Business Card Designs

I have decided to base my business card design on a black and white photo I have taken. It is a Fiat 500 in Amsterdam. This will show people my interest in photography and show the style of photographs I can take. I have used a stencil font that I inverted to get the letters black and a clear border and also added a paint swirl over  the text to highlight it more.

The back of the business is kept clear and simple with just the stencil font of my name and the other relevant information underneath.

Final render of head

Here is a render of the final head.

I think the eyebrows are the feature which came out best and wouldn't need any adjustments. The ears are probably the feature which need more attention. But as a whole I think there is a vague resemblance.

Adding Hair

Then next part of creating the head was adding the hair, this was done by adding the 'hair and fur' modifier, initially it spiked hair out from all directions, with use of the tools I could cut it and brush it to the correct length and style.

Here is the hair un-rendered.

This shows the hair in it's editable form where you can brush and cut it. As the default was light wispy blonde hair I had to change some material parameters to get the right thickness and density.

Here is a final render copy of the head with the hair on.

UVW Mapping Continued

Having taken the map into Photoshop it was a matter of adding the skin onto the UVW map making sure the texture is position correctly. Using various Photoshop techniques I could add the different texture of my head and apply them to the correct parts of the head. Here is the UVW map I created.

Here is the UVW Map applied to the head.

As you can see it works quite well but still needs the Bump map and the specular map. Here is the head with both maps added as well as the eyes which I am yet to talk about.

It gives the face a more realistic skin material.

To create the eye I made a sphere, I then highlighted the end polygons of the sphere to make the outline for the iris, I made it slightly flatter. Then I made a clone of the area which would later be used as a transparent lens over the pupil and iris. I made another sphere and fitted it in place and made it black. I then applied the iris material to the eye and made the cornea white. Here is a close up of the eye.

UVW Mapping

The head shape is now complete which means I can begin adding the texture, this will be done by UVW mapping. First of all I applied an Unwrap UVW modifier which flattens the image allowing for easy editing in Photoshop. With the head unwrapped I opened the edit window which shows me the guide and I can begin adjusting it making sure there are no overlaps or inverted selection.

With all the inverted points sorted I could begin moving around the quads to give even coverage spreading out the surface giving the texture an even coverage. This screenshot shows both the head and the UVW map which helped me when sorting out the spacing.

This image shows the finished spacing of the UVW map.

This shows the spacing of the material on the head.

The checker pattern is quite evenly spaced which means when the material is applied it will be evenly spread.

Knowing that the mapping will be correct I could go ahead and save the UVW map to edit in Photoshop.

Addition of ears

With the head really coming together it is time to add the ears, this meant doing the topology process again. This one was quite difficult as the ear is a small area. With the new topology the reference plane was updated ready for modelling. Here shows the updated reference plane as well as better alignment of the neck and head.

Using the topology and the same technique as the face I created the ear. This was more complicated and was difficult getting the right shape.

With the ear attached to the head it is looking good. This screen shot shows the head with 'turbosmooth' enabled.

The alignment looks a lot better and looks to fit well with the references.

Here is another screenshot showing the alignment from a different angle.

Creating the rest of the head

I have now got the face sorted it is time to get the rest of the head modelled, this is done by creating a sphere in scale to the reference planes. By cutting away the sides  the edges of the sphere will line up with the edge of the face.

This image shows this stage of the head.

With the shape of the head right I could create the rest of the shoulders by creating extra quads and connecting them up.

So with the neck and shoulders created it was a matter of welding the vertex's to the face and making sure it was all lined up correctly with the reference planes.

Here is the head so far, this shows it with a 'turbosmooth' modifier added to it.

Giving depth to face

With the flat shape of the face outlined it was a case of adding depth to define facial features, to do this I had to convert the object to an 'editable poly' allowing me to see the vertex's. I had to go through and pull out the individual vertex's until the aligned with the side reference plane. With the outline of basic topology on the side of the face it was easier to line up the points correctly.

Having added the correct detail a symmetry modifier was added to mirror the other side of the head, this meant that changes made to one side would be reflected on the other. Here is what the head looks like to this point.

As you can see I have made a mistake in my topology causing there to be a pinch on my cheeks, this was a major problem but I managed to fix the problem using the options in the editable poly tool bar.

Here is the corrected face.

As you can see the dimples have gone by adding in another polygon connecting up the broken line. Also the face isn't wide enough at the moment but with some slight alignment it has been corrected which will be seen in other screenshots.

Finished Lines and conversion of lines

The next step was making the reference planes to work from, these will be seen throughout the blog in various posts. They were straight forward to make and aligned nicely once they were flipped.

Using the reference planes I could begin using the line tool to draw out the topology, this was done using the snap toggle so all the corners of the quadrilaterals were connected. This image shows the process

With this drawn out I could attach the lines together and make it an editable object.

When I converted the lines into an object I had realised detail was missing as well as the nose polygons from the face, this is why I have redone the lines again.

Happy with the lines I could continue modelling my head.

Alignment and Topology

With the images aligned it was time to start the topology process, as I found out this was time consuming but a vital part of the modelling process. It was important that all parts of the topology were square to ensure that there was no pinching later on. Here is what the topology looks like

Once I got into 3DS max I flipped the images on the reference planes so they corresponded with the video tutorial. This topology matches the important muscle lines but may lack some definition in the nose.