Week 8

Ice Skater Character – Texturing & Eye Creation

Skin / Face Texturing

Now that all of the character had been modelled with exception of the Eyes, this week the main character mesh was textured using an array of custom created materials. The entire skin surface of the mesh was given a “UnWrap UVW” modifier which was flattened and exported as a  Jpeg. This UVW map of the character was given real skin and facial details using several images within Photoshop. This was then re-imported back into 3DS Max as a material which was applied to the character mesh to view the changes made within Photoshop in real-time. Retouching the UVW image to create a seamless skin texture was extremely time consuming, however the end result was particularly pleasing.

 

Flattened UVW Map & Checker Material Stretch Test

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UVW Map Texture Creation

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Final Rendered Skin, Face & Hair

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Leotard Texturing

The previously created leotard was also textured using the same technique involving a UVW map. A Lycra type fabric material was made in Photoshop with grey for the top half and red for the bottom, similar to the colour scheme of the outfit worn by “Maria Butryskaya” the female figure skater from the earlier researched video.

 

Leotard UVW Map

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Rendered Leotard

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Eye Creation & Texturing

Once all the texturing had been completed the last remaining section of the character to create was the eyes, these are a significant feature that help to portray emotions and personality. Due to this fact it was decided to create rather detailed looking eyes which would hopefully breathe life into the final character. In order to produce the eyes an online video tutorial ^[1] was followed as a guide and expanded upon. Firstly the a basic sphere was created this then had a concave section was made by deleting a large section of polygons to form the indented Iris area. A pupil was the produced simply using a circle spline which was purposely positioned directly over the concave area so that it intersected through the front of the eye. This spline could then be moved back and forth to simulate pupil dilation as required. The last portion of the eye created was the cornea / front lens which was achieved using a hemisphere in combination with a transparent and highly reflective material tinted a slight blue. This group of objects was textured then cloned for the other eye and centred accordingly in the eye socket.

 

Eye Creation

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Final Textured Eye

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The eyes were also tied to a “Look At – Constraint” which was applied to a green box “Helper Object”. This was done so that the eyes would rotate and follow the helper object, making it extremely be easy to control the direction in which the character is looking. This method also helps the eyes to move in unison and prevents the character from looking “cross-eyed” for example.

 

Eyes - Look At Constraint tied to Helper Object

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Final Rendered Face

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References

1. CG SWOT, 19th April 2010, 2010-last update, 3D Character Eyes: Video Tutorials Parts 1 - 4. Available: http://cgswot.com/tutorials/3d-tutorials/133-24-3d-character-eyes-part-1.html [May/02, 2010].