Small Update

Just posting the updated, rendered turntable. It still needs fixes, but I'm feeling a need to move on to something else. I'll probably still do the hair research and post updates of that as I figure things out.

Face Model Changes

We're on reading week now so since I finished my marking yesterday I thought I'd fix some of the most glaring issues with my face. Er... my CG face that is.

Firstly, since I rushed the texture painting process, I went back and painted out my double chin. This one isn't as obvious in the render, but combined with the geometric problems, it made me look fat. But I was still thin. But I looked fat. It was weird.

Next, using my favorite Sculpt Geometry tool in Maya, I went in and pushed my jaw and chin around, tweaked my lips, massaged around my eyes, and adjusted my ear ridges. Some of these modifications are more subtle than others, but in the end, I think this looks tons better. I still haven't done any real hair, but I've been playing with paint effects hair in Maya and perhaps I'll try and get a beard going first before I move on to real, styled hair.

As a last thing to look at, I've never been happy with the way blogger deals with videos, so I've gone back to my Face Off project and compiled a movie showing my progress because that is what I had originally built my face model for. So here's a breakdown of the five segments:

1- Previs. I needed a video to explain to the wife what she was filming and why. This also helps with the timing of when certain actions have to happen.

2- Proof of concept. Once it was filmed and I had it all tracked, I took my face model, put a chrome shader on it and loaded in the HDRI I took of my kitchen. It seemed to be good.

3- Next was a roto/CG test. I wanted to see that I could actually get my fingers looking like they were on top of the CG model of my face coming off. I used projection mapping to attach the texture to the face. I grabbed that right from the video footage.

4- After taking off the face, I wanted to see what it would look like with the hole that is left over. This is pretty rough, but started to give an idea of how much work was ahead. How much? Lots.

5- Lastly, I just wanted to see how it was all coming together so I grabbed a skull model I had, modified it, put a chrome shader on it and comped it all together. This really showed me just how hard this was going to be with the hand moving on top. If I was smart I would have filmed two versions (one without the hand motion) and I might have actually finished this project.