3D retopo

So, last post for 3d1 and it is the one on facial scanning.

The first step on the journey to a true photorealistic self-insert in your game was to have tiny x makrs painted on your face with a ballpoint pen. The second step is to take a number of photos of the face from different angles and the X marks on the faces helped to clearly mark out points on your face that the software can later use as reference when making the 3d model based on our face.

These are mostly needed since we at the time was using a single camera and the photos needed to be taken separetly, if all the photos could have been taken at the same time from multiple angles there would have been no difference in the face between the pictures but as I cannot sit perfectly still there are going to be changes, my head is going so sway, my eyes will be looking at something slightly different, my lips will move and create errors, making the data harder to read and interpret properly.

After sending the photos through the appropriate software a highpoly model is created.

This model was later imported to 3d coat to begin the work of lowering the poly-count somewhat.

When working with 3d there is generally more than one way to do all things and when working with faces there are a few good ways to start. I chose to start with the left eye making a circle around the eye, careful to include the tear duct and eyelid thickness. From there I worked outwards in concentric circles until I hit the brow proper.

After that I started anew with the mouth, working in much the same way making circles. Then iDidi a rough count of the vertices of the upper lip and started to connect the eye with the mouth, first by way of the nose and then stitching it together outwards.

While doing this one should make sure that the star shape is in a place that does not move that much.

I must admit that working with my own face felt a bit odd, since I do not spend a lot of time in front of the mirror I am not too familiar with it as I am that of mot my classmates and seing a lot of it cast me off a bit.

Lastly on Photogrammetry I have to say that it seems rather usefull for some things, and could really help getting things just right. I have never really thought about how pineneedles gather on stones before I saw them on one of the stones the scanned, but it was just so right that they were there.

As to problems with the system I would say that the fact that tiling textures cannot be used is probably worse that the fact that someone needs to make a retopo of the original model. Huge parts of buildings in games are generally made up of a single square texture and if there suddenly is unique bricks for all the walls of a house instead of 80% of it using the same tiling brick texture there is going to be some difference in the amount of textures that need to be loaded.

//Max Norldund