A Stylized Face/head

[conde3d]

Hi, I've been learning Maya by myself for about a month now, but you can only go so far by just looking at books and tutorials. I hope that I'll learn a lot here! Thanks for the help in advance.

(More images coming soon, my USB key is miniscule and there's no connection where I am usually)

Right now, I'm trying to do hair, but I'm having problems with that... it just doesn't look good. I don't have Maya Hair, so I'm just using a bunch of NURBS surfaces with transparency maps on them. Is it bad to have both nurbs and polys on your model...?

And how do I apply a 2D bump map and a 3D bump map at the same time? I'm sur, e it's possible, and I saw how to do it on the help file, but I can't do it, somehow...

Thanks once again.

[conde3d]

Here are more pictures:

Wireframes (before smoothing):

I'm having trouble with the skeleton, also... it doesn't rotate properly about the y-axis. It just sort of wobbles. Can anyone tell me what is wrong?

Thanks again.

[e321]

Hey there not bad for only a month - a word of advice - slow down take your time do it right the first time keep it up and stuff just starts to naturally come to you. I don't know if you have it but look into pelt mapping for maya its on here somewhere in the downloads that will help with your hair. Paint it nice and slow . - Books are great, tutorials are really great, movies are even better check into digial tutors great videos always try what you find messing up makes you figure it out and remember it always.

Your model - check the curves on a ladys body - pictures etc - way to go on fingers, toes, eyelashes and ears after a month you actually made them thats awsome... your mesh is a bit messy look at some of the wireframes on really nice characters floating around here... You can make excellent hair exactly the way you did it already just take your time on the mapping.

[conde3d]

Hey, thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate it!
Haha, maybe I should slow down. I didn't want to spend too long on one model. This one already took me long enough.

Pelt mapping? I thought that was for quadrupeds. Oh well, maybe I'm mistaken -- I do have problems with UVs anyway, so in any case, I think that will help. Thanks.

About the model itself, it was supposed to be sort of stylised -- I wasn't really going for realism at this point, although I really should have before attempting this. I guess it didn't really work! The reference picture that I drew was all pear-shaped. Although, somehow, the model got even MORE pear shaped while I was making it, rofl. I know the fingers and feet are really bad, I was thinking that it would look better once I got around to posing them... nah, didn't happen.

Finally, the most important thing - messy meshes? I realise that it is, but how exactly do I go about fixing it? Do I really have to fiddle with each individual vertex until it's all nice and neat? Nooo... I don't wanna do that... I'm too lazy...

But anyway, you were a great help, thank you!

[jer133]

you might want to put more isoparms in the nurbs hair or mess with the advanced tesselation in the nurbs setting as the hair is looking a bit jaggy.. It is a good model, very cute. Keep up the good work.

[kdf]

I like your model. Although I help folks render their Maya files here at the farm I really don't know how to use the software for modeling. I do have a an appreciation for artistic things and this model pretty good.