More Tips

The last meeting we had, I mentioned naming the objects correctly to make handling scenes easier for texturers and animators (even modellers adding to other people models). If you name an object such as a roof tile or something you know will be cloned many times, before the copy they will all inherit the same name such as "tile01" "tile02" and so on. Well I found a nifty tool today for renaming. Not actually hidden or anything, but theres so many tools in Max, I keep finding new things.

Its in Tools --> Rename Objects

You can select as many objects as you want, and the tool provides features to deal with the properly. In the screenshot I only had 6 objects all previously called plane. Also, do you notice the top toolbar has a dropdown menu? Thats for "selection sets" which are kind of groups of objects. In the image below, I used it to seperate objects into easily selectable groups. Unlike the annoying 'group' tool you can still deal with objects seperately if needed, which makes it handy for quick texturing, and changes such as scaling, without it acting as one big object like a normal group would. I mostly use it to hide/freeze/show things though, because when I'm modeling one type like ropes, its annoying to accidentaly select/move other things, and takes too long to find all the names etc to freeze them.

Modeling my face IV

I only worked on the eyes today. I was trying to get more detail around them, like eyelids, creases and so on.
Crease is a great tool to use on edges. You just select the edges push the button, and it puts a crease there! Nice and simple :)

The problem I just realised I've had, is that the area/shape around the eye changed without me noticing. I'd advise you, when using the relax tool, to keep an eye on the area around where you're working, because it can affect too much sometimes. Now I've got to tweak the nose, cheek and brow back to how it was :(

The face stuff is starting to get on my nerves, so after this I just want to get on with fixing it onto a head, and getting all that over and done with.

Oh, and something I would really suggest, is once youve got the general face shape, to put your front photo on as a texture. That way, instead of trying to look through it, and at different angles, you can actually move things slightly, to get them in the right place. It really helped me, because you can see if the nose is slightly too high, or if your creases are at the wrong angle etc. Anyway, if you want to do that, use UVW Map modifier on your face, and use the 'plane' type, and just move the gizmo around, and adjust the height/width to get it right. If your photo (like mine) is uneven, you can use the material editor to crop half, and mirror it in the settings above.

Tips!

I saw on Sam's Blog, she wrote about 3ds Max crashing and losing work, so I thought I'd share with you all some tips and the cool features Max offers.

• 3Ds Max by default, makes backups every 5 minutes. You can configure this in the 'Preferences' window, 'Files' tab. They are normally saved to:

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3dsMax8\Autoback

• *EDIT*
• 3Ds Max 9.0 seems to save in your Documents folder, instead of the program folder. On mine (Vista) its found in:

C:\Users\James\Documents\3dsmax\autoback

• In the 'Preferences' window, change the default "Scene Undo" levels. Its set on 20 or something ridiculous by default. Push it up to 500, so even when you make a huge amount of changes you undo them all.
• You can right-click the Undo buttons to see what changes were made, and jump back to them. Kinda like the Photoshop history tab. Not that useful, but handy when undo steps take ages because its a big file/low memory.
  
• When working on intense bits or you can tell the computer is struggling, just hit CTRL+S often, and you shouldn't lose a thing.
• Use versioning when saving, like face01.max face02.max and so on. I do this for major phases, like between modeling/mapping or just a new one for each hour/day. Then you have older versions to go back to. Keep in mind, some of the things you do in Max can't be undone. (for instance, converting object type and making animations from the physics engine which we will probably use.)

Oh and a few problems I found since I started using this program. These are annoying, because they happen so often, everyone gets annoyed by them yet they are so simple to solve!

• Everything turning into cubes when you move? It switches on when you use up too much memory, or just catch the key by accident. Use 'O' to toggle that on and off.
• The "Gizmo" (3 axis thing for controlling move/rotate/scale) disappeared? Just press 'X' to get it back.
• Wondering why when your working with vertex, you press a normal key to change the view and it screws up the whole object? Sorry, I haven't figured that one out yet! ;)

Hope that's some help, if you get any other weird shit happening you can't figure out, comment this post and I'll try to update it with a solution.

Modeling my face I

I've now moved out all the vertices, so that they are laid out in the 3 axis. I spent quite a long time tweaking it to get it as accurate to my face as possible. There needs to be more work done on the nose, eyes and lips obviously, but I'm happy with the rest of the facial structure. I think the defining parts of my face are the cheeks and brow region, they can make a face look very different if altered.
I did this in Uni before, but didn't save because I wasn't too pleased with it. I tried using my photo as a texture map for the face, but it was just for fun really, because I'll be making more changes, and I believe mapping should only begin after the modeling stage is complete.

I used a NURBS type mesh smooth, with 2 iterations to soften the edges, as you can see in the top two wireframe photos the amount of edges are increased. It's also useful because it means I now have more edges to play with, so I can actually define the detailed areas.

A few tips I'd recommend to everyone, that I found while doing this:

• Keep a mesh smooth filter on all the time, but don't adjust the vertices/cage of that, just flip back to the original blocky edges when you want to make adjustments, and see how it looks with the smooth on.
• Use NURBS smoothing, instead of quad or classic. They both produce unwanted details and blockyness.
• Use the Mirror tool (next to 'align' on the toolbar) and choose 'Reference' as the type of clone. It means you can keep working on just the half you want, and all changes will be updated to both sides! Remember to delete the reference after.
• Play with the opacity! You can see through your model onto the reference plates.
• As well as the reference plates, I found using UVW Map, Plane type on the model, with your photo as the texture, can help you see if some parts are slightly off. Also comes in handy when working in Perspective as opposed to the left and front only views.
• When its complete, take off the smooth first, use Mirror again to create a clone, attach the halves, and weld vertices. Then reapply the smoother of your choice.

I'm eager to continue, but I think I'll watch a few more of the tutorials first, and maybe wait until Friday. That's all for now!