Ear

To create the ear I first needed to go back to the original topology photos I made and start to draw in the ear topology.

Starting the same as when I did the original topology, by drawing in the blue lines, I started planning out the basic layout of my ear.

Next I went over the basic topology with the more detailed topology using red lines, this allows me to import the picture into 3d studio max and automatically start drawing out the polygons I require.

After importing the picture, I used the line tool with the corner settings turned on as well as the snap tool, this allows me to start creating individual polygons. Once I had created all of the polygons i required i simply needed to attach them using the attach tool, after attaching the polygons I needed to weld the vertices's together, again using the weld tool.

This is how far I have gotten at the moment due to time restraints and other assignments, i am hoping to complete the ear before hand in day.

Creating The Face - The Back and Side Of The Head

To create the back of the head I needed to simply create a sphere and scale it to the size of my head, using the reference plane as a guide again.

After this was done I needed to remove the polygons that would cause problems and that werent going to be used, this was done by selecting all of the polygons on the side of the sphere as well as the top half of the sphere, as the symmetry will create another version so this is unneeded, then simply delete them. This will leave you with what should look like the top and back of your head, a little like the image below:

After this has been done the vertex's at the end of the now not sphere need to be attached to the top of the face, once this has been done the amount of polygons need to be reduced, this is simple to do as you simply select every other polygon edge, then using the ring function the rest of the edges that are inline with the selected edge will highlight and then you can use the collapse function, this will basically delete the polygons, this is done to allow the turbo smooth that will be used to work better.

The image above shows the head with less polygons, once this has been done the next step involves pulling down the edges of the polygons using the same technique as when doing the nostrils, this is used to create the back of the head, shoulders and neck. This technique is quite simple to do as the majority of the polygons are quite big and therefore dont involve many tedious or fiddly bits.

The image below shows the side of the head once I had pulled out all of the edges -

After I had pulled the edges out I simply attached all of the vertexs together from the face to the side of the head and from the top of the head to the side. After everything was attached and I thought it looked good I simply used TurboSmooth on it, and got the following:

Which I am pretty happy with overall, now I need to start the ear and start adding materials etc.

Creating The Face - The Nose, Eyes and Lips

Within this post I will be talking about how I created the nostrils, lips and eye lids, all using the same technique.

To start with my face model had no lips, nostrils or eye lids as they weren't put into the original section when I created the polygons, I'll start with the nose. The simplest way to do this is to select all of the edges of the polygons within the nostril, and then with the scale tool selected, hold down the shift key and pull the polygons outwards,  to create a copy of the polygons:

Once this has been done I needed to connect all of the edges and vertexes to each other and then set out the nose how I thought it looked best, after I thought the nose looked okay i started with the inside of the nostril, this again included selecting all of the edges of the polygons and then holding the shift key down pull the nostrils upwards towards the eyes, this gives the nose the "tear drop" look that most people have.

 The images above show the nostril after the polygons had been selected and pulled up and then what they looked like turbo smoothed.

Using the same technique for the nostrils you can do the eye lids and lips, as the technique is the same I wont bother showing anything except the end product.

Eyes - 

Lips -

Creating The Face - Mirroring and Smoothing

Within this section of the process I mirror the side of my face that has already been created rather than waste time creating the other half of my face.

This process is done simply be selecting my model and applying a modifer called symmetry, this can be accessed in the modifer list:

Once this modifer was applied the face folds inside itself, this is simple to fix, within the symmetry options I simply checked the Flip option and this sorted the problem.











Once this was done I simply moved the mirror gizmo to allow the two halves of the face to match up correctly.

Once the symmetry has been done I needed to apply a smoothing modifer to make the model look more like a face rather than squares. This is simply done by adding a smoothing modifer, im using the modifer called TurboSmooth:

This modifer uses a smoothing algrithom that allows the quads to be smoothed.

The image above is what my model looks like after my first attempt of having it mirrored and turbosmoothed, I know there are a few things I need to do, such as sorting out the bumps and groves that shouldnt be there but that can be sorted at a later date.

Creating The Face - Adding Depth To The Face

The next thing needed was to create depth to the face, this is done by simply pulling out the vertex of the polygons, this gives the face a depth look and allows the face to take shape.

The first thing that needs to be done is to attach all of the seperate vertex's, this needs to be done because as we created all of the polygons seperately none of the vertex's that were created with it are connected to each other, this would cause alot of problems if left untouched, so what we need to do is select all of the different vertice's, as in the image below:

Then we need to select the little options box next to weld, this brings up a box which gives you the ability to change the weld threshold, it also shows you the amount of vertices you have before and after the weld will take place, after finding the threshold that best suited my case I clicked apply this automatically weld's the vertices together. Some of the vertices didnt weld properly so I had to go through the ones I found and manually weld them to the surronding vertices.

After all of the vertices have been properly welded together I started to pull the vertex's out using the side reference plane as a guide, this allowed me to get the vertex's as close as I could to the correct positions. This was a very tedious process as it required using different viewport layouts and alot of fiddling about to get things in the right position, after making sure all of the vertices are in the correct position I need to go onto the next section of the videos and the next step of creating my model.

Creating The Face - Splining The Face

To start actually creating the face in 3D studio max I needed to use a technique called spline, this is done by accessing the line tool under the shapes tab, after this I need to make sure all the correct settings are selected, these settings include setting up the snap tool to vertex from grid points and also making sure the line tool is set to corners.

Once the line tool has been selected I needed to full screen the front facing reference plane and zoom in, this allowed me to get a good view of what I was doing, once ready I started to draw using the line tool, using the topology as a guideline I had to go round the edges, making sure I created quads and that each one closed, this is essentially creating polygons which I can then manipulate at a later date.

The image above shows my face after I had finished splining, though it is quite hard to see, the white lines show the quads I made. This process was quite tedious as I needed to make sure I went over every line of my topology and checking that every quad was closed and to I also found it quite difficult to make sure that there werent any triangle as this would affect my model later.

The next thing I needed to do was to create the actual polygons, this is a simple step as all I did was select one of the objects, right click and click convert to editable poly, this gives you a "surface", the image above, which I then attached to the other objects by selecting the little options box next to attach and highlighting all of the other objects I had just created, the image below shows the full topology of my polygons.

Creating The Face - Reference Planes

After creating the topology lines on my face I needed to create the reference plane, I knew this from experience as well as the video's we were told to use telling us to do it as the next step.

To create the reference planes I simply had to draw a plane and add the image to that plane by creating the image as a material and then once I had set out the material to the correct settings I simply had to drag the material to my reference planes.


After adding the material to the reference plane I had to clone the plane and rotate it 90 degrees to make sure both planes were exactly the same size as well as being in the correct position to each other, once this was sorted I then had to use UVWMapping to move the position of the image without moving the reference plane itself, this allowed me to get the reference planes to show both sides of the image as well as being able to set out the images how I needed them.

The image above is what my final reference planes look like, now I need to start on the next section of creating the face.

My Face

Today I decided to give creating a 3D version of my head a go, which I wasn't very confidant about as I feel I lack any animation skill, but after watching some of the video's provided by Richard on the 3ds MAX Tutorials website, I decided to try my best as I found the videos to be very informative and helpful.

To start off with I need two photos of my face and head, one facing forward toward the camera and the other facing sideways, like a mug shot. Once I had both photos taken and uploaded into Adobe Photoshop, I needed to use a Distortion Filter called Lens Correction which allowed me to remove any distortion created by the camera when the photo's were taken, it also allowed me to "flatten" the images, which allowed me to optimise the images and wouldnt cause problems when trying to draw out the Topology lines.

Once the photos were of a good standard I then merged both photos onto the same background layer, I then needed to make sure both the photos were level with each other. This was done using the rulers tool in Photoshop, this is accessed by pushing control and R, this tool allowes you to create a straight line and in this case match up the two images. I lined up the two images by matching up parts of my facial features, such as the pupils of my eye, my chin and eyebrows, this allowed me to get a general idea of how much tweeking the photos needed to be aligned. The image below shows how closely I managed to get my two images aligned:

Trying to align features using Rulers

After aligning the photo's I needed to start working on creating the Topology lines on my face, I started this by re-watching the video that talked about how to do it. Once i'd watched the video I simply started drawing blue lines on my face where I thought that my facial features protruded or extruded this included the obvious ones, such as my nose, eyes and mouth, as well as the less obvious ones such as the jaw bones, eye sockets and parts to the top and side of your mouth. The reason for having blue lines is simply just because it stands out from my face and couldnt be mistaken for anything on my face. Image below shows the lines I thought were important:

Blue line topology

Once I was happy with the blue lines used for the Topology I then needed to create the next steps in the Topology by drawing red lines, using red here because it is a bright colour and stands apart from the blue used before. The red lines are implemented and used as a "target mesh" this means that when the image is imported into 3D Studio Max it is easier to create polygons as the mesh acts almost like tracing paper.

After finishing the red topology lines I needed to create the blue lines on the sideways facing photo, this was again mainly done by simply drawing over any defining features:

Now I need to import the images into 3D studio max and start to actually model my face, but i'll have to make another post about that once I have successfully finished it.