Head (for animation)

Mongrelman

Everything is still WIP, though some parts more so than others. It's my first proper attempt at texturing and using things like displacement, specular and subdermal maps.

The eyes are still giving me jip. I've been faffing about trying to get them to fit, but I don't think I'm quite there. I've still to add the tearline, my past efforts on it didn't turn out all that great. So more fiddling about there.

Anyway C&C much appreciated, I'm aiming for photorealism. I'll be adding hair at the end.

Ferg

can you post a wireframe? Would make it much easier to crit, especially since this is going to be animated

edit: nice skin shader/texture

noritsune

skin shader looks beautiful and the face model is pretty nice man. Off the bat I think I would say that the eye iris diameter is much too large right now. Also the pupils dont seem to be sitting on the same horizontal, or maybe the right eyelid is especially droopy. I would consider changing that so that the pupils have the same margin from the upper lid on either side of the face.

also, again with the iris, the color seems a too saturated and comic-booky.

wireframes would be interesting to see.

Mongrelman

This is the wire of the undisplaced mesh (I'm not too sure the easiest way to show the wire on the displaced one).

This is a deformation test I did on the head awhile ago, before I tweaked the shape more. It's the same base as the render above, just a different displacement map.

http://lupusart.com/Animations/AnimTest8.mov

Jaco

Nice, the head lacks sharpness though, it looks like it was smoothed too much.
The deformation test looks real nice, all though he looks a bit poo coloured...

Rick Stirling

Thers one obvious issue for facial animation (and I've spent the last week doing nothing but facial rigging, so trust me on this).

You are lacking the pear shaped loop that surronds the mouth and the bottom of the nose - the yellow one in this image

Mongrelman

I shrunk the irises, the pupils were on the same horizontal, so I tweaked the eyelids to reduce/remove the illusion that they weren't.



@Rick: I usually add that loop in, but Taron's 'Neckling' http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/1820/necklinggeom7ch.jpg was my main reference for the base mesh, so I decided to see if I could get it to work ok too. I think it seems ok in the deformation tests I did.

Ferg

what you have so far looks good. My main crit is that there's still plenty of detail left to add. The nose (nostrils especially) could use more definition, as well as smile lines and the brow area. There's also a strange crease thing along the top of the upper lip. It looks a little wierd to me but I could see it working just fine as it is (looks intentional, and it could definitely fall into the category of characterizing physical quirks). You might also want to try shrinking the gap between the nose and the mouth a little, either by bumping the mouth up a little or the nose down. Hope that helps.

Jaco

Yeah, and the line of the mouth also seems a bit flat, try pulling the corners down a bit.

Mongrelman

I'll be going into zbrush later to do the final touches, such as wrinkles and the lips.

I raised the chin and mouth to decrease the nose/mouth gap and pulled the corners of the mouth down. And also increased the iris size a tough, I felt it was a bit too small.



EDIT: I didn't particularly like the result from raising the mouth and chin, so I tried by pulling the nose down, which gives a better result I think.

Mongrelman

Changed the eye shape a bit, I think it gives him a more neutral expression and makes his face seem less long.

hawken

everything seems realistic except for the eyes... can't place it though. Maybe the highlight is too diffuse plus the cornea is too dark. Maybe.

Rick Stirling

[ QUOTE ]
@Rick: I usually add that loop in, but Taron's 'Neckling' http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/1820/necklinggeom7ch.jpg was my main reference for the base mesh, so I decided to see if I could get it to work ok too. I think it seems ok in the deformation tests I did.

[/ QUOTE ]


Fair enough. Thermidor and I just spent a week rebuilding meshs to add that geo in to get the deformation to work, I'm suggesting that if you want photorealistic deformation to go with the photorealistic texturing you'll save yourself a shitload of grief. That labial fold contorls most of the emotion when smiling and sneering, and is essential for the 00 and ee sounds.

Mongrelman

Aye, I was thinking that myself when looking at Taron's geometry, I was suprised at some of the loops it was missing.

But I don't think it will be a problem for this due to the way I'll be animating it.

@Hawken: I agree, that is what is getting on my tits hehe. There is something wrong, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I think it may be the lack of specularity on the iris itself. I did try adding some, but my tweaking of the settings for the iris have no effect (I don't know why).

I'll try using a different material for it and see if I can get something better.

Thanks all for the C&C, very helpful

Thermidor

Im just gonna echo what Rick says. I know you are using displacment maps for detail, but i think its allways good practice to use flows that are going to help your mesh.



I did a quick paintover of the areas that need to flow, the ones round the lips you have but the main one to have is the one marked in green which will control pretty much all the smile shapes, the one in yellow is more to help you weight areas flowing between the nose cheeks and eyes.

Other than these animation issues the model is looking good , the trouble with the eyes might just be him not having eye lashes and eyebrows yet, try painting them on in photoshop to check if its gonna look ok after that.

Mongrelman

Re-enveloped and quickly setup a deformation test. Some of the movements/shapes he makes in the animation aren't what I'll actually use (such as the way the lips are when he opens his mouth at the end). I'm just testing to see if there are any problems.

www.lupusart.com/Animations/AnimTest9.mov

Fjornsvavne

Haha, the potential is there alright, but in that clip he looked kinda retarded

frostymoose

Definately agree about the loop around the nose and mouth. That fold is extremely important and the change in topology should not be particularly difficult. If you don't do it on this guy, fix this issue on your next face.

Mongrelman

Just back from my holiday yesterday, so back to work on this.

I read through a fair bit of the new Digital Lighting and Rendering while I was away, so I redid the lights and did some post pro in photoshop.



Blink:


And had a quick go at having him look at the camera

The eyes are too dark, but I'll try to fix that.
Currently back in zbrush fixing some things such as the crease in the lip.

Mongrelman

Sorted out the reflection in the eyes and decided I felt like starting on the clothes (I really will get back into zbrush at some point).

Hope you like.

Xaltar

Dude, all I can say is WOW. Really nice work and the textures look amazing. Any chance you know of a tuto so I can learn how to do that(textures)? If not, could you write one..... please.......

Still something funny arround the eyes tho, like little redish spots although that could just be from the lighting....
Great work dude.

GLandolina

only crit is everyhing is far too shiny/plastic.

rooster

it looks sweet! I also think its the eyes that are stopping it being realistic- they are very bright, and could use some shadow onto the white.. I just happen to be sitting on a pile of high-rez head ref, and I dont think I'll get in any trouble for posting a few eyes
http://www.redprodukt.com/post/eyes.jpg

Mongrelman

Thanks guys.

@ Xaltar: I used the free tutorial from the 3D World website on making a skin texture. I didn't follow it exactly, just as a guide as I did various things my own way and some extra bits.

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/premium_content/3d__and__animation/gimme_some_skin

@ GLandolina: Are you talking about the jacket and jumper? I'd only just stuck on basic materials on them when I did that render so that is probably why.

@ Rooster: Thanks man, and that pic did help

I tweaked the eyes more and did some texturing on the jacket.



Also did another with a dark jacket and did the post pro differently. I think this one makes him fit the background well.

EDIT: Shaped the jacket to look better

But I'm not sure which lighting I prefer, the last one probably.

Xaltar

Thanks for the link
Try looking at your own eye in the mirror. Here is a neat little image I found in blenders tutos that may or may not help.



The problem is that the rest looks so real even the slightest thing can make something stand out.

Mongrelman

Since apparently I can't use the XSI skin shader for what I want to do with displacement maps, I rebuilt it from scratch using some phong. I'll enhance it more later once I've read how to do gradients in XSI.

Also been working on eyebrows and stubble. They still aren't quite where I want them to be, but at least it's progress.

Xaltar

There is still something funny about the texture on the upper eyelid, it looks blotchy. They eyes are looking better but I think the Iris is a bit large now and the brows are comming down too low.

Keep at it, its going to look great

Ruz

think the white part of the eye is too blue.I use more of a reddy off white/ochrey colour. I also reccommend desaturating that blue in the iris slightly.
Overall i think the skin is too light/pinky and if you are going to give him stubble make it heavier so you can notice it from a distance.
I think if the skin was a bit darker the eyebrows would n't stand out so much as they do now. They look way too harsh as they are

MoP

indeed, while this is looking good, the eyes are really throwing it off right now. they're far too bright and a little too saturated.
the skin under his eyes should be darker and more purplish, they also need more wrinkles and bump detail... the nose should probably get a bit more red, and the lips should probably be a touch darker.
basically his skin texture, while good, is still a tad too uniform in terms of colour.

the stubble is looking very odd at the moment, the dark segments are too large and too regular - needs to be smaller points of dark, speckled around a lot.

his eyebrows are also seeming fairly crazy, the hairs seem to be going in every direction, and you seem to be trying too hard to define every single hair - you can probably get away with making much of it a mass of darker colour with suggestions of hairs, rather than trying to indicate every hair.
Unless you're using a hair plugin rather than just painting it onto the maps, in which case you should make the hairs longer, thinner (and taper off at the ends), and going in a more regular consistent direction.

you should probably paint the interior of the nostrils to be very dark on the diffuse, the lighting is making that area seem odd (since the nostrils shouldn't really be lit).

now that i take another look, the whole thing seems rather blown-out and badly lit - i much preferred the (more basic?) lighting scheme you were using for the test renders right at the start of the thread, IMHO they looked a lot more natural. these new renders are looking fairly noisy and muddled in terms of lighting.

hmm.. lengthy post.

basically I like where this is going, the proportions and modelling seem very good, and your diffuse texture is definitely getting there, but currently your render settings aren't doing it a whole lot of justice. oh and the eyes need fixin'

keep it up!

Mongrelman

Thanks guys.

I'm going to sort out the eyes at the end, as each time I change something else the eyes are altered differently in the post processing, so I'll wait till everything else is finalised before I tweak them more.

I'll go in and tweak the diffuse more, I actually painted in quite a bit of colour variation, but I tihnk it's quite washed out in the render, or just not strong enough in the texture, so I'll fix that and add more. I also forgot to paint the interior or the nose and mouth dark hehe, woops.

The eyebrows and stubble.....they are pissing me off, particularly the stubble. I painted hairs for each with a 1 pixel brush, but they still seem too coarse, so I think I'll try what you said and maybe have a go at a hair plugin. I'll need to use that for the scalp hair anyway so might aswell learn it now hehe.

The stubble distribution was really just a test to try to get the hairs to fit the rest of the image, but I think I'll start again and just use some dots and see how that turns out, with some random ones thrown about to break things up.

I prefer the current light setup as it gives better control (a proper 3 point setup, the other one was pretty rough), but I'll try to even out the lighting so it is less harsh.

Thanks again

Mongrelman

Changed the lighting and did some tweaking to the texture. I removed the stubble and eyebrows so I could focus on the skin. Don't worry about the eyes, as I said I'll get to them at the end.

Is this closer to what you were meaning?

Ruz

I think the lighting seems too harsh , making the specular look almost white

SouL

Upon first glance, the eyes, lips, eyeballs and nostrils jump out at me.

Look at reference and really study the face. Try and find REALLY well modeled eyeballs/eye lids on google and study the wireframe. This will give you a good idea of the their structures.

The nose... I see a lot of people making the mistake of not making the nostrils dark. It has to be nearly black becase light doesn't get in there. On top of that... we all have nose hairs.. The bottom of nostrils doesn't abruptly cut into the face like that. It very gently contours the bottom of the nostril. The amount of how much you see varies from person to person, obviously.

It looks like he's puffing air into his upper mouth. Be careful about how you model it. Again, this varies from person to person, but the upper mouth area is generally flat. Also, don't forget the ridge lines that drop down from the insides of the nostril to the center U shape of the upper lip. I wouldn't go as far as saying that some people don't have it... but sometimes it can be very flat and very subtle. Usually in old people, though.

The corners of the lips recede back into the mouth... it helps accentuate that puffy area on the other corners of the mouth. You've got it... just need to refine it a little more. I think blending the upper lips more into the skin will help. Turning it also so it catches less light will help.

Chin seemed kind of long, to me. But some folks have long chins. So that's your call.

Eyebrows... just make them dark. I don't know how you're painting eyebrows this is how I do it:
I just take a single color (in this case black) and simply paint wave strands towards the sides of the head. If it's starting to get too thick, I take the skin color and paint over.

The eyballs are looking strange because you're not having the eyelids/eyelashes cast a shadow onto the eyeball. The eyeball would also pick up some bounce light from the surrounding skin area.. so it shouldn't be blue.
I'll admit the eyeballs in my paintover are a little too dark... I got a little caught up in trying to make the big shapes of the facial structure read from a distance and kind of forgot to go back and clean up.

Skin shader looks good. Take your renders into photoshop and try adding some subtle green and see what happens.

SouL

The lips, by the way, remind me of poop's.

MoP

SouL's paintover pretty much nailed all the issues I had with it... although he managed to make him look a tad effeminate at the same time

I'd probably leave the proportions (skull/chin size etc.) the way you have them, it's an unnecessary change, but all the points about the colouring and most of the pointers on anatomy are spot-on.

Mongrelman

Much appreciated SouL (and dayum, wish I had your 2D skills).

I'm not entirely happy with what I have at the moment, and I don't actually think the path I'm on at the moment is the best for my research project. So I think I'll start the head again from scratch (in Silo 2 which they said today should be out in a few days).

What I'm doing is animation by blending morph targets with displacement maps. I think I could demonstrate this better by morphing the head into very different ones (a more exaggerated effect over subtle changes in a single face), which I don't think my current base geometry would handle too well. And I'll also go back to modelling the head the way I usually do and include all the edge loops
I don't consider what I've done a waste as I learned an awful lot from it, so I should be able to pick up again and work even faster. And hopefully be back here soon hehe.

I should probably start writing my project up now methinks.

Xaltar

Good luck to ya, I like what you have done so far and am looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Just a bit off topic, do you by any chance play Werewolf the Apocalypse? The name Lupus being the reason I ask

Mongrelman

Fraid not It's actually from a river near my parents' house in France. The river "Loup" from the latin "Lupus".

Xaltar

Ah, cool. Good luck with the remodel

Mongrelman

Bumpage.

This is an animation showing the effect I was going for (blending displacement maps). There are some errors such as the inflating and deflation which I'm still working on.

It's not as 'flash' as the previous head as I'm focusing on the actual effect than extra work such as texturing. There is a wierd spot on the top of the forehead on each side, it's actually extra geometry to pull horns out of his head (to make a sort of demon).




http://www.lupusart.com/Animations/MixTest3.mov

animatr

that's badass man. great work.