Week Three Lesson Five
Creating a Cartoon Head using Subdivision Surfaces
Now that we have created a few organic shaped items using Subdivision Surfaces, let’s
look at how easy the character modeling process can be using these powerful tools. With its
ability to create smooth, seamless meshes, subdivision surface modeling is perfectly suited for
creating characters for your animation. Obviously, I’m not saying we’re ready for Hollywood or
anything at that level, but we can create some very effective and appealing characters.
Today we’re going to create a character head model using Subdivision Surfaces. As is
the case with most SubD models, we’re going to begin this one by just creating a simple box.
Without any further ado, let’s open up Modeler and begin.
1.
Start up Modeler. Select the Box tool and just hit the “n” key to open the Numeric panel
and simultaneously create the default 1m x 1m box. Click on the Box tool again to
deactivate it.
2.
Next, go to the Multiply tab. Here you will find the Subdivide group of tools. Click on the
Subdivide tool and its dialogue box will pop up. Select Metaform and just leave
everything at the default values and hit Ok. Now you should have a 24-sided shape that
looks more rounded (Figure 1). The reason you made a box and subdivided it instead of
making a ball, is that you want only four-sided polygons in our mesh, remember? Notice
that the Metaform tool subdivided our box and retained only four sided polygons in the
process.
Figure 1
3.
In order to get a better idea of what our character looks like as we work, we need to turn
on the Subdivision Surface mode. Hit the Tab key to activate the SubD mode. Already we
can see how the SubD mode smoothes out our low polygon object (Figure 2).
Figure 2
4. We have a kind of general shape for our character’s head, but now we need to add some
features. We can start by giving this guy some eyes. First we need to create the sockets
for the eyes to fit into. Working in the Right Side view, Use the Drag tool to move the
points indicated in Figure 3 to the location shown in Figure 4.
Figure 3
Figure 4
5. See how easy that was, we already have the general features of a character head and
we’ve only just begun. Let’s give our guy a surface. Type “q” to open the Change Surface
panel and enter a name for the new surface. I called mine “head_surface”, but you can
name yours anything, as long as you remember what name you pick. After you have
entered a name, pick a base color and click the Smoothing check box to apply surface
smoothing to the mesh.
6. Now we need to fashion a mouth for our character. In the Right view window, select the
two polygons that are in the area just below the nose of the object, as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5
7. We’ll use these polys to create our mouth, but first we need to add another row of
polygons in to create an upper lip area between the nose and the mouth. A great tool for
adding geometry to an existing by dividing existing polygons is the Bandsaw Pro tool
found on the Multiply tab of Modeler. Locate the Bandsaw Pro button and click it. At first,
nothing happens, so open the Numeric interface for the tool by hitting “n” on your
keyboard. Click in the “Enable divide” checkbox and leave everything else at the defaults.
The Bandsaw Pro tool will automatically select all the polygons on the same row of
geometry as the two adjacent ones we selected and divide them in the center along the
same contour as the edges. The important thing to remember about this tool is that if you
start with four point polygons (which we did), it produces nothing but four point polygons
and it enables you to divide polys that would be difficult, or impossible to divide with the
Knife tool. Close the Bandsaw Pro panel, close the numeric panel, then deselect the
Bandsaw Pro button. You should see the selection go all the way around our mesh,
dividing the lower middle row of polygons neatly in half. (Figure 6)
Figure 6
8. Now deselect all but the lower, front-facing two polygons, by clicking and dragging over
the ones you want to deselect. When finished, your selection should look like that in
Figure 7.
Figure 7
9. Select the Smooth Shift (Shift + f) tool from the Multiply tab. Right-click to activate the tool
without any Offset or Scale. Now select the Move (t) tool and in the Right view, move the
selected polys back about halfway into the head to create a mouth cavity.
10. Ok, now that we have the hole for the mouth, let’s give the inside a different color. You
still should have the back two polygons selected. We can grow the selection one row at a
time by using the “Shift + ] “ keyboard shortcut or clicking on the Expand tool in the
Selection group on the Display tab. Performing this action just once selects all the inner
mouth polygons. Now open the Change Surface panel, type in a name for the new
surface, and select a color for the inner mouth. Since mine is orange, I selected a darker
orange color for the inner mouth surface Figure 8
Figure 8
11. Let’s make our character some eyes next. Select Layer 2 as the new foreground layer
and put Layer 1 into the background. Select the Ball tool and enter the values to match
Figure 9. Click on the Ball tool again to deselect it.
Figure 9
12. Select the Rotate (y) tool. Place the cursor over the center of the ball in the Back view,
and rotate it in a counter-clockwise fashion until the Info Box at the bottom left of the
Modeler interface reads 24 degrees. The oval shaped eyeball should be leaning toward
the center of the head.
13. Open the Change Surface panel. Name the new surface “eyewhite” or something similar
and click on the color swatch to open the system color picker. Select a white color and
click in the Smoothing checkbox. Click Ok to apply the texture to the eyeball.
14. Now select the front three rows of polygons at the forward facing pole of the eyeball
(Figure 10). Open the Change Surface panel and call this new surface “pupil” and choose
a black color. Click Ok to apply the surface.
Figure 10
15. Select the Mirror tool (Shift + v) from the Multiply tab and click and drag straight down
along the Y-axis to mirror the eyeball over to the other side.
16. Hold the Shift key down and select layers 1 and 2 together to see what the character
looks like now. It should look somewhat like Figure 11.
Figure 11
You can try adding detail and features of your own using some of the methods we have
covered in the previous lessons dealing with Subdivision Surfaces, such as bandsawing the nose
area and move the resulting vertices to create a more detailed nose. You can see, even from this
really basic example, that creating things like characters is much easier to do with this fun and
powerful method of modeling. Try moving some of the individual vertices around to affect the
shape of the character head. If you feel adventurous, you might even try making some teeth, or
even a body for the head we created in today’s lesson. Whatever you do, remember to save often
to protect your work. It’s always better to have 3 copies of the same thing than to have none at
all.
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