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.