Female face modeling video tutorial

3d-artist Giorgio Luciano did an excellent video-tutorial for 3dsmax-users. In 1 hour 9 minutes he explains how to create a female head. The video covers all small details from start in photoshop to the final poly-model in 3dsmax. You can't find a better free video tutorial for female face modeling...

Modeling a face using Nurms

Tutorial

First, find any suitable reference for your model. Setting up the pictures as a view-port background is a common technique, but I prefer drawing sketch in 3D.

This is how your scene will look at some stage. Thin gray or dark blue lines show the initial 3D sketch. Red lines you see over the surface is kind of low polygonal model, which serves as NURMS control mesh. It is slightly different form typical low-poly in that it is not suited for visualization itself. It only can be used as rough model representation. NURMS behaves much like NURBS power 3 with the difference that NURMS can be of arbitrary topology with no UV–quadratic restriction.
Note that control mesh vertices lay somewhat outside the actual surface, if the surface is convex, and inside the surface if the surface is concave. This surface behavior is different form 3DSMAX Bezier Patch surfaces, in which surface must cross each vertex. Please see “Additional information about the subdivision algorithm” below.
3D sketching. Draw profile and front view curves first. These two curves can stay ‘2D’. Draw as many curves in 3D as you need. Choosing the correct curves is the main thing at this time. Created curves should give you a sense of volume in perspective or user view-ports, not only correct shapes in front and side view-ports. Align curves, so the curves that should intersect lay as close to each other as possible at the ‘intersection’ point. Use mirror modifier or the mirror tool to create symmetrical curves. If you use mirror tool, do not forget to turn ‘instance’ option on, so the symmetric object will last symmetric after modifying original object. I recommend doing all the modeling around the center of the world coordinate system. Allow yourself as much time as you can at this stage and create a perfect shape. This will save you a lot of time creating actual geometry.
Setting up symmetrical objects Create a Box object; convert it to editable mesh. Delete all the polygons but one. Use the transform type-in to center your object along the symmetry axis.
Enter sub-object mode, select the polygon and move it to the side.
Mirror your object using Instance option. It is important to see the both symmetric sides while editing. You can then edit either of the two objects and see the other side reflect the changes immediately.
Setting up NURMS Apply the Mesh Smooth modifier. Set Mesh Smooth type to NURMS. Apply To Whole Mesh should be checked. It is useful to set Iterations value to something smaller then in Render Values to improve interactivity while editing. Turn the Show End Result radio button on while in Editable Mesh sub-object mode.
Extending surface with edge cloning Select either of the objects, enter edge sub-object mode. Select the side edge and shift-drag. (Shift-dragging means that you keep a shift button pressed on the keyboard while dragging something with the mouse.)
This is how you create polygons by shift-dragging the edge selection.
Select several boundary edges.
Shift-and-Drag to Create several polygons at once.
Modifying topology with Welding Delete a polygon. Select a vertex.
Enter Weld Target mode in Vertex sub object mode.
Drag the vertex over another.Release the mouse button. Vertex should weld.
Creating Elements with polygon cloning Element of mesh is a group of polygons that are connected by their adges or built on same vertices. You can create elements in your mesh by shift-cloning polygons. Shift drag a polygon, release the mouse and answer Clone To Element when asked.
Fitting surface to the sketch Now you are ready to start modeling, using your 3D sketch as a guide. Start with any part of the face.I am starting with the lips. To make seamless connection between mirrored geometry, you can provide a polygon stripe in the middle.Polygons in this stripe should always be perpendicular to the plane of symmetry.Connection will be seamless even without final welding sides together.If you want to attach and weld the objects together when finished, you should not do it with instances.To attach the sides, do the following:Delete one side. Delete the Mesh Smooth modifier that is applied over the Edit Mesh or the Editable Mesh in the stack. Mirror with the ‘Copy’ option, not the ‘Instance’, then attach and weld with the weld selected option.
Correct Topology Control mesh is not treated as just triangles, but as polygons. For example, each quadratic polygon (quad) actually consists of two triangles in 3DSMAX. There is one invisible edge in each quad. NURMS makes sense of topology. Try to make build your mesh of quadratic polygons if possible. Use other types of polygons with care. Here is an example of ‘good’ topology.
Incorrect topology Geometry of the control mesh is the same, but topology is different. Some edges made visible in this example.
Additional information about the subdivision algorithm Generally, surface does not have to pass through the control vertices, but you can achieve this by placing three vertices to a line (vertices A, B, C on the picture). In this case surface near these vertices will behave somewhat like a Bezier spline, vertex A will serve as a knot, and B and C – as the Bezier handles. This behavior appears on the boundary surface edges, to use this feature with other vertices, you should line up all the 8 vertices around the ‘knot’ vertex to a plane. Surface will also intersect all Corner vertices (vertex D). Vertex B serves as a Bezier handle for knot D. This feature of the subdivision algorithm can be very useful to get more precise control over the surface shape.

Please refer to the 3DSMAX reference for more information on particular techniques, such as mirroring objects with instance option, using Weld Target and Weld Selected commands attaching mesh objects and using Bezier splines to draw shapes.

Notes about this tutorial

In this tutorial, I'm not using Vertex Weight feature, and Smoothing Groups feature, which are the powerful NURMS techniques. I believe that the same results can be achieved without using these features. At the same time, not relying on these features can potentially make your NURMS mesh portable to other implementations of Subdivision Surfaces (SubDivs), such as Pixar™, Maya™ and LightWave™ implementations by means of exporting non-subdivided control-mesh as polygonal object.

I describe 3DSMAX interface features as for version 3.x, but in vesion 4 it did not change much. Also, version 4 adds Editable Poly, that is slightly different from Editable Mesh, and the HSDS modifier which supports hierarchical mesh refinement and can be used in alternative or together with MeshSmooth/NURMS described here.

Notes about Subdivision Surfaces

Other implementations of Subdivision Surfaces modeling frameworks may support different features, such as hierarchical mesh refinement. Some of the industry standard renderers such as Pixar Render Man support rendering of Subdivision Surfaces on a level with NURBS.Some 3D game engines and Internet 3D viewers now support real-time Subdivision Surfaces for scalable quality and download optimization.

Intel Subdivision Surfaces

References

For those who interested in Subdivision Surfaces, I recommend to take a look at Academy Award-winning short film "Geri's Game" by Pixar.Keywords for those who interested in Subfivision Surfaces algorithms: Doo-Sabin, Catmull-Clark andChaikin’s algorithm - which can be pointed to as the first of these subdivision algorithms.

Autodesk Introduces 3ds Max 2010

Autodesk Introduces 3ds Max 2010

Autodesk, Inc.(NASDAQ: ADSK) has introduced Autodesk 3ds Max 2010 software - the latest version of its 3D modeling, animation and rendering product – offering nearly 350 additional features. The 2010 release provides innovative creative tools: a render-quality viewport display and at least 100 new Graphite modeling tools. It also offers powerful new capabilities that help artists manage complex scenes with greater ease and an unprecedented level of support for software interoperability and pipeline integration.

Artists have used 3ds Max to create numerous award-winning entertainment projects, such as "Fallout 3," "Prince of Persia" and "Gears of War 2."

"3ds Max 2010 is a feature-packed release that has generated a lot of excitement in the 3D community," said Marc Petit, Autodesk senior vice president, Media & Entertainment. "This version will help artists work faster than ever before, so they can explore more ideas, push boundaries, and create stunning work in less time.

"Jeff Hanna, senior technical artist at Volition, is a 3ds Max 2010 beta tester. His favorite new feature in the 2010 release is the xView mesh analyzer. "3ds Max 2010 software's powerful xView mesh analyzer will make it easier for us to ensure that every asset our artists create is correct and game ready," said Hanna. "The xView technology can quickly identify missing UVW coordinates, overlapping vertices, or open edges, among other things. With this tool, we won't have to worry about bad game data due to invalid geometry."

Key Highlights of Autodesk 3ds Max 2010 Innovative Creative Tools

• A new Graphite modeling and texturing system introduces at least 100 additional creative tools and helps artists explore and more rapidly iterate their ideas.
  
  
• The addition of render-like effects in the viewport display - such as soft shadowing, exposure control and ambient occlusion - offers near photo-real quality for faster decision making.Powerful New Referencing and Scene Management Capabilities
  
  
• Artists can create robust referencing workflows to help organize complex scenes more easily by treating multiple objects and scenes as a single Container object.
  
  
• A new Material Explorer helps to simplify the way artists interact with objects and materials, making iterations much easier even in highly complex scenes.
  
  
• The new multithreaded xView mesh analyzer technology helps to significantly reduce errors by providing in-viewport reporting on several types of mesh.Enhanced Software Interoperability and Pipeline Integration
  
  
• 3ds Max 2010 is the first animation package to integrate mental images' powerful mental mill technology. This allows users to develop, test and maintain hardware-agnostic shaders and complex shader graphs for hardware and software rendering with real-time visual feedback.
  
  
• Enhanced OBJ support and ProOptimizer technology provide improved interoperability with Autodesk Mudbox software.
  
  
• Additional support for C# and .NET gives developers the access they need to customize, extend and integrate 3ds Max into their existing pipelines.3ds Max 2010 also includes all the features offered in the Creativity Extension for 3ds Max 2009, released in August 2008. A list of features in 3ds Max 2010 is available at www.autodesk.com/3dsmax.
  
  

Videos of the new features in 3ds Max 2010 are available on the Autodesk YouTube Channel. To learn more about the software, also visit Autodesk's 3ds Max blogs by Ken Pimentel, director of visual communications; Shane Griffith, 3ds Max product manager; and Louis Marcoux, 3ds Max application specialist.
Global Quality Knobs: mental ray
Architects familiar with Revit will appreciate the addition of global quality knobs to the 3ds Max Design mental ray toolset. This new feature can be used to quickly dial up or down quality settings for shadows, glossy refractions and reflections along with image anti-aliasing and indirect illumination quality.



Interactive Lighting Analysis
A unique and new feature of 3ds Max Design 2010 lets you analytically explore direct lighting effects with interactive results right in the viewport using the new real-time pseudo-color exposure control. You can use the exposure control to establish color gradations for different light levels and then interactively adjust your lights until they give the necessary coverage. You can then use Exposure to validate the results and to factor in the impact of indirect lighting effects.



Linear Color Space Workflow
Gamma correction has been improved to correctly handle images and textures for a physicallyaccurate rendering workflow where color consistency is critical. Gamma settings now load correctly with files and propagate correctly on network rendering solutions.



Multi-Map Shader: mental ray
A new 3ds Max Design Multi-Map Shader for mental ray lets users purposely assign specific color variations to a set of objects that otherwise share the same material. It can also be used to quickly randomize or assign colors to multiple objects/maps based on object IDs or Material IDs. This new capability could be used to randomize the colors of trees, leaves, crowds, or anything repetitive that could benefit from a degree of color variation.



Review Enhancements
Representing a major leap forward in viewport display, Review 3 helps take the guesswork out of rendering. It offers support for ambient occlusion, HDRI-based lighting, soft shadows, hardware anti-aliasing, interactive exposure control, and the revolutionary mental mill™ shader technology from mental images. Combined with prior abilities for textures, bump maps and photometric area lights – viewports give you live feedback like never before. The Viewport menu system has also been re-designed to significantly improve the user experience. For example, you can now take advantage of the Layer Manager to control groups of lights (light banks) to quickly turn on and off lights in the viewport, similar to what you can do with the 3ds Max Design software renderer.



Pricing and Availability

Autodesk anticipates that 3ds Max 2010 will be available in English during spring 2009. The Autodesk suggested retail price for Autodesk 3ds Max 2010 license is US$3,495*. The suggested retail price to upgrade from either 3ds Max 2009 or 3ds Max Design 2009 to 3ds Max 2010 is $895*. Autodesk Subscription is available for purchase simultaneously with the product or upgrade purchase. The Autodesk suggested retail price for Autodesk Subscription for 3ds Max 2010 is $495* per year. *International pricing may vary.

About Autodesk

Autodesk, Inc., is a world leader in 2D and 3D design software for the manufacturing, building and construction, and media and entertainment markets. Since its introduction of AutoCAD software in 1982, Autodesk has developed the broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art Digital Prototyping solutions to help customers experience their ideas before they are real. Fortune 1000 companies rely on Autodesk for the tools to visualize, simulate and analyze real-world performance early in the design process to save time and money, enhance quality and foster innovation. For additional information about Autodesk, visit www.autodesk.com

Autodesk, AutoCAD, Mudbox and 3ds Max are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. mental mill is a registered trademark of mental images GmbH licensed for use by Autodesk, Inc. All other brand names, product names or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifications at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document.