Blog report week 08

Facial scanning

During week 8 we were working with modelling human faces. One exercise we did during class was that we used a 3D scanned head and cleaned up the topography. Werther you wanted to use your own face or not was up to everyone to decide. I decided to use a head from http://www.123dapp.com/Gallery/catch, an Autodesk site where you can make 3D scans from photographs. I did this simply because I am not comfortable with seeing myself from all thinkable angles.  So how do you make a 3D scan? If you do it on the 123D Catch site it is kind of easy because the software will do all the work. You take photos of the object you want to scan from several angles, the picture beneath is the pictures from my classmate Christoffer’s 3d scan. The amount of photos you have will determine the quality of the scan because the software will have more information to match so the more the merrier.

When you have taken the photos you can upload them to 123D Catch and the software will make the scan for you. When that is done you can download the model, preferably as an .obj, so that you can open it in your 3d software.

The next part of the exercise was to change the topography of the scanned model. We did this in 3D Coat. When you do a face in 3d that is supposed to be able to move and to be animated it is very important to have a good and functional edge flow.

What we did is that we used the Retopo feature in 3D Coat and drew our new edge flow on top if the model. The program makes sure that the shape of the face stays the same. This is my attempt on the edge flow.

When doing a model of the face there are some very important features to think about and that you start the whole model with. They are the eyes and the mouth. In most cases you should start the model by doing the eyes with the oval loops you can see in green in the picture above. After you’ve done the first loops you will connect both eyes with another, mask shaped loop. Then you can start doing the mouth in a similar way. In this case I did not come that far on the topology but you can see in he picture above mine how the loops around the mouth should look. After you have done the eyes and the moth you connect them with the nose bone and then you do the nose. The lines from the mouth and eyes will also connect on the cheekbones.

After reading the article about the Photogrammetry’ in ‘The Vanishing of Ethan Carter I was very impressed by the work they did and the result they got with Photogrammetry in their game. The exercise we got with the scanned face put the work that they did in perspective. I think that it seems to be a great way to create more realistic and credible surroundings in games, something that not all games focus on but something I really value in games. The fact that they can make an environment with a wide range of textures and objects will make games feel much more alive and hopefully inspire more game developers to put more focus on the world their game is set in. Another thing I thought about is how 3D scanning may make it easier to make more open doors in games. As it is now many games located in inhabited places have to have a lot of locked doors because it is too hard to fill every building with rooms. By 3D printing buildings it might be possible to make interiors and the player will be able to have a bigger sense of freedom in the world they play in.