Making the Ear

After realising that the ear would be very difficult to make without an actual template of my own ear to work with, I look a picture of my ear and put it onto the template. This made it easier to see where the ear would go my my head and exactly what shape it needed to be.














I drew red lines onto the ear as a template of where the polygons would need to go. This was quite easy as I had done it earlier during the project for my face. After several attempts I managed to get it looking alright to model.





















I drew the lines in 3ds max around where I had drawn them on the template. I made the mistake of trying to draw the lines in perspective mode. This made the vertexes go in all different directions and it wasn't very accurate. I made sure I was in right view and draw over the lines to make squares. I then turned one of the squares into an editable poly and attached the rest of the lines to it. I then welded all the vertexes together. I found this part quite easy and I quite enjoyed doing it.
















I then moved the front view and began making the flat poly into a 3d shape of my ear. This proved a lot harder than it looked because I did not have a template to work with and it would have been quite hard to take a picture of the front view of my ear without making it look distorted. So for this I guessed whilst looking in a mirror at my ear.














I then made the ear into a 3d shape by using the shift key to duplicate edges and polygons. Through out making the ear I had to make sure that it looked alright with turbosmooth on because this is how the final version will look.














The ear was not very important as I knew my hair would be covering it and it wouldn't need to look perfect. However, I was very impressed with how it looked once I had completed the modifying. The picture below shows how the rendered image looks.

Primitive Extension - Making the Head

In order to make the back of the head I needed reference point. From the picture you can tell that I didn't expect that I would need a reference for the back of the head otherwise I would have tied my hair up to make sure I could see the shape.

The lines were pretty easy to draw as there are no complex details on the back of my head. The lines I drew are shown below.














I made sure I missed out my ear as this part needs to be made later and plus I couldn't exactly see my ear. These lines won't be exactly how the polygons will be laid out but it gives me a rough idea of how it can look.





















Firstly I made a sphere to make the basic shape of the head. I found this quite amusing because at this point I looked like something from a futuristic movie. I then deleted some of the polygons from the sphere to make the top and back of my head. The sphere worked perfectly because it enabled me to get the perfect shape of my head.


























I then had to merge the sphere with the head by using the weld tool and also the snap tool to get accuracy. From the chin I began to build the neck. This was a little more difficult because I had to guess where many of the polygons were meant to be placed. The template also came in very useful as I used it as a guideline for creating the rest of the head. Through out making the head I used the shift key many times to make more polygons and I also used the create tool.














I found the back of the head very easy to make as it is a very simple shape and does not have any detailed featured. The turbosmooth tool also came in very useful as it allowed me to gain a smooth head. The rendered image below shows how my model looks so far.

Creating and Modifying my Nose and Lips

I began the nose thinking that it would be quite a difficult task considering the complexities of my nose and the shape of it. However, it was easier than I thought. I spent a lot of time rearranging the vertexes to make sure that curves were in all the right places.

I located the nostrils and had to add a few polygons to make sure that it looked like the right shape but when I highlighted the nostrils I simply extruded them into there the nasal area would normally be. This process was very easy to do and I was also very surprised at how easy it was to make the exact shape of my nose. I thought I would have had to take ages re-shaping the nose to make it perfect.














The lips took a little longer to make because of their shape. It was extremely easy because I knew exactly how I would go about making them and I was familiar with the shape. Each lip took a very long time because there was many polygons that needed to be added and modified onto the face. I made the top lip first by selecting the edges around the top of the empty part of the lip and I held down shift as I dragged it outwards. This created the first line of polygons and I carried on creating them with the first line. The bottom lip was created in the same way and joined to the top lip. I made sure there was a tiny gap between the lips because they are not welded in real life.














After creating these detailed featured I could really see the effect of the turbosmooth and how it was benefiting the model. The first picture below shows the model without turbosmooth and the second image shows the same model with turbosmooth.












I rendered the image to see how to model would look with its detailed features. I am very impressed with it at this stage as it is starting to look a little bit like me.

Symmetry

The symmetry was very easy to do because I had done this so many times before. I selected symmetry on the modifier panel and aligned the other side of the face. I made sure the 'weld seam' was selected so that I would not have any problems with the model later.














One problem that occurred when doing this was that the symmetry created a line down the middle of the face and almost made my face look like the middle of the face came to a point. This is shown in the picture below. This problem was easily fixed by making sure the vertexes in the middle of the face didn't come to a point and instead had a straight edge to them. I applied the modifier 'turbosmooth' which allowed me to see a smoother affect on the model. I set the turbosmooth iteration to 1 which is the lowest setting and making the the face is not too smooth so that the details of the face can't be seen.
















The picture below shows the rendered image of the front of my face with the symmetry. At this point I am very impressed with what 3Ds Max has allowed me to create. From a few quick steps I was able to make a replica of my face. At this point I do not think that the face looks very much like the shape of my face because my cheeks are much larger than this and the face shape could do with some tweaking.

Shaping my Face

Because of the simplicity of making turning the lines into an editable poly I wondered if the process of making the 3D shape of the face would be as easy. I was very wrong as I had to do it all by hand which was very difficult to do as the side of my face does not have many distinct reference points and my cheeks have a specific shape to them. I had to use the right view and move each vertex individually out to line up with my picture template.

I began by doing the forehead and worked my way down the face. The middle of the face was very easy to do as I could see the guideline in the background of my own picture and the middle of my face has very distinct shape. The further towards the cheek I got, the harder it was to line up the vertexes with my face shape.














This took me a long while as I wanted to make sure it looked as much like my face as possible. During the process I rendered the image to see what the first couple of lines of the forehead looked like. The rendered picture is shown below.

















Another extremely hard part of the shaping was the eye. This was very difficult because I could not see all of the eye and had to make rough guesses most of the time.














Eventually I got a rough shape and stuck with it as I knew I would be able to change it later and focus more on details after I got the rough whole head. The picture below shows the final rendered image.

Creating an Editable Poly

Once I had all the lines drawn out in front of the template I had to convert them into a shape that I could manipulate to make into a 3D shape. I did this very easily by converting one of the closed set of lines into an editable poly. This was fairly easy to do but at this point I was wondering if I had done it correctly because I did not think all the lines would attach to each other correctly. I found out that this could simply be done by using the attack tool to make sure all the lines I drew were connected.

I then noticed that there were several holes in the flat 'mask' where edges hadnt joint properly. This was easily fixed by selecting all the edges and using the weld tool.














I did not think this part of the project would be this easy as I thought I would have to go through each square individually and make sure each separate square was converted into an editable poly and joint to the rest fo the squares. I enjoyed drawing them but I was certain I would not enjoy a tedious job like that so I was very glad this was not the case. I was very impressed with how it looked so far. Seeing how easy it was to get the 3D model this far made me more motivated to carry on with the rest of the task. The image below shows how a rendered version looked at this point.

Building a 3D Reference Plate

Once I had the planes in place to as a template, I could start making the actual squares on the mask. I did this by using the line tool to create squares. I also used the snap tool to make sure that the squares appeared as accurate as possible. I found this part very simple and enjoyable. It was quite relaxing because it was very easy. A few times I forgot where I was up to and thought I might have missed out a few squares but it looked alright in the end. The picture below shows how it looked in 3Ds Max after I created all the squares.














I wondered what it would look like to render at this point to see if the lines would appear in the render. They did not come out, instead this is what it looked like after rendering.