The Head:
Go to the Create Panel
Click on the GeoSphere button and then Click, Hold and Drag in the view port. I sphere should be made. Like this.
Go to the Modify panel with the sphere selected and change the Parameters to; radius of 30, type to Octa and turn off the Smooth. Like the image shown below.
Center the sphere; With the Sphere selected right click on the move tool. Another menu box will come up. Change the values to X-Axis to 0, Y-Axis to 0 and Z-Axis to 35. This will give you a good start position and will also help with any renders we do along the way.
Open the Material Editor, with the sphere selected. Apply the selected material. (It should be a gray color.) I find the gray color helps a lot with seeing the over all shape of the model, by just having shades of gray. The other way you can do this is to have different colors for different parts of your model; this can help to understand which part is which by having the skin a skin color, wood a wood color etc. What you use is up to you.
Close the Editor and now you should have a gray sphere in the middle of your view port. We will now convert this sphere into an editable mesh. This is very important because this is where you will be editing the sphere into your model. This also will be done a fair few times in this tutorial. Having the sphere selected, right click in the view port which will bring up the quad menu. To the bottom right of this menu there is the option Convert To. Go to this and then another menu will roll out, click on Covert to Editable Mesh.
Now if you go back to your Modify panel, you will see there is now a hell of a lot more buttons. I will be working with a lot of this later on in this tutorial, but for now all you need to know is that there are five different modes within editable mesh; Vertex, Edge, Face, Polygon and Element.
Ok you what to selected Vertex (shortcut key = 1) and change front view (shortcut key = F.) Selected the on one half and delete them. You should now have a hemi-sphere.
Mirror the sphere along the X-Axis as an instance.
Selected the left side of the face (you may need to turn off Vertex Mode, by right clicking > Sub-object > Top Level) and then go to your modify panel. In the Modifier list selected FFD Box.
Change your view back to Perspective (shortcut key ‘P’.) You may want to add a few more points to your FFD Box so that you have more control over the shape. This is done by clicking on ‘Set Number of Control Points’ in the FFD box roll out. Enter 5 all values should be enough. Right click in the view port and pick Sub-object > Control Points from this menu. This will let you edit the FFD Box and therefore editing your mesh. You want to edit your
sphere to make the basic shape of your characters head. It is done by moving the control point of your FFD Box.
You should end up with something like this.
Remember this shape is for my character not yours.
When you have the shape you want, Converted to the model to an editable mesh. Than delete one side and do a mirror instances again (Converting to editable mesh will reset any Instances of that mesh.)
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Brendan George BrendanDoord@hotmail.com
Mid-Poly Modelling
09/2002