I need soo much help on exersise 11.5 make a face i do not understand at all wat to do to make the face. As far as i can get is i make the two photos of the front and side veiw of coopers head. but then when your supposes to move and extrude to make the nose i dont understand at all how to do this!?!?!?!? i need a lot of help. if someone could possibly record a video of doing that part of make a face then that would be soo much help! thanks

AmKyle

You may need to tell us more about what you don't understnd about extruding. maybe show a screen shot of what you have so far.

Kyle,
I know you are excited to get all the way into A:M and explore all there is to explore but I fear your frustration factor is going to reach new heights if you jump all over the place. Are you animating, modeling and working through all the exercises at the same time or are there 14 of you?

Exercise 11.5 is not an easy exercise.
You need so much help because you aren't following the path of least resistance. You should start with simpler projects.
Work up to the more difficult ones. Focus!

I admire your spirit and tenacity. There is nothing like diving in to the deep end of the pool to learn how to swim.
According to my wife (whose dad threw here into a river to teach her and her brother how to swim) that method usually works.

so what your saying is that i should start animating simpler models like 3d shapes and like maybe a ladder and other simple things.

Also i have the David Rogers a complete guide to A:M would this be a good book for me to use for all the things im having trouble with?


I also try to get a screenshot of what im doing so far, but ill have to wait because a kinda big file is rendering out right now.

Not quite but that is close.
I'd suggest working your way through TaoA:M right here in the forum, posting your results as you go.
It may see boring at times, too easy, or not important but by the time you finish you will be really ready to dig in and move on to even more complicated projects.

I'm not suggesting you -only- do the TaoA:M exercises. No!
Keep experimenting. Push buttons, Right Click on everything. Experiment. Learn.

But too much experiment without a specific goal won't get you the help you need.
For that you need a structured approach to learning the tools at your disposal.
What better way to learn those than to follow the outline those who created the program wrote.

TaoA:M is designed to set you up with a foundation from which to build not just Faces but entire worlds.
You won't do it all in TaoA:M but you'll discover the tools and the means to do it.

I plan to work through TaoA:M myself and document the journey.
Want to start out on the journey with me?

do you mean like follow you and youll help me with parts of animation master and the buttons?

because yes i would love ot have help.
or just follow you. whatever you mean.

The TaoA:M exercises are continually being completed but every once in a while a groups tend to work together to get through.
Following me will probably take a little more time than you care to take as I'll probably average about 2 exercises a month this year.
But I'll also be jumping back and forth with those that are working ahead of my schedule.

My goal this year is to dig deep into each exercise and mine a little bit of the gold.
I don't want to progress too slow though or no one will retain interest.

So... there will be 1 or 2 'active' exercises at any given time.
Thats where the focus will be.
But... all exericses will continually develop at the pace of each person involved.

I hope you will follow me as we progress through all the exercises collectively but mostly my goal is to follow you.
Its a 'best of all worlds' scenario. My purpose ultimately though is to let you take the lead and make each exerise your own. I'll follow.

There is nothing more important to me at this stage in my experience than to assist others in achieving their goals.
Its extremely rewarding too.

Click to view attachmentHi everyone-

First post here on the forums. I've been following the book and the video tutorials when available, but now I've hit a little snag with the Cooper face model.

Here's the thing- when adding points on to pre-existing splines- sometimes the splines are "square" and give me nice edges, but other times, the lines curve and I get wavy squares. I've attached a screenshot where I circled some of the problem areas.

Click to view attachment

I know there's a way to fix them- I just don't know how to do it yet

-Erik

Hi, Erik - welcome to the forum.

Splines are a little tricky at first - you need 'Basic Splinemanship I', which you can find here:

http://www.alienlogo.com/tincan/

Click to view attachment

If you look at my picture, the one on the left is correct. Follow the colours to see where the spline is going. The green spline on the left is straight, but the one on the right is curved. At first glance, it is not always easy to see which splines are continuous.

Try clicking a control point, and press the comma , key and the spline will be selected, so then you can see which splines are going where.

The two areas on his chin that you have circled are definitely suffering from this problem.

His nose looks great. I have trouble with noses.

A bit more... those splinemanship tutes are great, but this point isn't covered (I don't think).

Adding onto a single spline is simple enough. The problem shows up when you've got a corner formed by the ends of two splines, and you try to add from there. A:M can't read your mind; it doesn't know which of the splines you're trying to add to, so it guesses. I think it adds onto the most recently drawn spline - somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

So if you want to go a different direction, you get a curve. Then if you go back to that CP to extend the other spline, A:M chooses the older spline to extend, and you get a couple of pinched curves.

When I run into this, I delete the unwanted extension, then I break the original two splines at the CP. I temporarily pull one spline end aside, add the extension I wanted at the CP, then move that CP back to its original position and right click to rejoin them.

Thank you Caroline & phatso! I'll take a look at those tutorials- hopefully they'll clear up another unfortunate development- 3 point surfaces!

Caroline- the comma , shortcut will definitely come in handy- exactly what I was wondering about. Thanks for the nose comment! After copy,flip, attaching, poor Cooper looks like he has an adult's nose! I'll have to round it down a bit.

phatso- I think I figured out a similar way to differentiate between splines. All my undesired splines would get pulled aside and deleted once I connected the spline I was looking for. 3-D space is tricky, but I think I'm getting the hang of it!

Thanks again!

Erik

Working with patches and splines does seem to be trickier than the polygons of other programs - but that's an illusion, because when you make one patch, you've made the equivalent of maybe 100 polygons.

ok im still stuck on the face, but any of you guys know how to make stuff like a leg or a torso. do you just use the lathe tool and make a curcular kind of thing? beause this is what im stuck on now.

This exercise, 11.5 is based on Colin's Cooper tutorials, located here:

http://www.colins-loft.net/tutorials.html

There's a section on torso and legs.

However, first try exercise 11 Giraffe, as you get to make legs there, and join them to the body. That's a tricky exercise that will challenge your usage of splines.

Short answer, though, I would make a 6 (or 8 for the torso) point circle, then extrude.