Month: January 2023

Adding joints wasn’t much of a difficulty for me, but I ran into crises with the weight of the skin (pictures below). This probably took me the most time to solve as I was facing the same issues over and over again. At first, I was too rough with painting skin weights and had to smooth it more. This was part of the problem, but it didn’t fix everything. I spent some time blending them and it made the poses look more natural.

My main trouble though was the jaw rotating with the head (should be just the head). It was my mistake that I keyed the wrong parts of the head in the timeline. This was most likely because I wasn’t paying enough attention to the timeline and keyframes. Next time, I’ll be sure to make sure all my keyframes are set up correctly, and if I run into another similar issue, I’ll be sure to check the timeline first.

While working on blend shapes, I noticed that skin weights change and mess up the model. I solved this problem by locking skin weights. I feel like I miss a step sometimes and it causes me a lot of trouble later on, but at least now I understand it better.

I continued to work on the model (UV mapping and texturing) while improving the topology as I worked on it. My main way of doing this was by smoothing the UV maps and adjusting the edge loop (add or remove) in the main model.

After adjusting the maps and playing with the Mudbox (I know it wasn’t perfect but I had to keep going) I opened my eyes (trying to think about the movement, the skin around the eyes, the corners of the eyes and the lower lip – checking if it looks good from the front and the profile side). Later I got into adjusting the UV maps (ears) and solving any topology issues (mainly inserting edge loops with edge flow) to add geometry.

Workshop notes:

Creating joints:

Orthographic view>Rigging section>Skeleton>Create joints.

Shading>X-Ray Joints (on).

Display>Animation>Joint Size.

Skin Weights:

Skin>Bind Skin Options>Send to: Selected joints>Maintain max influences (off).

Skin>Paint Skin Weights>Paint interactions (Add, Scale, Smooth).

Keyframe movement (Rotate X, Y, Z).

Sources:

Autodesk Maya: Joints and bones (2016) Available at: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Maya/files/GUID-1B59334F-2605-44C3-B584-A55B239A2CBE-htm.html (Accessed: 14 November 2022).

Introduction to rigging in Maya – Part 3 – Rigging the neck and head (2014) Available at: https://3dtotal.com/tutorials/t/introduction-to-rigging-in-maya-the-neck-and-head-jahirul-amin-animation (Accessed: 5 December 2022).

Autodesk Maya: Paint skin weights (2021) Available at: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2022/ENU/Maya-CharacterAnimation/files/GUID-7D773C38-F9CF-4141-8ADD-4E0454838BB7-htm.html (Accessed: 26 November 2022).

Autodesk Maya: Lock smooth skin weights (2019) Available at: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2019/ENU/Maya-CharacterAnimation/files/GUID-C170E134-0746-44DC-B122-9F8FA7894674-htm.html (Accessed: 5 December 2022).

Even though I tried to get everything in the right position, I spent a lot of time in this session adjusting the eyelids because the topology wasn’t right. I had to move all the top vertices to the right and when I did, the top vertices matched the bottom ones and the overall topology was much better. After all that, I had to work with the relaxation brush to tidy up the edges and sculpt the brush to bring the eyelid shape closer to reality.

While reworking the face and following the tutorial, I realized that I had missed some parts earlier (I didn’t position the mouth properly in the middle). I wasn’t sure if it would affect my later work, but since it was very possible, I decided to sculpt the face again. I believe that setting up the job correctly saves a lot of time later and helps avoid errors. But I also see that my perfectionism and need to get things done right before moving on to the next step kept me from keeping up with every workshop and left me behind. Maybe that’s why I wasted so much time sculpting (though the main reason for this error was not checking the model with the original form).

I worked with the correction targets in the shape editor to freely adjust facial features that didn’t look right. I also tried to improve the face model in general. I found the most similar model on the Internet and put it on top of mine to see the anatomical errors I made. I decided on this step after bringing the model to a stage that I was generally satisfied with and I did not see any major flaws in it. I also asked for feedback from my classmates and they agreed that there was an improvement and that this is the best version so far. Knowing that the longer I work on the model, the fewer inaccuracies I see, I needed to take a break and check with references what problems I missed.

These were most of the issues I noticed after layering the two models on top of each other. I realize there are probably more issues with my model’s anatomy, but since I had a backlog of work, my priority was to get the face as close to accuracy as possible and get to texturing and skinning quickly.

Sources:

Face muscle topology (2017) Available at: https://blenderartists.org/t/face-muscle-topology/688729 (Accessed: 30 November 2022).

Head model (2020) Available at: https://discover.therookies.co/content/images/2018/09/Rookies_02.jpg (Accessed: 30 November 2022).

Workshop notes:

Creating deformer shapes:

Windows>Animation Editors>Shape Editor.

Select object (with no history on it)>Create Blend Shape>Add Target.

Sculpt Tool:

Tool Setting>Falloff>Type: Surface.

UV Mapping:

UV>Cylindrical>UV Editor>Modify>Unfold.

Connect points with the Cut/Sew.

Separating parts of the mesh:

UV Editor>Cut/Sew>Split>Right click>UV Shell>Move.

Autodesk Maya: UV Editor overview (2021) Available at: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2022/ENU/Maya-Modeling/files/GUID-73BF7546-3BF2-44F3-9192-15A024CEC173-htm.html (Accessed: 7 November 2022).

Autodesk Mudbox:

Autodesk Mudbox: Learning resources (2020) Available at: https://help.autodesk.com/view/MBXPRO/ENU/?guid=GUID-9928B53F-26E8-4C49-A785-8AD797BA619C&v=2020 (Accessed: 7 November 2022).

The main lesson I learned from week 5 was drawing geometry on the model. My main problem, which I identified fairly quickly, was having too many edge loops. Because of them, it was difficult to see the mismatched vertices and modify larger parts of the face. I think I started adding details too quickly which made my workflow messy and ended up making a lot of mistakes.

So when I went to model the eyeball, I added eyelids and details much later, which in turn helped me create better topology (and anatomy).

I prefer to manually adjust the vertices than use a brush. I can see that working with a brush can speed up the workflow, but I still don’t feel completely comfortable with it and I make more mistakes, which slows down the process overall. I focused on recreating the shapes of the faces and making sure that the topology looked correct at this stage. I know from previous experience that good topology is key in later steps, so I spent a lot of time cleaning up areas that looked messy and making sure the lines matched the muscles of the human face.

Workshop notes:

Sources:

Free 3D Head Model (2022) Available at: https://www.3dscanstore.com/blog/Free-3D-Head-Model (Accessed: 31 October 2022).

FaceTopology (2018) Available at: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/FaceTopology (Accessed: 31 October 2022).

Drawing geometry on the model:

Select object>Choose the “magnet” (last one under Mesh Tools)>Live object>Mesh Tools>Quad Draw.

Reflecting half of the face:

Edit>Duplicate Special Options>Scale X (-1).

Object Mode>Mesh>Mirror Options>Mirror Axis (X)>polyMirror>Merge Threshold (0.007).