Figure 1
STEP 2: Go to the layer that contains the faces of the head. Set the Perspective View display type to "Wireframe Shade."
STEP 3: Type q to bring up the "Change Surface" panel. Assign a surface called "Kara Face" to everything, with Smoothing turned on and the same color values as the face and skin surfaces of the body (such as RGB 204 183 167).
STEP 4: Now for the hair. Hit the Tab key to convert everything to SubPatches -- we need a better idea of where the "hairline" should fall.
STEP 5: Select the polygons shown in Figure 1. Give them a surface called "Kara Hair," with Smoothing turned on and a yellow color for now (such as RGB 179 171 098).
Figure 1
Not as...elegant as it could be, no? We need a nice diagonal line of SubPatches to get a nice diagonal hairline. We could try using Spin Quads to get our diagonal lines...but we can also try a more direct approach.
STEP 6: Select all polygons, then go into Points Selection Mode.
Select the four points on the tip of each "staircase" SubPatch, and type
Ctrl-l (that's a lowercase "L") to Split the selected geometry along these
points. (Figure 2)
Figure 2 |
Figure 3 |
STEP 7: Select the triangle SubPatches that border the hairline and assign the "Kara Hair" surface to them. It should look like Figure 3.
That's about as much surfacing as can be done for now. Let's move on to point selection groups. This will make it easier to select the points that we want for morph targets later on.
STEP 8: Go into Point Selection Mode and deselect everything. Hit the Tab key to convert everything back into polygons. Select just those ten points that border the eye. Then go to Display > Grouping > Point Selection Sets to bring up the Point Selection Sets panel. Enter "Kara Eye" for the Point Set name, leave "Remove Points" unchecked (we want to mark these points as part of a group, not "unmark" them), and click on OK. (Figure 4)
Figure 4
Note: To see how this works, deselect all points. Then type w to bring up the Point Statistics panel. At the bottom of this panel, you should see a greyed-out text string called "(none)." Left-click on this to select existing point groups from a drop-down list. In this case, select "Kara Eye." Then left-click on the white plus sign next to "Kara Eye." All points marked "Kara Eye" will now be selected!
Now for the mouth. Sometimes the points lining the inside edge of the mouth can be hardest to grab when modeling. Let's mark them now, to make our job easier in the future.
STEP 9: Deselect everything. Select the seven points that rim the inside of the mouth. Use Point Selection Sets to create a point set called "Kara Mouth (Inside Edge)." (Figure 5)
Figure 5
STEP 10: Deselect everything. Select all of the points of the lips -- including the ones you had selected in the previous step. Use Point Selection Sets to create a point set called "Kara Lips (All)."
The points that rim the inside of the mouth now belong to both "Kara Mouth (Inside Edge)" and "Kara Lips (All)," proving that a point can belong to as many groups as you like. Think of it as the point equivalent of joining a club. A high school student might belong to an art club and a science club -- he is not forced to pick one over the other. His name will be listed on the rosters of both clubs. So, too, can a point belong to both "Kara Mouth (Inside Edge)" and "Kara Lips (All)" -- it is not forced to pick one over the other. It can be listed on the rosters of both point groups.
Note: Points live the good life. Not only does a point get to have as many weight values as it wants, but it also gets to subscribe to as many point group memberships as it likes. Whee!
STEP 11: Save this object as head06.lwo.