Tutorial

Completing the Head

In this lesson, you complete the head by restoring the connections between the main head surface nose, eyelids and ears. These surfaces are based on curves that reside on the surface of the head, but when you deleted the temporary U lofts, these curves were converted back to independent CV curves. You need to attach them again, to avoid seeing gaps when you render.

Attach the left ear again:

  1. Continue with the file from the last tutorial Mirroring and Lofting the Head.

  2. Go to the Surface sub-object level.

  3. Hide the ear surface. This will make it easier to see the curves.

  4. Go to the Curve sub-object level.

  5. In the NURBS Toolbox, turn on Create Normal Projected Curve. Click + Drag from the last curve in the left ear, the one that originally resided on the temporary surface, to the new head surface. When you release the mouse a new normal projected curve is created

    The new normal projected curve is is displayed in green rather than white, because it is a dependent curve. The old curve and the new curve occupy nearly the same location.

  6. Still at the Curve sub-object level, select the old curve, the white one, and press DELETE.

    DELETE is a shortcut for clicking Delete on the Curve Common rollout.

  7. Go to the Surface sub-object level and unhide the ear surface.

The last section of the U loft that forms the ear is gone of course because we deleted the old curve. Now we will insert the new curve inti the U loft surface.

  1. Select the ear surface.

  2. On the U Loft Surface rollout, at the bottom of the Modify panel, highlight the ------ End ------ marker in the U Curves list, and then turn on Insert.

    When you insert a curve into a U loft, it always appears above the highlighted entry. Highlighting the ------ End ------ marker makes the new curve the last one in the loft.

  3. When you move the mouse over the new normal projected curve, it is highlighted in blue to show you can add it to the U loft. Click the new curve while it is highlighted.

    Now the ear is connected to the head again.

  4. On the U Loft Surface rollout, turn on Auto Align Curve Starts if the surface appears twisted.

  5. You might have to turn on Flip Tangents to get the correct appearance of the ear.

  6. Repeat the previous steps, 4 through 12, for the right ear and eyelids

After the eyelids and ears are fully attached we need to fix the nose surface

  1. Go to the Surface sub-object level.

  2. Select the nose surfaces and delete them.

  3. Go to the Curve sub-object level.

  4. In the NURBS Toolbox, turn on Create Normal Projected Curve. Create two Normal Projection curve from the old CV Curves On Surface. The new Normal Projection Curves are the green one in the image below.

  1. Delete the old CV Curves On Surface

  2. In the NURBS Toolbox, turn on Create U Loft Surface. Create a one U Loft Surface from all the nose curves

  3. IF you examine the new surface we will see there is a hole on the bottom and top. You need to snap the Curve CVs to the ends of the Normal Projection curves. Use 3d snaps set to CV and Curve Ends as described earlier in these tutorials. You will most likely have to fix the CVs of the Eylids as well.

  1. After you snaps the CVs yout nose should look this on the the image below. Don't forget to fix the top of the nose as well.

All we need to do now is Mirror the Eye

  1. Go to the top level of the Nurbs object

  2. Select the eye object

  3. Choose Tools menu > Mirror. In the Mirror: World Coordinates dialog, leave X chosen as the mirror axis. Set the Offset to -3.5" (inches), choose Instance, and then click OK.

  4. Render the head. Your finished render should look like the image below.

  5. Save your work as StudentID#_BetterHead_final.max

This completes the tutorial for creating a Better Nurbs Head.

 

 


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