MT 5: Head Tutorial - Mesh Draw

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Simon
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MT 5: Head Tutorial - Mesh Draw

Post by Simon »

Here are screenshots from making my Cali head. The head was a small part of the composition so I wanted to make it quickly, not too much fuss so long as it looked good from the side.

To start with I drew lathes for the head and neck, then painted a very rough Curvy map to define the eye sockets and cheek.

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After creating a mesh object and adding the head and neck lathes as children I began drawing in some lines with the add points tool. After finishing each line I clicked off the model in a different view to deselect the last point I added so I could start a new line.

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Adding more lines I tried to follow the contours of the head. Remember you can hold shift while adding points to drag out a new line between existing points.

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Further away from the main features I spaced the points and lines out more because less detail was needed. I tried to keep a good smooth flow of lines down the head and into the neck.

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Adding the faces is easiest if you put the children into a new layer (using the layers panel) and hide them. Then it is easy to see where you have added faces. I tried to add mainly quads - with as little distortion as possible, with only afew tris where quads were impossible or mucked up the edge flow.

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Turn off "Show edit curves" in the view menu to see the mesh without edges.

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Here is the mesh after using subdivide and dragging some points around with the widgit tools. To make creases you can pinch the mesh by dragging the mesh with the widgit towards the crease line from both sides. (this should bring the mesh edges closer together without changing the shape of the mesh much)

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Don't forget you can use the curvy smooth slider to help out - then bake the results.

Here I lined up the head with the green cross and used extrude to create the other half of the head.

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And here she is with light and textures set up.

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And there she is, a bit rough and ready but she was much faster to make than other techniques I have used for heads - most of the speed gain comes from drawing the mesh onto the child objects - a very helpful technique.');
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