The start of the ear was a walk back down memory lane, into the wonderful world of topology. As before, the key was to find the main creases/grooves/bumps and highlight them in blue, following that up by drawing in sets of quads in red, using the aforementioned blues as a guide. Pretty straightforward stuff by now. And just like before, the next step was to create the quads in 3DS Max with 'line' tool and having enabled 'snap' for the vertex. The splines were then united into one with the 'attach' option, and all the overlapping vertices welded together so that they move as one. To be honest, the next step was basically trial and error. Being a small and relatively flat shape, it's hard to get a solid reference for the ear shape (The portrait shot can only help so much. It's like the eye socket in the profile picture. You can get a vague idea, but it's not ideal). You can quickly find obvious contours around the edges and where the 'flap' overlaps the ear canal, but other than that, you're better off guessing and constantly adjusting, using any spare pictures of yourself to get an idea of what parts go where. Below is a screenshot from about halfway through the modelling.
Not where near perfect, but getting there. A small section of the top and side of the ear was extruded slightly to allow the ear to have some depth to it. From this stage, it was simply a case of going through old photos (That had some stronger, clearer angles of the ear) and working out where the bumps where, and how far they stuck out. 
This stage was just nasty. Attaching the ear to the head took several (failed) attempts before I finally managed to crack it. There were 2 large problems here: 1. The tutorials failed to mention that when modelling the ear, it helps to try and keep the number of quads similar to what you have on the side of the head. I had 20+ vertices to try and connect up to 10. 2. Extruding only part of the ear meant that it was difficult to get a smooth connection between the head and ear, as there would normally be a few messy gaps. After a few failed attempts, I deleted the extruded faces and started with the 'flat' ear again (As in it had no depth. The shape and grooves/bumps were still present) and this time extruded it all out as one. This now meant that all the edges linked nicely. The next step took a page from the nostrils/lips, and selecting all the outer edges: used the 'scale' tool inwards whilst holding shift: Thereby creating a nice new set of inward pointing faces, again with all the edges linked up nicely. From here, I counted the amount of vertices that I needed to connect the ear up to, and subsequently made the exact same number from the new faces. Basically, The numerous faces once again gave me 20+ vertices to join. However, this time I could join neighbouring vertices to each other: So 2 neighbouring would create 1, thereby cutting down the number. It was simply a case of bunching up the vertices until I had 10 left, all connected cleanly to each other (No overlapping parts). As always, after joining it to the head, it was attached and the connecting vertices welded. After a bit of tweaking and tucking the occasional vertex away, I ended up with what you see below.
Hmm... I like it but I can't help but ponder how much that looks like Richard O'Brien, none other than the face of 'The Crystal Maze' which made a strong part of my childhood. It makes me want to take out my harmonica and set people some mental/physical/skill/mystery challenges. My mother has some explaining to do... until then: "WILL YOU START THE FANS PLEASE!"
No comments:
Post a Comment