0:01 This tutorial shows how anyone can model a human head using free open source software. For this tutorial you need Seamless3d 3.000 or up.
0:13 Seamless3d's interface has been greatly simplified to make it very easy to model and animate a human face in 3d.
0:21 Because Seamless3d is a general purpose modeller, if you can model a human face, you can model it in any style, as well as its body, cloths, other kinds of animals, plants, man made objects and whole scenes.
0:35 To make a face we start by creating a nurbs lathe and then converting it to a nurbs patch.
0:45 With a single patch we can go onto to create a more complex structure to form the head, this revolves around just 2 buttons, extrusions and insertions of control lines, both of which are very easy to learn and use.
1:02 Shaping the model is done by moving the control points and this can be done by simply dragging just one control point at a time from different view angles but this tutorial will show how you can also select and manipulate multiple control points as well as ways to make it easier to understand where the control points are in awkward areas of your model.
1:24 Although using seamless3d is quite different to using a pencil to sketch an image, it should be no more difficult to create models with, to verify this, Seamless 3 has been successfully tested by a 4 year old artist, however I must stress, just like it takes practice to develop your artistic skills when learning how to sketch with a pencil so too does it take practice to develop you artistic skills using seamless3d as it is not one of those programs that does the art for you, it is a program that frees you to be a 3d artist.
1:58 To create a new file, restart seamless.
2:03 Before we add our lathe to form our head, set the view to birds eye so we're looking down at the grid.
2:07 We want to work in mirror mode so before adding our lathe make sure this button is set to this state. If not click it to toggle it.
2:16 Now we can add our lathe by clicking this button and then clicking on the grid to set the position. Make sure you click on the centre line, or we will add 2 lathes instead of one. You don't have to click exactly on the line, so long as your close enough, seamless will automatically centre it.
2:33 Now we can click one of the green points to specify the orientation of our lathe's spindle.
2:39 Click 4 times to add 4 control points for the face and another 3 times to add 3 more control points to form the back of the head. Click done when finished or you may accidently add more control points next time you click in the 3d window.
2:54 You can change the orientation of the view, by dragging with the right mouse button held down.
3:01 Like a full grown caterpillar, the task of our lathe is complete and is ready to be converted into a nurbs patch, so that we can begin our nurbs patch modelling. Convert the lathe to a patch by clicking the butterfly button. Specify 9 control staves so there's a control line that goes up the centre of the face, and then click done.
3:22 To create 2 holes in our head for the eyeballs to be placed in, click this control point to select it, and then click the extrude button. Increase the distance to a negative value, so that the holes go nicely into the head. When you are happy with it, click done.
3:41 To form the ear bases, click this control point and then click extrude. Tick the spider web centre check box, so that our extrusions for the ears will be closed instead of being left as holes.
3:53 Increase the distance and increase the number of insertions to 2. And then click done.
3:59 We can hide the grid by clicking this button to open the grid's control panel and unchecking the show field.
4:08 To select a ring of control points, click this button and then click the ring.
4:11 To change the position of the pivot point, drag the blue point.
4:15 Drag one of the lever points to rotate the selected points around the pivot point.
4:19 To squash the points, hold down the left Alt key while dragging one of the levers.
4:25 To move the selected points, drag any one of the selected points and all the selected points will move with it.
4:41 To insert a control line, click the insert button and move your mouse to a control line where you want the new line to intersect from.
4:48 Move you mouse along the interesting line until you see see the preview line going in the right direction, then click where your mouse is and then click done to complete the operation.
5:11 Our ears look too far forward so lets drag them back a bit. We can drag all the ear points back in one go, if we select them all using the rectangle selection tool.
5:21 To ensure we don't miss any points, toggle out of back-face ignore mode.
5:26 The rectangle selection tool can be utilised by holding down the left shift key while dragging with the mouse.
5:32 Just like when we used the ring select tool, drag just one of the selected control points and all of the selected points will move with it.
5:44 We want another ring in our neck,
5:50 and we want to squash it in a little.
5:55 Hold down the left control key while dragging the lever, to get the lever at the same angle as the ring before squashing it.
6:20 It's a bit confusing with the lines from the other side of the head showing through, so toggle to ignore back-face mode.
6:28 Now lets define the mouth more by squashing the stretching the mouth rings.
6:45 Drag the mouth down a little using the rectangle selection tool. If you drag one of the centre points, the mouse will be kept in the centre when you drag.
6:58 There's a lack of control points between the eyes and the mouth. We'll fix this by inserting a control line that goes across the face from one ear to the other.
7:07 First get the preview line to go from the ear to the mouth, then click to set the line and then click here to divert the line. Its good to make the diversion where we have a non 4 sided polygon in the control cage like we have here, as this avoids adding any more non 4 sided polygons to our structure which are harder to keep smooth than 4 sided polygons. Ok click done and there we have it, our inserted line goes from one ear to the other just how we want it.
7:38 We want another set of lines going from the eyes to the mouth.
7:45 And a ring inserted around the mouth.
7:51 Now we can add a line going from the eye here and divert it so it goes back to the other eye.
7:59 Note we diverted this time where we had a 4 sided polygon in the control cage. This resulted in the creation of non four sided polygons but we'll use this result to our advantage in forming the structure of the nose.
8:13 Now we have the key lines for our nose, we can drag out some points to form the nose.
8:36 Zoom in using the mouse wheel.
8:41 Insert another line going from the eye here so that it goes down the nose and back to the other eye.
8:48 Now if we did everything as I showed, adding the nostrils is dead easy by extruding this point.
8:59 Perhaps a rather strange looking nose at this stage but it is quite well defined.
9:08 With all the lines added for the nose, it looks rather lacking in control points here, so inserting a line between the eyes will help give us more control in this region. We will also get more control over this region later, when we insert rings around the eyes.
9:23 We have lots of control points here in the eyes but very few here so lets balance things out a bit, by adding a control line here.
9:36 You can change the view position by dragging on empty space.
10:04 Lets squash flat the 2 rings of control points that form the ear base, this helps our head look less round
10:20 Toggle out of back-face ignore mode, so that we can select all of the control points in the head.
10:23 The sides of the head want to be squashed quite a bit,
10:32 and in side view we want to squash it in a little too.
10:36 With 2 squashes made to the entire head, our head is much more realistic but our eyes are way too high. We can bring the eyes down a lot by squashing the face down towards the chin.
10:49 Now our ears want to come down a bit.
10:56 We can get the eyes yet closer to their target position in the head by dragging up up the forehead and the chin.
11:10 Looking at our head from this angle, we can see how flat our face looks at this stage. It is important to keep modelling from different angles. If you keep to one view for too long and imagine the rest of the shape, you'll be in for a big surprize when you see your model from a different angle.
12:05 Not much of a chin now, which makes it look a bit like a monkey, but this ring we'll insert here, which we want to help define the nose, will also be used to define the chin.
12:22 We want another ring around the mouth to help define it.
13:09 The nose now looks a bit thin so lets stretch it out wider.
13:21 To unselect points, hold down both the left control and left shift keys while dragging out the rectangle.
13:30 You can unselect all of the control points by clicking on empty space while holding down the left shift key.
13:48 Looking from a worms eye view, we can see the nostrils want to be dragged back a bit. The ring select tool is very useful for these types of awkward operations, as it allows us to see the points inside the structure.
14:57 We don't have many control points for a realistic nose, that has nostrils but it's good to get by with less control points if you can, as less control points means we have less to deal with, and it's easier to insert more later than insert too many too soon. Also a small number of control points generally makes it easier to keep your curves smooth, however non 4 sided polygons are not so easy to keep smooth, so we may want to insert extra lines to reduce their size,
15:30 like here for example.
15:42 Lets now close our mouth. Although a mouth is just basically an opening in the head, it is one of the key features that defines a face and is one of the hardest I find to get right, especially if it is a closed mouth.
16:20 We want to drag our most inner ring back into the head to get 3d looking lips but before we do that, we want another ring inserted close to our most inner ring.
16:31 Ok lets now select the most inner ring, and in side on view, drag it into the head.
16:42 Tilt the head slightly so that we can see into the mouth and insert one more ring.
16:58 As this is an awkward area to work in, select the ring we just inserted and set the points so there is only one active at a time.
17:11 To seal our lips, we want the lower points to overlap the upper points in this ring.
17:20 Ok that's pretty good now the eyes are begging for more attention.
17:24 Lets insert another ring around them and refine them more.
17:59 We want to insert 3 rings into our ears which will leave us of a total of just 5 rings to define our ears.
18:08 Lets insert our 3rd ring here very close to the ring which will be our most inner ring in our ear.
18:17 Now lets select and squash our most inner ring to make it smaller,
18:27 and drag it back just a little.
18:34 Now insert the 4th ring next to our most inner ring.
18:42 And our our last ring, the 5th ring, insert it just after the base ring.
18:47 Now we have all the points in our ears, all we have to do is drag the points to define them.
19:30 Back-face ignore mode wont stop our base ring showing through our ear when looking at it from the side view, because it is in fact facing us. Some of the other rings can also partially show through when we don't want them to. This can make our work on our ears confusing. It helps to get an understanding which ring is which by rotating the view.
20:00 but we do have the option of clicking this button to toggle into zbuffer control cage mode, which will cause any part of the control cage and any selected control point to be hidden from view when it is behind any part of the head's mesh. Problem with this mode is often when we want to be able to see a control point, it will only slightly behind the mesh but it is useful to be able to toggle in and out of this mode.
20:27 Ok all we have left to do now, is drag some points to refine our head.
21:05 You can orientate the view around a selected control point by clicking this button.[3d Modelling Software] [Tutorials] [Forum] [Features] [Download] [Gallery] [FAQ] [Worlds] [Avatars] [Links] [Thyme]