Introduction -
After seen a lot of nice girl renders on Internet, I decide to make a Chinese style girl. In the period of making this girl, I found that the most important thing to a character is the facial expression and posture, when considering the facial expression, I paid most attention on her eyes and mouth, coz these two areas are the key to the facial expression.
I believe there are lots of friends like me who’s learn by his/her self and not have an art background, if we want to make a veracious character model, I think the most important thing is not only to read the books about 3d skills ,but also to learn “anatomy of human” and books about art theory, it’s really helpful ! because when you read those books, you’ll understand the human structure, when u know what it should be looked like, you’ll of course know how to make the model.
Ok, I think I’ve saying too much ,lol, now I’m gonna share with you my workflow and some experience.
Concept and References - Before the modeling process , we need a concept, so I set her background as: living in the period of the Republic of China in Chinese Mainland, Born in a middle class family, about 15 years old. After conception work, I start to search references of dress on Internet.
Modeling -
CLOTH: I made the base mesh in 3ds max and unwrapped it’s UV, export it into ZBrush for sculpting, after sculpting, import it into 3ds max for render.
HEAD: I use box modeling method to create the head.
It is said that : “all roads lead to Rome”. There are so many ways to modeling human head ,every artist has his/her own way to make a head or anything else, but the most important thing is to understand the structure of things u want to make, u could understand it like this: if u don’t know what the Rome looks like or where Rome is, how could u get there? Even there are millions of ways ,u still can’t get there ,right? So, here I’d l like to point out some important features on a head more than how to make the model.
Beside the The rule of thirds and The rule of five eyes,There’re still some key points that we should pay attention to (above Fig) :
1: Upper eyelid, when lit from above ,it’ll cast a shadow on the eyeball ,so ,when we are modeling, should make sure the lid have enough thickness ,or it’ll not cast shadow; And the upper lid is more arched than the lower lid.
2: The upper lip starts halfway between the nose tip and back of nose wing.
3: The upper mouth lip has a “M” shape, there’s a raised structure on the middle of the lip. The whole upper lip looks like an open book with two wings.
4: The lower lip is an extension of a shelf that come out from the Chin ,the shelf is hollowed out in the middle and rounded at the ends. ON where the red point 4 sits, the change is only a color difference , not a plane change! when we modeling that part ,do not make a hard edge near the corners of the lower lip, just make it smooth.
5: The lower eyelid located always on or near the midline of the head.
(I learn all these things from a book called “The Artist’s Complete Guide To Facial Expression”, written by Gary Faigin)
|
|
|
