Jung-Mi Han
January 21, 2005
Edit:April 5, 2005
CAD 2
Procedure: The general method utilized in this project was polygonal modeling. It employs an
initial 3d object and the various modification capabilities of a polygon object to reach the final
product.
For the head of this model a capsule object with several horizontal and vertical segments
was changed into a polygon object for manipulation. The polygon object was then cut in half
making the modeling procedure twice as efficient, as the face is naturally symmetrical.
Standard modification commands such as move, rotate and scale were used on vertices,
edges, faces, boarders, and polygons to achieve general structures, such as the nose and lips.
These elementary procedures were also fundamental in successfully creating convex surfaces
such as the cheeks and chin.
To create the concave spaces such as the eye sockets and mouth, the extrude and bevel
commands were used. Beveling the surface of the polygon into the inner space of the object
created a concave section of the surface. Extruding outward from the surface was used to create
features could not easily be created by simple movements of components. A feature of the head
that was primarily built with the use of extrusions and beveling were the ears.
Another capability that was highly employed was the cut command that allowed faces to
be cut into, if necessary, several separate faces. Creating faces was especially important when
using the move command to create features because without increasing the face count the model
would loose its details. In addition, increasing the face count on non-protruding surfaces was
vital in achieving a smoother surface when used in conjunction with the smooth view of the
model in the view-port window.
The half of the head was then cloned and mirrored. This created another half head object
that would need to be joined to the other half to create a full head. The two separate objects were
then made into one object by the Boolean join procedure. This created one object but the two
halves were still separate parts. The vertices joined together using the weld command to create a
full head model.
There were no appropriate materials in the materials library of 3ds to use on the model.
Therefore, a skin material was created using the Brazil Advanced material with the skin baseshader option. The defaults were changed to meet the specifications of the type of skin that was
appropriate for the model.
Texture mapping was a technique that was used to solve the details of the model. Instead
of modeling all the meticulous details it was more efficient to apply a UV texture map. The eyes
and hair were a result of texture mapping to coordinates. An iris texture was imported into 3ds
and applied to two spheres, while imported hair textures were mapped to thin boxes.
Building the hair material required three main components to achieve the overall
look of the hair. An original bitmap of the hair texture in color was imported as the Diffuse
Color map of the “hair” material in the Material Editor. The color image was then
converted into a grayscale representation in Adobe Photoshop and the levels adjusted to
achieve the optimum levels of black and white. This new image was then imported as the
Specular Color map of the material as to reduce the glossiness of the entire box and
highlight the strands of hair. This new grayscale image was adjusted adding gradients of
black in areas that would show transparent in the material. This image was imported as an
Opacity map in the Material Editor, and the information converted to show the parts in the
image that were black as transparent, white as opaque and a gradient of transparency in
accordance to the gradient levels of each color.
The hair was mapped onto a box and then poly modified. This secured the texture to
the original faces of the box. The hair was then built in layers on the head by shaping them
to fit the contours of the head. Due to the transparency of the textured boxes, many layers
were built on top of one another to increase the opacity of the hair.
Following the general procedures of polygonal modeling, material editing, and
texture application, other accessory components, such as the knit poncho, were added to
the character as supporting detail.