No More Time :(

As time has run out I have decided to make do with what I have and finish off the face with a nice skin colour which instantly boosted the resembleance. I re-made the lips that I lost somehow between saves and attempted at making some eyes. All in all it looks a lot less like an alien or a character from the 80s film 'Tron'. From the angles shown in the screenshot below I can honestly say that I am please with what I have done and although incomplete and bald, i feel I have learnt a considerable amount during thing six week module.

However, another comparisson can be drawn from a front view, is this what I will look like in 15 years? alarming!

Back Of The Head

Now that the face is nearly completed our interests are turned to the rest of the head. For this we are to use a sphere, shapped using both windows to be a rough aproximation of the head size. The sphere is then turned into editable polygons and the appropriate polys are disgarded. What we are left with is the look of a tire coming out of the forhead and round the back. This saves time and creates a platform from which we can advance into the more comlex areas like the neck and chin.

Nose and Mouth

Intimidation! Is what i felt after watching Erics tutorial on modelling the complex areas of the face, nose, mouth and eventually ears. On attempting to follow his exact movements in creating a nose I discovered that all my previous hard work and meticulous planning for the early spline stage was wasted as what I had created was a wiery mess. Unfortunatly for me the only option was to go back to the drawing board and re-assess the contours and flow of my face. Several hours later I had matched his perfect spline creation and was ready to go about creating more complex anatomy. Call it a learning curve. When the greatly anticipated nostils finally arived on my face I was very pleased with the way it looked an barely had to tweak them at all. Result! The lips i found just as easy to assemble though not appearing in the images below.

Symmetry and Mirrors

Having extruded the splines successfully after sorting out a few minor anomalies I really felt I had achieved something as the face - well, half of it - was starting to take shape!

As for the other half; Erics tutorial covered all the major ways to duplicate an object. The image below is of one such way (Symmetry), though, later in the tutorial Eric explains that this is not the most efficient way of mirroring a face as it can cause ruptions along the seem of the divide. The recomended way to duplicate a face happens to be the 'mirror' tool situated in the modifier menu. The advantage of using this is that it irons over any minor creases that can appear along the seem without any effort from the user, handy.

Extruding Splines

In this tutorial Eric showed us how to connect the whole network of quads together using splines. In the background of the image below you can see the reference plates used to dictate the positions of the splines and how important the 1st stages of the planning are in this case.




When extruding the splines you rely completely on the accuracy of the doctered images as its is near impossible to create the same effect throught judgement no matter what angle looking from. Mike explained to us that we should go about extruding the mesh that we made in a very structured fashion. It is important that a column at a time is extruded as not to confuse things. in the image below you can see my half extruded face.

Reference Plates

After being introduced to the module we were shown the 1st of 16 videos that follow step by step in creating organic structures, in this instance our own faces. I love the idea of having a lecture on video as it saves note taking and I can always refer back to it if I get stuck. It also means I can work independantly outside the tutorials with no trouble and will need minimal supervision.

I Got straight into the module by getting profile photographs taken to be used as a platform to build my 3d face. I imported the profiles into photoshop and lined them up while removing the lense barrel distort as to advoid any difference betwwen the images and reality. Great care was taken in making sure the two photographs lined up perfectly as we were informed of its later importance.

As instructed by Eric Malsowski I set to work drawing construction guide lines across the contours of my face. The more difficult areas of my face were traced with blue and the red pen then followed converting my whole face into a web of quads, strictly quads though, no triangles allowed!



I was then able to use the two images as reference planes in 3Dsmax. I created Two planes in a t-shape and put the two images on them as materials making sure to freeze the planes so they are not able to be accidentally moved. Unfortunatly blogger is not letting me upload the images so you will have to wait till the next blog to see them in action.

YMCA - New Beginnings

Time to start seriously looking at our YMCA module.



I feel that we are off to a good start with a cracking idea. We hypothesised on it a week or so ago but feel that we have refined it enough to bring it out into the light and perhaps others critisism now.

Coming away from the meeting we as a group agreed that the emphasis of our advert needed to be centered around the diversity and wide ranging activities hosted by the YMCA organisation here in Chelmsford. We especially picked up on a few comments made highlighting the fact that the YMCA clubs had the reputaion of being "grebo" centres. In order for YMCA to reach its maximum target audience it needs to be clear that YMCA cater for many types of music and culture with particular emphesis on music. As music is the main division between the different cultures of today we feel as a group that this is what our advert should focus on. If we can get each viewer to relate to at least some aspect of what is on offer at the YMCA then there is a greatly increased chance of there attendance to said events.

With this in mind Music becomes the main driving force of our advert and in the early stages planning takes centre stage. It is important that we put the correct balance of styles and genrés of music on display and do not appear to lean in either direction favouring our own person tastes.
Below is a copy of our current storyboard showing the scenees we wish to create in the next 6 weeeks. There will be fast transitions from busy nightclub like scenes to the more relaxed sessions in which music is tought displaying a generally "chilled" atmosphere. The focus of the advert is to highlight these differences with the quick cuts between crazy and calm. If all goes well this will be a very powerful scene and I look forward to seeing it come to fruition.