DMCDOESART: 2012

so before i started modelling our character for our degree show film"Aero-sault" i decided to practice my modelling and texturing in Maya before i cracked on. Also so i had something to put into my showreel as well. Below is my progression of my self portrait project and will show you the journey i took into creating my final image.

I start out by blocking out the head

I then begin to block in the eye

Blocking out nose

adding in more edge loops to help with more precise detail on nose

adding in more edge loops to help with more precise detail on mouth

more detailing on the mouth

I used CV curves to lay out shape of ear then extruded along curves

I then had to look at how i was going to connect the ear to the head

after merging some edges i was left with the equal sides to attach to the head

I then began to look at it smoothed to see what changes it needed

I then added the eyes which i had made earlier but changed the colour to match mine.

I then started to look at what needed done to make it more like myself

I then copied the other side across to help me amend the model to look like myself

I made some ammendments and added in a rough shape for the eyebrows

I then added a rough hair shape

a close up of the eye area with eye lash shape.

Now it was time to start UV mapping this was difficult when it came to the ears so i had to cut them separately, UV map them then sew them back together. Due to my very poor source images that i took myself with my phone so the textures didn't match up too good. This i will take into consideration for a future project.

UV Mapping of the face

Texture for UV map

The texture applied to the model

I then began to make a skin shader what consisted of making different textures for certain aspects of making the texture of the skin look real.

Epidermal layer

specular layer

Subdermal Layer

Specular bump

Bump map

Now that i had the shaders all set up it was time for the Hair. I started to try and use the actual hair option in Maya but there was difficulty in getting a realistic look plus trying to match my short spiky hair. So after all consideration i ended up using Maya fur. The Maya fur worked really well and was a lot easier to get a realistic look and also very close to my own hair.

Doesn't look much but this is what Maya fur is lie before rendering.

So after a long brawl with maya this is finally what my end result is. Im finished with this model for now but as i gain more experience i feel i shall come back to it and fix things I'm not happy with. I rendered these images using Imaged based lighting and also a mixture of spot lights and directional

lights.