Making of Classical Girl
This model cost me a long time. I tried my best to make it perfect, so sometimes I changed the superciliary arches to make them more prominent, other times I chose to have the eyelids inwards, and also tried outwards too. I checked the cheek bone to make it proper and then had to better the musculus orbicularis oris shape, the nose shape, and so on. I always made the best effort to get the structure defined, and challenge my limits to making an Oriental beauty, taking into account to make good balance between structure and appearance. Through that on-going process, I found that many things had to be discarded. If you make the beauty aspect too strong, perhaps it won’t be beautiful or that the beauty was not going to be the genuine Oriental beauty that I would like to convey.
I have made models for years and spent a lot of time drawing as well. Thanks to that, I am confident that I understand the structural proportions of the human figure. I realized that to make a muscular man or woman was not too difficult to do, but if you want to express a kind of emotion (without having your technical skills overwhelm it), you have to consider many other aspects. I know that in this respect, I still have much to improve upon, but I will continue to try my best.
I am glad share with you the difficulties and emotions that arose during this process and if this Making-of can help you some how, I would be very delighted.
I welcome your e-mails to discuss every aspect of CG and I hope that I can grow with you all on this road of making CG together.
The first step is to define the shape. The most important is grasping the character’s features, such as the face shape.
Tip
Take for example: when we enjoy an image drawn by a great master from a distance, we can be attracted to the image even though we cannot see the details. The nearer we get to it, the more details we can see. The image becomes more attractive. This too is true for model-making. The model should be well perceived when seen from a distance. Don’t pay too much attention to the details initially; the most important is considering it as a whole, and then pay attention to the details as you further study it. What the outline is and how to grasp the outline may be two key points. Imagine that you can recognize your friends from a distance the moment you see him from afar, even though you cannot make out his appearance clearly. Similarly, you can imagine your model covered by cloth. That was my approach. If you proceed like that, you can optimize two-thirds of the time or more to finish your model. Because most people think about the details first before considering the entirety of the model, they get lost in the process — the lines become more and more overwhemling and it is difficult to retain control over them.
Tip
We can’t ignore the topology when comes to making a model. Initially, we spend a lot of time in laying out the wireframe. In order to reserve more time for shaping and molding the mesh, we should find our own method that can finish ‘wiring’ most efficiently and not just working randomly. My method is writing down the time of each ‘wiring’, the tool used and their order.
The focus here is laying out good topology.
Tip
Put aside your design, or scan it on the computer and use ACDSEE to open it when you need a reference. We should avoid importing pictures into our software to “describe” a model, unless you have to create a precise technical model — otherwise this approach is of little benefit for getting down the base shape. That said, I imported the pictures into Maya, I found no errors with what I saw. I was then confident to proceed. At the end, you can compare your finished model with the pictures to make sure things match up.
Tip
The way to understand the objects in the form of converting the surface into blocks can be used by the eye to survey the body, whether it meets the standard or not. It is possible for all of us to make a very good model, given the many approaches one can take. The premise, of course, is to have a certain level of understanding in human knowledge. For example: we can imagine the nose as a trapezoid, the cheekbones and jaw can form a trapezoid, the two cheeks as egg-shaped and so on. We should try to summarize these commonalities while we make our model.
Primary points:
(1) Eyes: It is in particular important to point out that the upper eyelids contain the lower eyelids. Many people do not consider such a relationship; as a result, the eyes of the model are lifeless.
(2) Nose: The nose is rotated into, rather than directly into. When making the nose, a lot of people do not pay attention to the nose when in actual fact, there are a lot of structures in the shape of the nose.
(3) Mouth: The relationship between the upper and lower lips is also about containing and being contained. The upper and lower lips rotate when they enter the mouth.
(1) Eyes: It is in particular important to point out that the upper eyelids contain the lower eyelids. Many people do not consider such a relationship; as a result, the eyes of the model are lifeless.
(2) Nose: The nose is rotated into, rather than directly into. When making the nose, a lot of people do not pay attention to the nose when in actual fact, there are a lot of structures in the shape of the nose.
(3) Mouth: The relationship between the upper and lower lips is also about containing and being contained. The upper and lower lips rotate when they enter the mouth.
Adding eyeballs to the eyes; I believe that we all understand why I’ve created the double-eye construction so I’ll skip those details here.
Now we will add eyelashes and the lachrymals gland. We often see CG masters make their characters seem alive. The key is to produce a single model of the lachrymals gland alone, and then adjust tears in the material. If you are not already aware of this tip, I hope that this step will provide you with some insight.
Together with the eyes, eyelashes, the lachrymals, teeth, earrings — observe the results and make the necessary adjustments.
This step is to make the hair. Once I was asked how to produce the hair, I used NURBS, mainly using the two lofted curves of a surface — do not delete history afterwards! This will allow you to amend it just by controlling the curve directly. Whether you want to simulate the effect of wind, or want to control it as a whole, using this method makes it very easy to make changes.
Add the hair and then make the clothes and the fan. We are nearly finished.
Finally, add the lighting. Lighting can be in accordance with our interests, in combination with the use Final Gather (FG) in mental ray in the final render. This is the result from rendering.
Finally, we move to texture map drawing. I have drawn the hair, eyes, the color mapping, bump mapping, high-optical mapping and reflection-mapping. The skin is an SSS skin texture. Many people have talked about the SSS material adjustment method before so I won’t repeat it. Due to limited space, we mostly talked about the model making this time around. In the future, we will have more opportunities to explore materials, lighting and rendering in tandem production.
For the time being, this is where we will end — thanks to everyone for reading!
-Wang Shiyong
Other
AUTODESK:
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/tutorials/tutorial_index/making_of_classical_girl/
3Dtotal:
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/makingof_classical_girl/classical_girl_01.asp
3DM3:
http://www.3dm3.com/forum/articles.php?action=viewarticle&artid=154
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