19. A Great Head Tutorial

Hi all, I know its been some time since my last post but due to some personal stuff, I have had no chance to focus. In fact I am still not quite ready to move on with the character head but I thought I should post something to get you started. I found these excellent tutorials by Ben Morgan. You really should go through his 8 part video series. His explanation is very on the ball and the pace he works at is not too daunting. I will get back to my head tutorial soon enough but for now please be sure to view Ben's great work .

18: Study The Head

Ok, so I am a little obsessed with figuring things out. But if I am going to try to make Blender 3D my main tool for modeling and animating I may as well do it right. I wanted to see my model in 3d before I built it and try to figure out how the edge loops are going to be laid out. This is not a bad exercise as you really do get a good feel for the way bits will likely join to other bits. This is not the final but is surely a good guide. Some studios actually draw lines on the faces of actors in order to see how the edge loops should work, this is no different. I have built a marquette and roughed out where the edge loops should go. The method is a little rough but hey it works. I am not insisting you do this with all your designs but give it a whirl as an exercise in understanding edge loops.

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17: Re Capitating

I have been looking forward to this. I soon will be able to put the head onto my character ready to add shape keys and controls I will be animating him soon enough. For now I have been designing what I think will be a good topology for the head. But to be on the safe side I will be building a maquette in plasticine that allows me to better visualize the mesh.

16: Head Topology Why Worry

If anything can separate a good model for animation from a stinky one, its topology. I remember a job I was involved with for the Sydney Olympics, remember "the best games ever". The company I was working for was asked to take a set of mascots that had been turned into clay marquets by Jozef Szekeres and animate a 3d version of these. Jozef's models where sent to Europe to be 3D scanned and at great expense. In those days 3D scanning was very new and very costly there was only a handful of companies doing it. So the price was in the tens of thousands. On the way to the scanning company one of the marquets had an accident and was unusable. A little known fact is that there were 4 mascots for these games. They were originally, Milly, Syd, Olly and Liz. Liz is the one that didn't make it and we were all very disappointed. We hoped all the others made it as 3D scans without further issue. But when the digital versions were sent to us to animate we were doubly disappointed. The meshes were totally unusable. Not only was the mesh for each marquet really hi res', but the topology was straight across and up and down. Nobody had realized that the scanners would not take into consideration the final models needed to be animated. It was a lesson that changed the way we communicated with scanning companies in the future. The issue was, the mesh may have been very high resolution but the topology for animating didn't exist at all.

Remember topology is key when it comes to animating, especially for faces. You can have a very low resolution mesh give excellent results if the topology is organized perfectly. I found a great tutorial that explains this better on YouTube. It is for Maya but it gives a very in depth explanation and Its still relevant for Blender 3D artists.

15: The Simple Body From a Box

In this tutorial you will learn how to use Blender and background images to create the character I have designed. The body is only simple but it will give some insight to how complex models are made. As this has been a learning process for me too. The tutorial may be a little stiff and may leave vital information out. Please leave a comment here about any improvements. I will change the tutorial in the future. But as I have received a few emails begging me to put something up. I thought I should do something ASAP.

Open publication - Free publishing - More 3d

On the same note as the last post.

There are many good books you can buy on animation but very few free books.
Preston Blair had a site some time back and you were able to access most of his first book but its only available now via the wayback machine . These days its getting harder to find good educational books on the web. I will endeavor to find all manner of good tutorials and articles to help bring out the animator in you. While surfing around I have found the book below. I suggest you download it for your personal library as it will undoubtedly be a great touchstone in future years.

Open publication - Free publishing

Something To Read While You Wait

I am currently working really hard as I am now back at work. I have practiced building the character and I am getting close to posting a tutorial in the magazine format you see below.

While you wait you should check out some of these magazines and get inspired.

Open publication - Free publishing - More zbrush