Name: Tim Roberts

Exercise Completed: Exercise 11.5, Make A Face

Date Completed: Nov. 6, 2008

Instructor: Manual, forum

Comments: A couple rounds of working on the face. At one point, I had the full head textured, but no ears. It was impossible to add the ears simply, so I went back to the half head, modeled the ears, flip attached the head and re-textured! Wife asked, "Is he supposed to be an elf?". So, I could see tweaking the ears.

Most challenging AM model to date.

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good job!

That looks pretty successful.

If you post a wireframe someone will probably pop in with some tips on reducing creases.

Here are the wireframes as such (front wireframe was a little confusing).

Any quick pointers on the creases would be great.


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Thanks to all for reviewing.

Your splineage looks great. I think the reason there is some creasing on the cheeks is because the spline is at a 90 degree angle from the side. It needs to flow better like the contour of a face. Excellent job though.

Most of that looks pretty good. I think there's a spline or two running form teh nose back across teh face that could be eliminated maybe.

Usually people try to have more concentric rings around the mouth but what you have might work fine.


Here's what looks odd;

the three sided patch (a) is ok, but maybe not right next to a five-sided patch (b ). Next to that is what looks like a three-sided patch with one side split by a spline dead ending into it©. Technically it's a legal 4-sided patch but not a good one.

(d) looks like a spline dead ending into the intersection of two other splines.

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is there any tutorial, or some kind of help on this tutorial. im completely stuck, you extrude the first line you make, but how do you form it?

You mean "how do I lay the first spline?"????

In the side view click the Add CP button, put a cp at various points, following the nose on the rotoscope.

Then you can extrude it in the front view, as per instructions. (If you didn't mean that, whereabouts are you stuck?)

You can have the front and side windows in your view together - Window Menu > New window, then Window Menu > Tile Vertically. Then you can set one window to side view (4 on keyboard), and one window to front view (2 on keyboard), and you can see much more easily what you are doing.

I'm not sure what you mean either. Do you mean how to reshape each new spline after you extrude? You do it by manually moving CPs to get the shape you want. Simple scaling of a whole group won't do it, because each spline is a bit different in contout than the one it came from.

It's a process of refinement. Make some rough adjustments, look at it from different angles to see what's out of place, then make more adjustments... until you are satisfied

Just do the nose as best you can, post it here and get some feed back before you try the whole face.

BTW, I recommend following the uncondensed version of that tut. The original seems to be down but it's still on the wayback machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080201095824/...t/CoopFace.html

This one has a few more explanatory comments. You may need to give it a few minutes for the jpgs to load.

ok...this one was reeeaaallllly hard. but after a few tries, here it is. i don't know why i saved it as a quicktime movie!? anyways...let me know what you think

Matt,
...and here I thought you were going to post a movie of how you made the face.

That looks like a pretty successful first effort!
If you know how to render or screen grab a wireframe image that will help on our end.

One of these days...
We are going to have to create Exercises 11.1 through 11.4.
Those activities would assist in getting everyone ready to tackle 11.5
Yup. One of these days...

Post an image or two from other angles please!


Edit: As Robert mentioned there is more to the Cooper tutorial.
Most of it can be found on via the wayback machine but they are also available on the Extra DVD.

sorry to disappoint rodney. i'll definitely give it a go though. hmm...maybe i'll try to combine this exercise with the lip sync one??? can you tell me how to screen grab please? thanks for your time.

There is a "print screen" button on your keyboard, press that.
Then in a paint program do "edit paste" then save it.

thanks spleen! i'm on it!

ok...here's a few screenshots i managed to get. i'm not sure why there's a shadow on the right side of the mouth. perhaps its something to do with the hook i used?

Those black bits look like normals pointing the wrong way.

"Normals": Each patch has a right way to face and a wrong way. Patches should all face outwards, but sometimes, especially when adding 5 point patches, they get pointed the wrong way.

To see which way a patch is facing, press Shift + 1 (that's the 1 that's NOT on the numeric keypad). You should now get a spike on all the patches. If the spike is pointed inwards, it's the wrong way.

To turn a patch around, use the patch tool on the right (Shift+P), and click the offending patch. Then press the F key. The spike will now be on the opposite side, meaning the patch has turned over.

When finished, remember to press Shift+1 to turn off the spikes.

[Another way to see patches with bad normals is Shift+6 (option means don't show back facing patches). Any patches facing away from the camera now become transparent. Important with this one to remember to press Shift+6 again to turn it back, otherwise you think you've lost your patches.]

where do I get more exercises from? Do I need to purchase something?

Hi, Rodney - welcome to A:M!

Have you been to the Hash site and downloaded "The Art of Animation:Master"? Also known as TaoA:M, the name of this forum.

http://www.hash.com/2007web/reference.htm

This will have exercises to take you through almost every feature in A:M. You can do the examples as in the book, and then extend yourself by putting your own take on them. Then you can post your results on the TaoA:M to entertain and delight everyone

There are videos to illustrate most of these exercises:

http://www.hash.com/2007web/vm.htm

This forum is a wonderful repository of knowledge - learn to use the search at the top right of the forum!

[quote name='Caroline' date='Feb 7 2009, 08:17 AM' post='293190']
Those black bits look like normals pointing the wrong way.

i did what you suggested and there were LOADS of patches facing the wrong way! especially the neck and where i extruded the head back. but it didn't get rid of that black patch. i got rid of the hook and 5 point patched it and that seemed to look ok, but i'm thinking it might effect it when it comes to animating his mouth. i'm still working on that challenge rodney i've assigned a bone to his jaw and one for his head but still gotta create all of the mouth shapes for all of the sounds. i've got a feeling it's gonna take a while! if only my job didn't get in the way i'm also gonn ahave to go back through the flower power excercise (which didn't go too well the first time) to get the smartskin right. wish me luck

Here is the face mask for exercise 11.5.

I used my son Max as my model.
He's not quite convinced I should post it.
I'll have to put some extra in his allowance this week to cover the humiliation I guess.
His mom is just glad I didn't use her.

Oh well, onward and upward.

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your a natural

A few days ago Matt said:


Good luck Matt!

That is very impressive Tim.
Very impressive.
If I didnt' know any better I'd say you've gotten the hang of this splinin' thing.

Tell Max hello from us.
He may not be in danger of being replaced by a 3D model anytime soon... but that model looks great!

Thanks guys.
It was worth doing just to see Max turn red.

Click to view attachmentTwo hours my ass.

This is by far the toughest lesson I've had to deal with... and it isn't because the instructions are hard... they are pretty much useless. I'm not an artist and getting this face right is giving me a hemorrhage.

Right now I'm trying to get the lips right and having a rather hard time. I wanted to "plump" the bottom lip a bit as my nephew has a bit of a pouty lip. So once I had the shape right I went to add a new row of control points in the center of the lip so I could pull them out a bit and plump it. The problem is that no matter what I do it keeps turning the last control point into a hook which gives me no control of that last spline and basically makes it a flat, straight line between the top and bottom control point.

So I thought to break the spline and add the cp's back in and got an error and a repeatable crash for my efforts.

Please watch the vid, the vid is of the fourth time I've crashed the program with the same error.

I'm wondering if the hook will become a control point once the two sides of the face are joined. If that's the case I may just have to wait to adjust that area of the lip.

Also, the manual isn't much use, any help/advice you guys can offer on the splines so far would be much appreciated.

Video and project file attached. I'll attach the images I'm using for rotoscope as well. They aren't perfect but I couldn't get him to stop squirming.

Thanks for any help.

EDIT: Had to zip the movie of the error because it was 98 MB. I should also probably mention that that hook on the lip was not made by me... the control point disappeared on its own.

Is there supposed to be no sound on that? I'm almost expecting Lillian Gish to show up.


Something is set to absolute worst-case settings for a 2 minute movie (with no sound?) to end up 98 megabytes.


that's my first diagnosis.





I'll take another look at it tomorrow.

Sorry, I didn't think it needed an audio explanation as the problem is fairly cut and dry.

Yeah the file size took me by surprise too. I've been working with windows codecs for years. I even know what to do with AVI and even some DivX but I have had zero experience with Quicktime. I have Quicktime 7 pro with the encoder built in and when I set it to export to web the best I could get was small file size, tiny window and really blurry. So I just transferred the AVI to .MOV and got 98 Megabytes. The real surprise is that the original AVI was only 28 megabytes.

So figure that one out... but that definitely describes my experience with Quicktime. Put X in get a pink gorilla out. I wish the forums accepted WMV's. I'd be all smooth and competent looking if it did. Instead of inept and bumbling.

Next time I'll put a little music on it for you.

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Notice the spline i fixed at the beginning got detached again after I was working something else.

Not sure why. Save and reopen that model after you fix that spot. that should get it to stay stuck.


You may want to delete your 98MB screencam movie now and save Hash a bit of server space. You can do that by editing your post.

Ok,

I'm kinda done.... in that I don't think I can tweak it anymore without making it worse.

This was by far the hardest lesson of all. Absolutely brutal.

I made my poor 5 year old nephew look like a longshoreman with a 5' O'Clock shadow.

There is some blurring of the decal where the 5 point patches are in the area between the eyes and nose. I could not resolve that. The black rings around the nostrils... I could not resolve that either. In fact when I rendered the image under the "Toon" setting it actually looked pretty good except those black lines on the nose became really prominent.

Robcat.. thanks for all the advice... As I said in my previous post I didn't want that end to be a hook. I couldn't stop it. It seems, and this is ony a guess bases upon my experience, that when a spline dead ends on both ends as that spline did (it would have eventually mated on the end when I did the copy/flip but when I sent it to you it dead ended at both ends) one end MUST become a hook.

So I removed the entire spline and attached it with extra, superfluous CP's and then deleted the extras and it gave me CP's on both ends like I wanted. I had intended to make the end near the corner of the mouth a hook like you suggested but I ended up keeping the CP and dead ending it there because it looked ok. I don't know why it looked ok... it probably shouldn't... but it does. Even before I decaled it, it looked fine.

Also there is no doubt that I have too many splines. I definitely added too many. I was trying to add detail in the face, the little cleft between the lips, the wrinkes around the eyes, it has caused and is causing me problems with the smoothness of the model. The face looks rugged. The biggest thing I was trying to get right, and the place I most clearly failed is the nose. I added a ton of extra CP's on the nose because the lesson seemed to enourage that:



I read this as encouragement to inrease the number of CP's in order to add detail. I guess that's not right.

Is this one of those times that modelers who don't know what they are doing would use "Porcelin" to smooth things out?

Robcat, I didn't entirely understand what you wanted me to do with the mouth, so I left it the way it was. It seemed to work ok... but I don't know if it would give me trouble later if I tried to use it for animation or something. I extended the lips inward once the two sides were joined. I'd be interested to know just how badly I screwed this up and a better way to go about it. The lesson suggests 5 point patches there but I got confused when it said:



Because in actuality, according to the pictures in figure 5, you aren't creating the lower lip you are creating the area under the lower lip. The actual lower lip just appears in figure 6 without instructions on how best to create it and in figure 7 the book tells me to put a five point patch... right next to where it told me to put another five point patch in figure 5; something I know does not work.

Anyway, I'm attaching the final project file... the images I used for decaling are here already two or so posts up.

If anyone has the time to look over the project file and can tell me how to fix the nose I'd appreciate it. Obviously I should start by removing an asslode of splines. I may have to take another run at this one. What do you guys think?

EDIT: The last one is a "Toon" setting render in which I got rid of the Toon lines. I don't know if that's cheating or not.

Also, Robcat I forgot to mention I did remove that hideously large movie file. I think I'm going to have to do some research on Quicktime codecs.

All in all, I think you hit the major targets here. Faces are the hardest thing to do well in any 3D software.

In general A:M discourages you from cheap tricks that work in other software like starting with a sphere and deforming it to look somewhat face-like.

In A:M you have to put your sculptor's hat on and think a bit harder.






Fewer splines will help make smoother models. For the future.




spline continuity problems are usually behind decal weirdness.






I haven't really modeled many faces myself. But I have doctored and rigged a lot of other people's. Fewer splines is easier.

Porcelain might help, but is least useful in fixing basic splining errors.





I'd have to read the whole tut all the way thru to be sure what his intent was. Colin Freeman wrote that so I'm sure it's great tut, but Martin condensed it for TaoA:M so some of the greatness may somewhat smaller in size.





another megabyte lives to store another day.

Exercise 11.5 make a face
in progress

I wanted to hold myself to posting at least once a weekend. As you can see Cooper is started. I have a lot of rough patches I need to work on. I have started and re-started several times. Each time he gets a little better. Anyway, here is this weekends work.

That looks on track there. I see a big valley between the eye and the forehead... maybe a spline or a CP is too far back?

You are off to a great start.
This isn't the easiest of Exercises but you'll learn a lot and take a whole lot of experience away from it.
As you've noted... its also true with each endeaver you make; each time it gets a little bit better.

Looking forward to seeing your next updates!

though i'm far from being an expert or anything, my advice regarding this tut especially, is that even though it looks rough and hideous, model the whole thing (well, half then CFA it) and then post pics of it and its wireframe and let the AM community pick away at it. Once they've done that, and you've fixed it up as best you can based on the suggestions (it will still look bad, but somewhat better then at first) then model it from scratch again. I found that my second model looked about 150 times better then my first, I was shocked that I was the one who made it, and that it only took hours as opposed to days. I think my problem in the past when I attempted making faces, is that I never completed the model and posted the wireframe. That's where the main learning curve is I believe, and then when people say (remove that spline there, move that CP etc) it'll click, and it sticks with you, so much so you don't even really think about it when you do it, it just feels natural. So no matter what, complete the face even if it looks completely hideous and not like a face at all.

Well here is the first run at the front of Coopers face. The things I am noticing is:

1. I am still not quite sure what makes a valid patch.
2. How 5 point patches work
3. How hooks work.

I am not sure if I am going to start over on this one or go to the next project. Work is killing me right now so I have limited time. I guess as long as I don't get too frustrated I will stick with this one.

The good news is if DC comics ever needs a model of Bizarro Cooper we are in luck.

That's not a bad first outing. Kinda lumpy but those are not un fixable.

Notice near the corners of the mouth where you have a CP that is at the center of five patch corners. That's always bad because that means you have two splines running thru the CP (good) and then one more dead-ending at that same spot (bad)

Every CP should be the site of four patch corners, no more, no less. (Unless it's on the edge of a mesh, then it would be the site of two patch corners, no more, no less.)

I think the giraffe or Flower tut explained hooks and 5 pointers, try reviewing those first. If you're still stumped ask again or show an example where they aren't working for you.

i think the biggest issue with your model is that it is simply too dense, though not cooper, here is my mesh of aiden, and you'll see how Aiden has a not nearly as many patches in the cheek and nose area as your cooper model does, regarde:

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You only need a denser mesh if really defining an area. So for instance, to cut done your mesh considerably, look at your eyes, they hve more CPs than are necessary to define that eye. You can get away with your eye having about 5 CPs as opposed to the 14 that it appears you have. Once the eye is cut down, you have basically reduced the cheek area by 2/3 of what was originally there. That will also eliminate some of the interesting dips in the lip/cheek area.

The nose only needs about 3 CPs in the left or right view. Let the spline define the curves, not the CPs. The CPs are only really needed when you really need to define the area otherwise, less is good

Ok, I will go back and try to refine it. Thanks for all of the comments