For example red colour is showing us the key points of our face. The eyes, nose, lips and others. When I am modelling a character or designing one I'm mostly focusing on them because well even thought they are almost entire face it's their shape and size that can tell us who the character is and give us initial feelings. For example the Y shape on chicks is one of the biggest factor that can crate face volume. If the person is skinny, old or just he got muscle structure like that we will almost be able to see his chicks bones. That will mostly cause lots of shadows on his lower part of face around corners near eyes which would make it sharp strong character or he's just hungry. However if he got full, ''puffy'' chicks like Fenix from ''Gears of War'' it will give us similar feeling that he is strong but also that he is big. Also by adding little wrinkles we can add a bit more feelings to our character, in area around side of lips on chicks.
On the blue colour I have marked the wire. It's the initial shape of the loops around the key points that we should have. When modelling a face we want to have round, circular loops around nose, eyes, lips and around entire face. There is many reasons why we want that. For example if we want to create winkles its easier when the wire from the beginning its forming them and all we have to do is to slightly adjust them. Another reason is that once we start to rig our characters its easy to select and edit loop able wire.
On the green colour I have selected what would happen to face if we would open our mouth to say something or to scream. Notice that when we are screaming we are not only moving our lower chin but also pushing our eyebrows towards each other, creating wrinkles on nose and in general we are moving everything. It's the purpose of round wire around or face to make this animation easy. Since everything is in loops and easy to select creating face mimics it's a lot more easier than if we had some boxy wire of even nurbs. Also by having that wire our skin dynamics would be a lot easier to make since things that happening to our face when we scream are easiest way to create once everything it's in loops, for example winkles around lips (painted in pink).
The next part when I'm modelling someone is to define characteristics of that person. If he is skinny, with strong bone structure, or muscle structure. If he has specific nose or eyes type. It's a lot easier to create one once you know the fundamentals. For example if you look at European people and Chinese, they are quite different, the face anatomy is that same as well as muscle structure but it's their size and proportions that make us different. Look at Chinese people eyes, they are quite small and wide, also their chicks are usually quite exposure which can let us almost clearly see bones from under the skin. However no matter how different the character is we can make him from only one wire model. What I mean by that is that if we will model a ''standard'' face in any modeling software with right topology/wire we can then make any person on the word.
Anyway let's move forward. On the image below I have put our friend James again with few marks on his nose which I'd like to study for a moment. I think that nose is one of the most important parts of face that is creating the initial feeling of the character. I have find out that there are roundly three type of nose that are used in industry and then their size and variations are making the big differences. They are:
1. Arrow pointed downwards
2. Upside down T
3. Upside down Y.
If we look at the drawing here we can see that once we draw an arrow or and inverted Y we can create nose around the shape and it will look in a way ''right''. Usually when we have character in games, or cinema if they are strong, heroic or evil we will have usually either arrow or mix with T nose. It's one of those sharp strong noses that character need to have. The T nose is used a lot in characters who are simply big. Like wrestlers or Fenix from Gears of Wars. It fit them perfectly.
(Picture from : http://www.gameguru.in/action/2007/18/gears-of-war-statues-announced-by-mindzeye-studios/ )
However nose it's not all of it. Once we have the right nose we need the right chicks. We can't really have a big fat nose with skinny chicks because it will look quite weird maybe even cartoon, if that the look we are looking for. Let's look at Fenix for GoW. He have quite big, flat nose (shape T), with big round chicks as you can see below. It works for him perfectly. The chicks give the right volume to the face, making it big round, fat and with extra detail of wrinkles we can feel the character straight away. If we would do it oppositely with sharp nose and skinny chicks, we would get some one that it's more like a hero alike character. For example spider man from comic series, he usually had that skinny face and straight little nose. Also the round wire would fit our friend Fenix perfectly, the wrinkles would be easy to make and later on animation of this big ''volume'' should be simply a pleasure.
Chick and nose is of course not all of it. We also have eyes, eyebrows, ears and more. Let's have a quick look at eyes, lips and eyebrows. Different characters will have different eyes. For example Fenix it's a big character, strong face structure quite big and very little eyes, with huge eyebrows which fit him perfectly. Even thought the face proportion are a little bit weird we have the right feeling of the character we are playing.
Anyway let's not just focus on Fenix and spider-man, I have brought below two character from Uncharted 2 game on PS3. Like I said above its good to not mix curtain characters since they might look a bit cartoon, however in some cases they might look just right.
For example the person below its quite big and muscle character. And even thought when he got quite big T size nose with huge lips, the designers gave him straight skinny chicks with mid size Asian eyes. It shouldn't work but as we see it works great for that character, the reason why is that it's because his entire body is a little bit off. Look at the size of his hands and arms, they are quite big aren't they? The body, it's volume it's making the face right, even, thought even without it would look ok. Just like in Hulk design. Big green muscle monster with little legs.
(Pictures from: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=079141
Also more examples here : http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=54100&page=1&pp=15 )
I also brought another one character from Uncharted 2. Its the main character I believe that we get to play. If we look at his face we can see that its quite perfect. Arrow size nose, with a bit skinny chicks, small eyes, straight strong tiny eyebrows with normal size lips. I have highlighted on blue the aspects I mean, also on red you can see what would it looks like with a bit ''puffy'' face.
So as you can see, characters are quite basic and easy to design once we know the rules and relationship between face parts. If we want funny cartoon character just mix them together. For unusual ''unique'' character sometimes its enough to overexposure one of parts. For all those character we could use one type of wire.
At the end id like you show you wire of model of James face. His face was modelled from a ''standard'' premade by me face that I got from quite a long time. The face with red lines its over painted wire that I would make using retop function later on once sculpture its finished if I didn't had the wire right. Since I got the wire from beginning all I will do its slightly correct it to match the face characteristics, when even it got scars or winkles or anything like that.
Now the retop function that I mention above stands for retopology. It is used a lot for models made out of sphere or any other shape. If the artists does not have the base wire, like I did he can start the model from sphere and then by subdividing it few times he can get it to look like human person. However his wire will be wrong and most of the time unusable for games or anything else. In that moment we have to do retopology, first what we do is draw pre-wire just like I did with the red lines. Once I got this part done its time to make the wire on model and then project the high level detail on low poly model. Thanks to that we have our ''roundy'' low poly wire which is great for animation and easy to use in postproduction.
No comments:
Post a Comment