TUTORIALS | Facial modelling

Perfect faces
Uncover the techniques used to create our cover image with these expert tips on facial modelling BY OLIVIER PONSONNET

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Always use reference les such as photos in your background viewport. Even youre not actually modelling the same face as shown in the photograph, it will help you achieve the correct proportions. Dont use photos taken with a short focal length (wide angle lens), or close to the subject. The reference photos must also have a perspective close to an orthographic view.

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ne of the most fascinating things about 3D is that you can bring life to your creations without having divine powers. Obviously, in producing a credible, realistic character, the most difcult task

is creating the face, and the reason for this is simple: its the part of the body that allows us to communicate. We can sense one anothers feelings at a glance. So any slight error on the part of the artist will instantly be picked up by the audience. This sounds obvious when talking about photorealistic digital humans, but its also useful when you want to create cartoons or caricatures. The fact that your character has a realistic mouth or eyes will help your audience believe in it. In this article, Ill be exploring some of the techniques used to create these kind of ne details in the image on the right, and explaining how to resolve tricky problem areas of the face The image took about a month to produce with 3ds Max, from Max the rst vertex to the nal rendering. The rendering is almost pure, with only an additional slight colour correction lter no details were added in postproduction. The mesh is built with polygons, including eyelashes and hair, beginning with a single polygon and then only extruding and cutting edges. Tools are not so important during the modelling phase, but your mesh topology is. Topology is the way your polygons are arranged, and vital for the two most expressive areas: the mouth and eyes. You have to build your mesh topology around these two parts, because these are the most likely to be animated. If you dont have correct topology in these areas, your model will not deform properly. The nal aspect of a convincing digital character is the skin. While I dont have space to cover the process of setting up materials and textures for realistic skin here, you can nd an article on the subject in issue 65 of 3D World, or download it from the website. World Olivier Ponsonnet is a full-time student and part-time digital artist. He spends most of his time creating digital beauties and little scared or scary children http://re1v.free.fr
The model was created from a quad from which I then extruded and cut edges. A technique for getting good topology is to create the mouth rst, then the eyes, and nally connect the two. Your polygons must form concentric rings around the open areas. Try to use four-sided polygons to avoid odd mesh smoothing results. Eyes can be modelled in two parts: the ocular globe, and a second form with the shape of the central part (iris and pupil) modelled as a cavity. You can apply subsurface scattering to this part, because its translucent. The inated cornea and the liquid around the globe have the same material as the one applied to the tear lines (see Tip 4).

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Facial modelling | TUTORIALS

The eyelashes:

Geometry

Opacity, Specular and Bump map

Hair, eyebrows and eyelashes are polymeshes. You only need one map to get them right: an Opacity map (the level of grey on the image determines the degree of opacity of your object). Use this same map as a Specular map so that your object only reects light on the hair. And, nally, plug this map into the Bump map channel to get a slight volume effect.

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A tear line (the line of uid along the lower lid) adds realism to the eye. Here, its a renderable spline placed where the eyelid and ocular globe meet. Its material is a fully transparent material with Fresnel-type reections. If youre using 3ds Max you can also add a slight Noise map Max, in the Bump map channel to achieve irregular reections.

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Backlight

Character

Main light and Light box Camera

Most of the shaders here are reective, so create something for them to reect. Using an HDRI map as an environment map is a good solution. You can also use self-illuminated white boxes with classical lighting. Combined with global illumination, the boxes produce a diffuse light. This is the solution adopted in this instance.

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