a great job.

First, I think you are using way more splines then needed on the top of the head, haha . I would try breaking some of those and creating hooks. And that wierd triangular patch on the back of the head is not a good patch. Try to come up with a better connection there. Other than that just push, pull, tweak and use the porcelain material to make your model look smoother.

Great job so far.

Michael,

You have just discovered something really powerful that generally we only discover through experience. Namely that just because we create a spline in a model doesn't mean we have to keep it.

If a temporary addition helps... add it... get rid of it... and move on toward your goal.
This can be especially true when using Copy/Flip/Attach to mirror our meshes.

Save often in increments (by adding a number after the filename) and you can always go back a version or two where necessary.

Looks like Cooper is starting to take shape!

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Thanks everyone for your feedback.

Colin - thanks for the taking the time to show me the most effective corrections. I have made them and the model is looking smoother than ever.

Here's the latest. I think it turned out pretty well for my first attempt at a human head.

Thanks again!
- Michael

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Hey folks. I don't know if this counts, but I tried making a face from one of my sketches, instead of using Coop. Anyhoo, I know you guys like lots of reference pictures, so here you go. If anyone needs any close-ups just let me know. Right now there's a small crease under the nose, but it should be covered for the still I'm working on, so I'm not too worried about it.

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This looks fantastic! It is very similar to your sketch. Like Colin said, you could use more roundness in the nose to better match your image. Also, the jawline is a more exaggerated in your model then your original sketch - but you may like it that way . Really wonderful job on this! Now if only I can get my models looking that clean (I'll get there !

- Michael

Hello folks, we've had some very wintery weather and my wife's been away for a week so with my free time I've tried my hand at making a face. Rather than try it on cooper I decided to try it on a couple of other people I know well (my wife and myself), BUT Colin Freeman's on-line tutorial for face making is excellent. His clear description of basic procedure and how to do the eye area and ears made it possible for me to model my first human faces. I've been playing around with A:M for a couple of years but I'm really glad I decided to go through TaoA:M... I've learned some really usefull stuff. I've got lots of tweaking and improving to do on these models but I think I should continue on and learn some more stuff about surfacing etc. and put these mdls on hold for now. I started these about 10 days ago and put many hours into them.

Name: Jeremiah M. Faries

Exercise Completed: #11.5: Making a Face (or two)

Date Completed: Jan 28, 2007

Remarks: The hair is borrowed from Lambrina (I tried using A:M hair but couldn't get it to work so put that aside for now). The eyeballs are tweaked from a free model I picked up somewhere. Everything else is from scratch (thanks again to Colin's tutorial). For surfacing I just photoshoped on of the rotoscopes and took out all detail leaving just a big layer of skin color. The lips were a separate application (again from the rotoscope). She's wearing a little too much mascara but that's my fault... I was trying out transparancy decals for the first time... maybe there's a better way to do eyelashes?. There are tons of little things to tweak to increase the likenesses. I think I have too many patches. I'm not sure what all the downsides of too many patches are but I think one of them is render time. I was thinking about future rigging needs and hooks (needed to reduce splines) just don't seem to behave well when moved around. So I avoided hooks in places that would need to be moved for facial expressions. This didn't give much of a reduction unfortunately. If anyone has any advice on or pointers to where I may get it I'd appreciate it. I'll include a wireframe below.


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And a movie of these figures rotating:
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Very Nice Jeremiah!!!

Hey Jeremiah -

Somehow I missed you posting to this thread (and I started it ).

Fantastic models! Great texture-mapping on your wife's face! I hope you can get the A:M Hair working. She would look brilliant with the hair. If you haven't tried the Wookie tutorial, give it a go, I think it may help you immensely .

- Michael

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NAME: Steve George
EXERCISE:11.5 Make a face
INSTRUCTOR: Colin
REMARKS: This started out as Anjelina Jolie but didn't end up that way. Thanks for the great tute Colin

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Steve, great job on your model. One of the things I realized doing this exercise is how important it is to have good rotoscopes to work from. Angelina just doesn't sit still for the full face shot and left side view needed so you had an uphill battle... It's nice to have the inspiration anyway You have a more sensible mesh density than I have AND it looks like you got A:M hair to work for you. I'm jealous!

Michael, thanks for starting this thread. You'll be the inspiration for all who follow Part of my problem with A:M Hair is that my machine is a few years old and it is frustratingly slow. It was taking to forever style the 'do so I gave up and raided lambrina. I'll be tackling Wookie in the next few days and see how that goes. Maybe I'll bring a book to read while my pc crawls along .

And Colin, thanks very much for the tutorial! It came in handy when I was modeling the giraffe too (for the instructions on how to straighten the centre spline for copyflipattach... my giraffe just couldn't get it together until I read your tutorial!).

--jerry

Wow. I wish Colin's tuts were around when I first started. Excellent job everyone.

Hey Steve -

Great job on your model. The mesh looks excellent (WAY better than my Coop job ). Really nice use of A:M Hair as well .

- Michael

Ryan Krysiak

11.5 making a face

Uggg! It took me like 4 hours. I couldn't get the just of it. lol. I hope this is good enough, its an alien. sorry. I know its bad. I have only been modeling for 3 months now


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I like it, and I couldn't have done something like that after three months!

I think you've got a copy/flip/attach problem, because there's a big crease running down the middle that doesn't look intentional. You'll need the advice of someone more skilled than me, though - I've been A:Ming for several years and never really worked out C/F/A

thanks. I did have a probel with copy flip attach. your right. I cant put a finger on it though

Ryan, that's a great Alien face! You're too hard on yourself (but aren't we all) . For copy flip attach to work well you need to have the center spline perfectly lined up. Colin's tute explains how in clearer language than I could muster. I can't quite tell from the jpg but it looks as though the copy flip worked but not the attach. If so, check colin's tutorial for simple instructions how to even up the center spline. After they are attached it is a simple matter to go through and even out any crease.

-jerry

well thanks jerry. That so much more sense. your very nice. I wish it was better though.

I was not pleased with my first model at all, so I started over completely from scratch. I think it is much better this time. tell me what you think

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it almost looks as if you are modelling from a sphere instead of stitching like my tutorial shows. Is that what you are doing? You're spline count seems to high for certain parts of the face, and not high enough for others. Nice Characters though. Keep it up. You'll get the hang of it.

hey,

this head is horrible but it is my first one ever. and if anyone can tell me what to do except lay off the patches i would appreciate it. as i do more i will make less patches and less errors.

dont make me feel too bad. jk. i dont kare. let me have it.

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I am not modeling from a sphere, but I am not using your tut either. lol. I am using extrude the wholde time. no commecting different parts. well. I hope its alright

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alright this is a completely new head model and better it think... i will try and do the rest later. but that is what i got for now.


name: Caleb Gunby

Exercise completed: 11.5 Making a face

Date Completed: March. 3, 2007

i am almost done with TOA of AM... woohoo

please give me bunch of feedback. i am still learning

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EDIT I HAVE FIXED THE NOSE CREASES

Name: Ralf Kampp
Exercise completed: #11.5 (Making a face)
Date Completed: March. 3, 2007

Remark: I chose my daughter to model my first face and from it my first head! Took me a lot of work, but it was worth it. I have learnt a lot! BTW: Eyes were taken from Miss Goodbody from the CD. The decaling isn't really good so far.

Nice, Ralf. You've got a "head" start with that character.

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i am not working fro a rotoscope.. just been trying some new tequniques and what not

----- and very nice Raffi

This one's a lot tougher than I expected, still need to work on smoother patches.

Kevin Woods
Exercise 11.5
10/10/07

This is my first face and i was wondering if you guys could give me any feedback. Thanks,

These are some pics of may face hope it helps

MasterFunk,
In looking at your face I see you are beginning to understand how splines work.
I do wonder how closely you've followed the Exercise 11.5 tutorial in the manual however as there are considerable differences in your model. No harm in that though as long as you feel you are making progress.

The areas I would focus on would be where the splines don't appear to be continuous.
In looking closer they do appear to be continous so there is something else going on.
Its hard to see what it is in your images.

Perhaps you can share your model with us? (you may have to Zip or compress it up to attach in to a post)
I'd be glad to explore with you if you are willing.

here is the model

thanks for helping, I appreciate it.

Could you give me any pointers?

First impressions:
Probably too many splines. And most of them are way too straight. The head is almost square.

Looking at your splines in detail:

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Don't have splines meeting in a 5-way like this. You can do a hook by moving one of the splines up a bit.

The eye surrounds are very good in the way they follow the curvature of the eye.

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Many of your splines are wrongly connected. To see how a spline runs, click the spline between two control points, and press the comma , key. You can see in the above picture that the spline should not be shaped like this.

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I can see that you have tried to keep the 4 way cross of splines to be an X by peaking the splines, however, the peak is really only to be used for sharp edges. By smoothing the spline, you can see that the spline actually goes from the bottom to the right, instead from the bottom to the top.

You should look at The Basic Splinemanship Tutorial to understand this.

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If you look at Colin's Cooper face, you can see that all the splines curve around the shape of the head, whereas yours all run straight.

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You don't need the splines all this close together - in this section you could probably get rid of 6 vertical splines.

It will probably be a lot harder for you to fix this up than for you to completely redo it. I know when I was doing faces I did many of them, and found that it was easier to restart, and much easier to create the face the second time. If you want to try fixing it up, you need to use the K key to break splines, and the Delete key to delete control points. You also need to use the T (turn) key a lot, to get the right angle. You need to highlight control points and use the H key to hide the others.

Sorry I missed your post when you first posted it - I hope you don't mind the critique! But keep at it - you are obviously heading towards the top of that learning hill and the slope down the other side is Soooo-oo much fun!