Sonya Blackwood

This is a walkthrough on my assassinbunny character, Sonya. I created her in 3ds Max R3, but if you have a basic understanding of almost any 3d-platform, the concepts of how I created her are very simple to grasp. So here we go...

Pretty Cool Eh? Lol, as dumb as this picture may seem, she did start off like many other polygon-based projects do. A basic cube. In Max, you will need to convert this to an editable mesh, or use the Edit  Mesh button from the modifier menu. Now what you will do is set up a few profile pictures in the front, top and side, views, as I did in the sandshark walkthrough, However, since you are creating only one side of the head in question, delete the  poly faces on one side. Extrude and bevel faces, and pull vertices to create a basic shape that somewhat matches your profile drawings.. REMEMBER! basic is important here! Keep it simple.

Ok, Now  that you have your basic shape, you can tweak it to match the profile shapes. it also helps to turn on edged faces so that you can see where your polys are going, otherwise it gets easy to lose track of vertices. Make sure all edges are turned in such a way that there aren't any obvious divots in your mesh topology. In the picture to the right, I have left her mouth slightly ajar to make way for a mouth sack, which will be mildly important on the lip-synch animation phases to come later. Try to use only quad faces,  in your mesh, since the next step can vary your models appearance greatly if there are tri-faces. Once you are happy with your side, mirror it and weld the vertices together. Now apply a MeshSmooth Modifier.

Now that you have applied your MeshSmooth modifier, you can see how your mesh will look with the subdivision levels turned up. For working, make sure it's set to NURMS. Keep faces convex  and  I recommend a setting of 2 itterations,crank it up higher later when you render. You can always go back to the edit mesh portion of the modifier stack and work on your mesh in real time with the show end result button pushed in. From here its pretty much basic modeling, and so the tutorial aspect of my walkthrough on her ends here.

See how nicely things are coming along? Here I added some simple polygonal eyes, made from tapered spheres. I also closed the mouth . Notice how the bone structure is a little too defined? too much chin and not enough cheekbones. I fixed that in the next image.

Here I have added some basic texturing to my model, as well as creating some very simple polygonal hair. Note the open mouth. I needed to texture the inside as well as refine the shape of the lips as they curve into the mouth. Need to add some teeth. The eyes were drawn in illustrator and retouched in photoshop. The lips come from a live photo, which was also edited in photoshop.

Remember that Cheekbone and chin work I was talking about? Well here it is. She now has eyebrows and nostrils to further detail her face. The final version will include a combination of multi-materials and blended procedural mapping, but for now it is simply easy planar maping courtesy of the UVW unwrap modifier.

Here is one of the test renderings of sonya's head. Note that I have employed opacity mapping to pull off the hair effect. At the time I did this, I had yet to buy my Wacom tablet, so thats why the hair looks a little sub-par. Better hair is on the way though I promise.

Lighting is crucial, and I have used some of it here. using soft warm, colors to light the side of her face and backlighting to fill in behind her head.

1/15/01: Here is my most recent rendering of Sonya's head, I have used shadow mapping to add more of an effect to the lighting which is in the scene. I have also added some eyelashes which I created using a very usefull lightwave tutorial. This final rendering was done in Max as well. I am hoping to port her over to Maya as well for use in my animation projects at school. I am currently working on facial animations for her, but I have yet to determine which platform has a better boning system; max or maya. If I use Max, I will probably use weighted morphing, if Maya, probably bones.

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