NEWBIE CHALLENGE #5 Lids + Adding Eyes

[Moochie]

Eyelids + Adding Eyes + Posing Eyes

Ok gang. Another challenge for ya. This time we're going to make some eyelids that fit snuggly to eyes (guaranteed!), adding eyes and then posing the eyes. All within an editable mesh. And this time we're going to go cartoon-stylee. You'll be able to use the same techniques for more realistic models, but cartoons are more forgiving for early attempts. ;)

I've done a screen capture movie of a one hit modelling session. It's 9mb, ok. I haven't used sound, as that increased the size dramatically. Maybe another time when I've sussed out the best codecs. I hope everything is clear .. I've used toolbar and palette options rather than shortcut keys, so you should be able to follow along. Let me know if anything isn't clear. Apologies in advance for the cack-handed way I use inverse masking towards the end. Heh heh.

THE CHALLENGE

Make yourself a little cartoon figure. And give him/her/it eyes that fit nicely. Extra kudos points if you can give your character personality or emotion by simply posing the eyes and lids. Post your pics, time-lapses, scripts or tools here. Good luck!
lidz_pic.jpg
http://www.wyldehearts.com/tutorials/LIDZ.zip

[1stbrother]

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a314/TSB1/eyes.jpg

[1stbrother]

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a314/TSB1/eyes2.jpg

cheated a bit and added a mouth.

[andreseloy]

http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/7517/eyes3ma.gif (http://imageshack.us)
Andreseloy

[Moochie]

Yay! Nice one, 1stbrother. Or nice two, rather. Strangely enough, the first one has a greater impact, though I'm not sure if that's because of the way the eyes and lids are posed, or because it doesn't have a mouth (ie one is forced to focus purely on the eyes). Cool. :tu:

[Moochie]

Lol cool cool, Andreseloy! I'm getting quite giddy watching that revolving eye. :tu:

[tez]

Cool video thnkc for that fun to watch.. Hey can ya tell how me how to mannaged to make the eyes dissopear after they where merged down as one complete mesh?

[Moochie]

After using the MultiMarker tool and creating a composite mesh (in the Modifier menu), ZB keeps the eyes and head as separate poly groups. So hiding any part is just Ctrl+Shift+Click as usual. Glad you enjoyed the movie. :D

[-WOODY-]

Mr. Bulgey is not pleased with this eye challenge..........

http://members.cox.net/woodmiester/artwork/mr_bulgey.jpg

( My entry )

Your video was pretty helpful. Unfortunately for me, every time I tried to place spheres in the mesh to displace it, it would freak out whenever I tried to pick it up. I was finally able to get it though.

[Moochie]

Heh heh .. I like it!

Hmm .. how was ZB 'freaking out'? Did you have enough polys in the mesh? When you add geometry shapes in Projection Master, you're just displacing the underlying geometry of the model by the shape of the primitive, not actually adding any polygons. The other thing is if the surface you're projecting onto isn't flat and face-on to the camera, you'll get distorted projections where the surface is slanted away from you.

Good work and great fun.

[tez]

I thought il do one but just wondered weather there is a way to change the rotation of the eyes wihtout having to reinsert new eyes rotate them them make a polmesh every time to get different eye positions. When I made the first lot of eyes facing forward I started to mask the eyes to make eye lids so where from there do I some how rotate the eyes if they are now part of the mesh and added eye lids, I can only think of maybe deleteing the eyes and reinserting new ones and re do another polymesh?

[tez]

This zapplink is amazine I didnt know that you could render all shadows e.c.t then drop into projection master then zapplink teh rendered image out then apply the render as a texture. When I droped it back I thought best render was still on but it wasnt.:tu:

[Moochie]

tez: no need to add new eyes. If you use MultiMarker, as I do in the vid, once you create a composite mesh the eyes are kept as separate polymeshes. All you gotta do is mask everything except one eye, click on the S.Pivot button to change the centre of rotation to the centre of the eye, then use the Tools > Deformation menu to apply rotation to the eye. Once done, clear the mask and then mask everything except the other eye, and do the same thing.

It used to throw me too .. you mark all the parts of your model, then draw the whole thing with the MultiMarker tool. But there's one more step after that .. create Composite Mesh (in the MultiMarker modifier sub-menu). Clear the screen, select the new Composite Mesh from the tool menu, and draw that on screen. All your textures return and the parts can be masked and moved using the deformation options in the Tool palette.

[tez]

Thanks for the detailed info my friend that method works great shame I didnt read this before I did it the hard way lol. Heres my one.

http://img457.imageshack.us/img457/4617/a18lx.jpg (http://imageshack.us/)




http://img454.imageshack.us/img454/9256/alien1sm2ir.jpg (http://imageshack.us/)

[-WOODY-]

Yeah, I guess that's what my problem was, not having the surface perpendicular to the eyes in projection master when I picked it up. I first tried to make really big eyes, but because of the curvature of the head it made the polys displace in all different directions instead of straight forward.
By making the eyes smaller and moving them more torward the front of the face created a much flatter surface and gave better ( although not perfect ) results.

[tez]

The method has always been the same using multimarkers but now knowing how to rotate them afer polymesh is made is a nice added method to the way I was doing it.:tu:

[Moochie]

Nice eyes and lids, tez. Doing three is ambitious .. well done!

-Woody- : In PM, if there is a cross next to 'Normalized' when you pick up your model, any deformation to the underlying polygons will be in the direction of their surface normals. If you take the cross out of the 'Normalized' box before picking up, the deformations will only be along the Z axis .. ie directly towards you, the viewer.

[-WOODY-]

Well I'll be dipped, I never knew that. Just goes to show you, despite my severe stupidity, I can still learn something every now and then. :D

[guanoria]

Moochie,
Your tutorial link is broken. Just wondering if we can still get a copy of this tutorial?

[Moochie]

Sure thing!

http://www.pantsofpower.com/LIDZ.zip

[breakneck]

.avi format?? what supports that format?? please help me thanks!

[Moochie]

Almost all movie players support .avi. There are hundreds of free movie players available on the net if you don't have a suitable one on your machine.

[breakneck]

i don't know what i'm doing wrong. . . .windows media player wont play it, quicktime 7 won't play it . . any suggestions?

[Moochie]

Dunno .. I just downloaded the zip (should be 8.68Mb) and played the avi without problems. My WM Player is version 8. My best guess is that you don't have the latest DivX codec on your machine.

[breakneck]

probably, i'll try to update my media player. . .

[proimage]

Hi Moochie,


Is it possible that you re-host the LIDZ.ZIP quicktime movie, as I was interested in seeing such.

Thanks

[Moochie]

Sure http://www.pantsofpower.com/LIDZ.zip

But ZB3 will make this sort of technique unnecessary, with the new sub-tools.

[lemonnado]

There is a little detail I'd like to add. You can see Moochie smoothing the mesh in the end (blue ring cursor). The intensity is very high and we can see him struggling with the introduced distortions. The regular Zintensity slider does not work then, it only affects the draw intensity at that point. To make it work, open the transform tab, set the brush to SMOOTH, THEN and only THEN the intensity slider shows the values for the smoothing brush. I usually set it to 15-25 and the result is more manageable than the poly ripping 100%. Then set the brush back to the regular setting and model/smooth away happily. That is a very difficult to find little funktion/workflow. You either stumble across it or you never find that out. Many people HATE the smoothing brush because they do not know how to control it.
Lemo

PS:If the movie does not play, then you need a DIVX player.

[Moochie]

Thanks Lemo .. yeah, I didn't learn that until some months after I made that vid. Oh, the shame of it. :o Heh heh.

[lemonnado]

Yeah, it's those little idiosyncrasies which contribute to the common perception that ZBrush has a hard to learn user interface. It would be expected that the intensity slider changes to the smoothing intensity once the function is selected, but it does not. It seems that this design flaw made it through at that time.
Now it's a good conversation piece haha. Let's see how V3 is dealing with that. I'll lock myself in once I can get my hands on it.
Lemo

[Blaine91555]

Took me forever to stumble across that as you said. Thats a real good argument for a traditional manual. I hope.

I just popped in when I saw Moochies thread come up. I'm a Moochie Dropout :rolleyes:
Made the eyes never made the eyelids. I'm claiming AADD and I'm sticking to it.

[Moochie]

I'm a Moochie Dropout
Yeah, me too. But as soon as I've got my copy of ZB3 and started to learn the new tools, the Newbie Challenge will return!