3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures

3D TUTORIALS

MODELING A FACE by Yaron Gur

Introduction

There are several ways in which you can create a humanoid face, the best is probably a method called Nurbs. However, at the time of this writting, a nurbs plug-in has yet to be released for 3D Studio Max, and im sure that not everyone that owns Max would want to purchase this plug-in when/if it comes out.

The second best method (in my opinion) is the create the face mesh using patches. This method will probably result in lower quality results at quite an effort compared to nurbs, but it is something you can do right now at no extra cost.

This tutorial was designed in a way that a minimal of 3D knowledge and conecpts are required to create your project. I will try to explain basic concept, and will show a step by step how i created my little monster's face.

Lets begin.

Concept...Vertex

Vertex is a point that exists in a 3D space, it has no width, height or depth.

Concept...Spline

Spline is a curved line that passes through several vertex dots in a 3D space.

Creating the face structure using splines

To begin the creation of the face, we will first need to create the underlaying structure.

We will do this using splines.

To create the most accurate face, you will need to have two scanned/drawn pictures of the face you are about to model. A picture to show the face's front, and a second picture that shows the face from the side. This is the optimal case.

However... this is not a must. You can make due with one picture, or even no picture at all.

In this tutorial, i will create a fictional face using no pictures at all. The resulting face will not come out realisticly amazing, but will look rather nice.

If you do have the pictures, make sure that they depict the face from both angles at the SAME SIZE, otherwise they are useless. If they are not exactly the same size, use some other software to scale them so they will fit each other.

To display a background image you must first select it in the pull down menu "Views/Background image...". Select your picture, then by right clicking the name of a viewport, select "Show Background".

To my knowledge, you can't display more than one background bitmap at a time, but i may be wrong.

Our first step in creating the face structure will be to create a single vertical line. We will do this by pressing the "Create" button, then press the "Shapes" button. And finally the "Line" button.

Once selecting line, the line button will remain pressed and turn green. You will now create the vertical line by first selecting the FRONT view (by pressing on the FRONT caption but only if it wasn't already selected as the active view).

You are now ready to create your first line. Just move your mouse to aprox. the top center of the FRONT view, and click the left mouse button. Move the mouse down in an EXACT vertical line and press the left mouse button again to make a line. To finish the line press the RIGHT mouse button. The ending result should look like this:

What we now have is a LINE, what we need to make it is a SPLINE. To do this press the "Modify" button, then the "Edit Spline" button. And there you have it, the first spline.

You will notice that your spline is made of a line passing through 2 vertex dots. What we want to do is add more dots to the line so we can bend it.

You will notice that there is a yellow PRESSED button on the right. This tells max on what part of the spline we are working on. We will ALWAYS work only on the Vertex part of the spline.

Now, to refine the spline (add dots), we will select the "Refine" button. If you don't see it, scroll down. If you pressed it correctly, it will turn GREEN.

Now press the left mouse button on the line several times to add more dots to the line. Your line should now look something like this:

Ok, we now have a refined line. During the shaping of the line we will need to add more even more dots for greater control of the line's curve. Add more dots as you see fit.

Now, every dot has 4 different ways of controlling the line that passes through it, these ways are:

Smooth, Max will try to auto-create a curve according to the position of the dot.
Corner, No curve is used.
Bezier, One sided curve is used (We use that for most dots).
Bezier Corner, This gives control on both sides, use when needed.

I suggest making all dots "Bezier", and when needed using "Bezier Corner".
To change a dot's function, right click the dot, and select your preffered control type.

You will notice that when a dot becomes of a "Bezier" or "Bezier Corner" type two small green squares will appear, by moving these you control the curve of the line.

What we do next is make the main profile (How the face should look from the side), We do this in the left view. The most important thing to remember is, that we are only changing the spline in the left view, it should still remain a non-curved vertical spline in the front view.

As you ajust your spline to fit a face-like profile, you might notice that those extra dots you added earlier are simply not enough, that will surely happen, just press on the refine button, and add more dots to the spline.

The end profile should look something like this:

Now, this is a harder thing to do, in the FRONT view, you are now going to move the dots to the left, make sure you lock the X move axis, so that you don't move it by mistake.

Now carefully drag the back part of the head dots to the left. It should now outline half of the face (again, we're only modeling half a face, not a full face, that comes later on). You may need to adjust the curves of the dots to make it look smoother.

Another thing you might notice, is that the face looks wierd, it might need more dots, or the height that looks in the LEFT view are don't look well in the front view, adjust them carefully (Better safe than sorry, save your work after each success, and under different names, in case you want to redo a certain stage). You may also need to convert some of the "Bezier" into "Bezier corner" for greater control (I made the top and bottom dots as bezier corners). And remember, think of the end object as a MASK, not as a full head (When ajusting the left view).

After a lot of fixing up in the front/left view with check-ups in perspective to see it looks like an outline of a face, it should look something like this:

Now that you have a general outline of half a face, you need to create a new spline, in the exact same way, for in-face features (it's good to have a picture of a human face around, even if creating some monster... to get the view of general human features, and you can always come up to the guy you've got the picture from, show him a monster you did, and say "You were my inspiration")

Ok, here are several pics in sequence i done to map out the human face:

A few notes about the above pictures. As you may notice i changed some of the splines to fit the newer splines better. The entire spline process is just an underlaying structure, it is done so you would have a visual refrence when applying the patches NOT to actually model the face.

Concept...Patch

There are two types of patches, tri and quad.
The difference is that quad is built of squares and has 4 dots to control the shape of the patch, while tri is built of triangles and has 3 dots to control the shape of the patch. Personally, i use quad patches about 80-90% of the time.

Patches in concept are several splines connected to each other that have a mesh of lines running between the splines.
All the control dots in a patch are either Coplaner (Bezier) or Corner (Bezier Corner).
You may change the type of a dot as in a spline by right clicking the dot and selecting the type wanted.

Building the face mesh using patches

The first thing we'll do is create a quad patch. We do this by pressing the "Create" button, the "Geometry" button, pulling down the list and selecting "Patch Grids" and finally pressing the "Quad Patch" button. The button should remain pressed and turn green.

Now go to the FRONT view, and create the patch by dragging the left mouse button from top left to bottom right.

You will now see a boxed grid. This is our patch.

Next press the "Modify" button, and select "Edit Patch". After pressing it, your scene should appear something like this:

To increase the detail of the patch (increase the mesh grid), press on the sub-object button, and adjust the Steps value. It is also good to remove the "Lattice" check. It will not be useful for our work, and it may actually make the object visibility worse.

What we do next is fit the patch into the spline structure. And once again... Remember, the spline structure is for general refrence. If need be ignore parts of it, but try to keep to the general outline.

Ajust the dots so that the patch will fit both the front and side views.
The resulting mesh patch should appear something like this:

Once again some of the dots may need to be changed to the corner type for greater control.

What we do next is EXTEND the patch, we do this by selecting the pull-down list to the right of the sub-object button, then selecting "Edge".

After adding the new patch, your scene should look something like this:

Now you will have to ajust the two new dots to their correct positions. You will also notice that two dots on your previous patch now have more green boxes to control the new patch.

Remember to move back to the Vertex editing mode by selecting Vertex from the pull-down list.

After ajusting the new patch into place, it should look like this:

You will notice that the first patch also moved somewhat... use the perspective view with smooth shading for a preview of how the mesh looks. Adjust when needed.

Now select the next edge and add another patch, something like this:

And once again, adjust it to fit the general spline structure, like so:

Oops, you notice that we now have two dots at a place we need one... What we need to do is make these two dots into one dot, or in another words, Weld those vertex.

What we do is arrange the patch as close as it should look like, then we select both dots by left dragging the mouse over both of them (and only them, make sure only the two dots you want to weld are selected). Once selected press the "Weld" button, and there you go (If this didn't work, the dots are probably not close enough, either move them closer, or increase the "Weld Threshold" value, but not too high so it won't find other dots by mistake).

Now you have one dot, and the line is connected like so:

What we do next is continue to map the entire face, this is a LONG and PAINFULL process that usually takes quite a bit of time, for a professional job it will probably take you days. My rendition took several hours.

And remember, the more patches, the more accuratly placed, the best the face will look. It's all up to you.

Following are several pictures showing my progress through the patching:

And here is the final result:

After finishing the modeling, you need to duplicate the other side of the face. You do this by pulling down the "Edit" menu and selecting "Mirror". Make sure you select one of the clone features of the mirror, then move the mirror to it's correct position.

Hint: Make sure you are in the FRONT view when mirroring, it will be simpler.

You may also want to actually connect the middle dots in the mesh for a smoother connection, just weld them...

Click here to view rendering