Nurbs Tutorial by Travis Stringer
Before you try to make a head with nurbs it
is important to know a few things. First off, expect to spend days
working on it. It will take a while so don't expect to do it in a
few hours. Second, Nurbs editing can get real slow. Especially if
you are editing a full head. The more points you have the slower it
gets. So add rows and columns of points sparingly. Also max nurbs is
not fully developed. So you may experience some annoying problems.
Although nothing that a little time can't fix, it is still something
you should be aware of.
Nurbs has a few advantages over polygons. One of them (the most
obvious) is that you will be working with curves. Everytime you edit
a point the surface will react in a curved nature (unlike polygons).
Another advantage is that once you have a nurbs head it is easy to
make another head from that one. Simply by editing a female nurbs
head you can create a male head, old man head, child head ect. I
suppose you can do this with surface tools as well but nurbs is
easier and faster to edit. You can see your character in real-time
unlike surface tools. |
Front and back
spline |
The method I used is one I learned from Jeremy Birn
(www.3drender.com) and involves starting with a profile spline. I
begin by creating a point spline. Cv splines are awkward to use and
you can always convert a point spline later. You set the axis of the
spline at the top of the head. Then you clone the profile spline and
rotate it. With the new spline rotated about 5 degrees you have to
edit it. Bring the points in around the eyes and make the lips
smaller. This is hard and takes some time. Then clone the spline
rotate it and edit it again. You continue to do this until you get
to the ear. Then you start with the back spline and do the same
thing until you get to the ear. One thing to note is that all the
splines DON'T have to have the same number of points. Around the
cheaks I erased alot of points because it didn't need alot of
detail. This process is VERY important so take your time. The more
work you do here the more time it will save you later. |
 by Platinum Pictures 3_ficheiros/fdspln.jpg) |
After the splines are created, attach them all. Then collapse
them to a point surface. It is imortant to collapse to a point
surface because right now we don't want to deal with a bunch of cv
points. Now click on ULOFT in the surface creation panel. Starting
with the profile spline create a u-loft surface between the splines.
You will end up with a very ugly looking head. Start by editing and
erasing points you don't need. Make the surface as smooth and good
as you can. You will not be able to really start editing until we
make it into a cv surface. But again editing now will save time
later.
Now for the real editing. Under sub-object/surface, click on MAKE
INDEPENT. It will convert your head to a cv-surface. Now go under
sub-object/cv surface and you will see all the cv points. You will
need to edit these points to finish the head. Before you get
overwhelmed there are a few tools that help you out. One is Affect
Region. Affect region allows you to move a region of points by just
moving a single point(I use this alot). You will need to edit the
affect region curve. Another one is weight. By increasing a points
weight you can give a model more detail and a sharper look (corners
of the mouth). Where you have a bunch of points that all come
together you can use FUSE. Fuse will make them all come to a single
point. |
The highlighted point is a point I deleted to get rid of the
that wrinkle. |
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After half of the head is done don't get too excited. I thought
that it would be a simple process of just cloning the head,
mirroring it, and then joining it to the other side. It seemed that
no matter what I did the head always got a little tweaked after I
joined the 2 halves. It was not to easy joining the halves so here
are a few things that you might want to try. First attach the 2
halves (sometimes it flips the normals of one side when you do
this). Then click on sub-object /surface/join and join the 2
surfaces. Depending on your settings and how far apart the halves
were, the head will get tweaked differently. After they are joined
select the whole center row of points it added and delete it.
If this did not work you may want to first create a blend between
the 2 halves. Then make the blend independent. Then join all 3
surfaces together. The bad thing about this is that you cannot erase
the center column of points.
No matter which method I tried the head always got a little
tweaked. So you are going to have to go back and reedit. This is a
real pain because now editing will be extremely slow. Since now the
head has twice as much points. So go back to the joining part and do
the best you can there. Then edit. |
 by Platinum Pictures 3_ficheiros/FheadHd.jpg) |
Once you have edited most of the head I go to the top of the
head and fuse the points. Fusing the points will make all the points
one single point and smooth out the whole top of the head and
forehead. To fuse points you select click fuse, then select a far
point and bring it to a center point. Make sure that you bring all
the points to the center point and not vice-versa. |
 by Platinum Pictures 3_ficheiros/BAfter.jpg) |
The great thing about nurbs is that once you have a head you can
easily make another. The wizard was made from the female head in
about 2 hours. Most of that was waiting for the computer (PII 300).
If you have a dual 300 it should speed things up. I created the
wizard head by pulling cv points. Creating bags under the eyes and
looser skin around the cheaks. Also making the lips thinner , head
and jaw longer and stronger. I made the eyes thinner and made one
wider and bigger (magic eye). Most of the detail was created using
bump maps. The textures were from a old man picture.
Since max nurbs is new and there is very little info on them,
there may be easier steps that I may have missed. If you have any
tips or something to add please email me at Travis@Dreamsoft.com and I
will post it on my site.
Travis Stringer
www.dreamsoft.com/travis
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 by Platinum Pictures 3_ficheiros/FhFull2.jpg) |
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