Porcelain Production Journal: Modeling Anna

With Anna’s design finalized, it was time to start modeling.

Again feeling a bit nervous as this is the most important model of my film and I will be working with it for the next year and a half. I definitely wanted to do a good job.

The modeling process was far less linear then the design phase. I kept thinking I was finished a section then coming back to that part several weeks later to tweak it or even rebuild.

I started modeling Anna’s head first, paying close attention to the edge flow. When making a character in digital animation each step relies on the one before it and greatly affects the one after. Having good edge flow or topology in a model is essential for the rigging and eventual animation stages of bringing a character to life. In order to animate, you’re the model has to deform properly to allow for movement not unlike how our skin and muscles stretch and move allowing us mobility.

Not surprisingly the edge flow of a character and the muscles groups are very similar.

Check out the similarities between an early version of Anna’s head and this facial muscle chart.

This head model definitely has some issues.

To start modeling the head I imported a profile and front image of Anna’s head.

Then I started forming polys (the shapes that make up the mesh) to match the two images. Unfortunately, trying to create a 3D object based on 2D images caused the head to be box like. The front of the face was far too flat when it needed to be much more angled.

Craig, one of my instructors at Capilano, put it this way, “Put your hands on your face. Now look at how your hands come together, in a point, not flat.”

So that needed to be fixed. But the big problem was that the silhouettes of both the front and the profile of my model were working and I needed to somehow change the whole angle of the face without changing the silhouettes.

I wish I could say that there was some magical fix to this but there wasn’t. It took many a try to get it right. Often I would spend several hours on a mesh only to have mucked it up beyond repair. Thank goodness for backing up work.

Another issue that plagued the face mesh was the mouth corners. Seems like a small detail but it’s pretty important to get right.

Here’s one of many picture I took of my mouth for reference. I like this one because it shows a bunch of facial hair I never knew I had.

So that was the face.

It was difficult. But it ain’t got nothing on the hair.

The hair…

Where to even start?

How about that I didn’t know how to start.

It’s one thing to draw something, it’s quite another to recreate it in a three dimensional space.

Craig on the topic of recreating a 2D image into a 3D model : “In drawings you create symbols, like a squiggly line could represent a nose. When modeling you can no longer rely on symbols, you have to create form.”

In retrospect, I think the hair was so difficult to start because of two major problems:

-I really had no idea how hair functions in a three dimensional space

-Even if I did understand hair, what method would I use to recreate it in a 3D program?

Again I wish I could say that there was some easy way of dealing with these problems, but the truth of the matter is that I stumbled my way through it, messing up and starting again several times before finally getting somewhere.

How hair falls …

To find out how hair works, I once again set out to find references.

And the internet failed!

When searching for pictures of hair, there are a lot of front and three-quarter views of people and their hair, very few profile pictures, and zero back of the head.

So I left the computer (gasp) and looked for references in real life. (It’s getting a bit disconcerting how often in conversation I have to clarify if talking about the real world or a virtual one.” You mean in real life?”)

I spent several of my commutes to and from school trailing a head of hair that I wished to emulate.

So many times I sat there, studying the back of somebody’s head, trying to sneak a picture without being too creepy.

Speaking of creepy, on one of these commutes a bunch of children about Anna’s age got on my bus. It was a reference jackpot! (In case you didn’t know this, a child’s face and hair is different than adults. It’s all very well to try and use your grown up features when modeling a child but sooner or later you’re going to paint yourself in a corner and have to find reference closer in age) I was so tempted to grab my camera! But alas, I knew that random strangers snapping pictures of little children would definitely not go over well. So I just sat there trying to memorize the curve of their cheeks and the fall of their hair without looking like I was stalking.

Yep, this project has turned me into a creeper.

So something not on the creepy side:

Making Hair in 3D

Several ways to do it.

-“Helmet Hair”. The most straight forward way of modeling hair, simply sculpt a mess into the preferred hairdo. The drawbacks are that this type of hair tends to look stiff and plastic like.

-You can also make hair by shaping planes (2d geo) to the head and projecting the hair texture on to it. This method ends up looking a lot more like real hair. However, bald spots and odd silhouettes are common issues with this method.

-Hair systems. I don’t know much about it to be honest. I have too many time restraints on this project to learn the complexities of how it works. What I do know is it can look really bad if done by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing (that would be me) but looks fantastic if done right.

I decided to go with a combination of the first two options.

Here is the evolution of Anna’s hair.

At this stage Craig said her hair looked like an octopus so I drew this picture. (I also cried a little inside.)

In case you are wondering how I ended up with her hair looking like this,

I’ll break it down.

(Sorry non 3D people, I’m going to start dropping some lingo here.)

1. Duplicate the head mesh and delete geo until you’ve got something like a swimming cap.

2. Make the swimming cap mesh a bit bigger than the head.

3. Divide swimming cap mesh into several different sections. I highly recommend looking at hair references for this part as this is where you design how the hair grows out of the head.

4. .Use the CV curve tool to create a path for the curl of a section.

5. Bring the curve to the edge of the swim cap section and extrude along it.

6. Once you have several sections curled, the lattice tool is going to be your best friend, use it to shape sections together.

7.Finish with a bit of hair spray and you’re done!

It’s a bit depressing spending so much time moulding and tweaking your character’s hair that you have no time to style your own tresses.

Modeling the rest of the body took a lot less tweaking than the hair and the face. Most of my time was spent problem solving the best ways to model the different parts of the dress. The bottom of the dress, for anyone who’s interested, has seven different layers to it.

For anybody out there working on any kind of project, here’s a bit of advice:

SHOW YOUR WORK!

And

DO NOT BE PRECIOUS WITH YOUR WORK!

FEEDBACK IS THE ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT COMPONENTS TO SUCCESSFUL FILM MAKING

Beginner film makers (I am not exempt from this observation) have a tendency to be secretive with their work and not want feedback. If they get feedback they will often ignore the criticism or explain their way out of it because they have become too attached to that idea.

Beware! Your story is obviously going to work in your head because you know everything there is to know about it BUT there is a big difference between what’s in your head and what is on the screen. The audience only knows what’s on the screen. Listen to feedback; it’s the closest thing you’re going to get to being an audience member at your own film.

Another reason feedback is great is because other people are better at things then you are. Find them and listen to them! Craig’s feedback, for example, was invaluable. He was able to make Anna’s design better even when I thought I was finished.