Today's lesson is on morphing. You might recognize this girl. Perhaps the hair or skin color gives her away. She used to be a guy.. =P But not exactly. The previous "Making Of" had Sensei and a guy whose model was used to create this girl's face. She might not look very good, but que cera cera... I wanted it to be a guy, but the girl worked out better, so I said heck with it. So I changed the eyes, eyebrows, hair, nose, mouth, and jaw to get her face. The eyes I decided to completely redo just so that the eyes wouldn't look alike. The eyebrows, I moved a few vertices into a different arrangement so that it's look less groomed. The nose was just a simple girlish nose, no big deal. For the jaw, I moved the wide part up and out, the thinner part I moved out and up also. The rest of the body is original. I just quickly connected a few dots and did a few calculations for the body parts. The legs didn't turn out too well. I think it started with the hips being too thin. But for a thirty minute CG lesson on morphing, I am going to let it be.
Well, I finally got the second character for Scene 3. He looks like a neanderthal. That's what I get for trying to use The Loomis Project to create anime figures. Well, it's not all that bad, but it doesn't work well with my style. More about my style in the next paragraph. But for now, I will teach you what I know about how to make a character. First, start with an image in your mind. If you wait until it's on paper or computer, you're certain not to get what you intend (since you intend nothing and will likely get something). Then, start with the jaw. The jaw is easy for anime because it's made of three steps that can be curved. The first is the chin. For guys, you want to make this almost horizontal. For girls, it must be very gentle. Then, the next step is the actual jaw. It should be 40-70 degrees from the vertical. That's a lot of spread, but I've seen both extremes used very well. Someone with a second step that is 40 degrees from the vertical will have a slender face no doubt about it. That means that the chin has to be wider and more horizontal and the third step has to be shallower. Someone with a second step that is 80 degrees from the vertical will have a wide face. This is good for girls, although at 80, they'll likely be chubby. A short second step works with 80 degrees well. The third step is the almost vertical part in front of the ear, often the cheeks. Most likely it will be close to vertical, but that depends on the second step a lot. From the third step to the hair is a semicircle pretty much. Well, this lesson should end there. I'll get on with eyes, ears, nose, hair, and mouth later.
Oh my gosh. I just lost a very long, very important lesson. *sigh* Haven't I learned yet to save often and backup even more often? I guess not. Here's the part that I want to rewrite:
This picture is to prove to the disbelievers that I really made a 3d website. I agree that it could be duped, but not perfectly without a lot of math. Thankfully, the mathematical calculations for the lighting was done for me by MilkShape 3d. It even did the rendering for me. How nice of it. But how exactly did I do it? Well, first I modelled it. I came up with a good idea and I built the thing in 2d. Then I pulled a few vertices out of the 2d plane. Those vertices look like they are bulging because they are bulging. So then in the 2d front view, I took a printscreen of it. That gave me a very nice looking object to work with. I then made some text with CorelDraw and put it onto the side and top. Then I cut it into four pieces so that it'd fit into a table nicely. Then I added the page list on the left. I really like how that works. It's an actual morphing 3d website. The morphing page list is a simple javascript code that turns on the display CSS. I like it a lot. Hopefully the poor Netscape users can see it. If not, get IE6. It's not as bad as you say...
