- This tutorial will focus on Creating a Head inside Mirai. but can be applied to pretty much any package. I chose to say Mirai because there is a definite lack of Mirai material available on the web. As this tutorial moves along, expect it to move up in difficulty a little. I chose to make a tutorial based on Modeling a head because in order to make a head I will be able to demonstrate a number of techniques, introduce you to a variety of tools, and put in some tips on how to use them a little more efficiently. also. I will try not to repeat things too much. so by the end this tutorial will get a bit general, unless i see a reason to explain something thoroughly. i might even change direction a little later down the road to try to get you a little more savvy on the mirais interface, know how to troubleshoot any problems that you might come accross.
Step1-References
- Get yourself some Reference Images. or make a sketch of what you want. ( personally i often get some reference/ inspiration images first, then use those as a reference to make a sketch, and finally start my models. heres a Few links that you might try to visit.
Step2-Setup
- I will be using Mirai 1.1 for this, with the environment variable. ( find out more about it on the Mirai Buletin Board over at ( http://www.izware.com )
- Make sure you have a Geometry Graph editor open. if you dont, then go to "file/ preferences/ geometry/ Camera/" and click on "always create camera graph". I will make use of this a lot throughout this tutorial, once i start working inside the mouth, or working around the eyes, ears, etc.
- the Struts plugin from http://www.edgeloop.com/ ( when you activate it , itll say its not working, dont worry about it. its a lie )
Step3-Lets Begin
- The picture above is of the character that i will be roughly making. so....
- lets start with a cube. ( press F5 ) choose cube. and press OK.
- above is the outline for selection modes. ( from left to right )
- if you right click on the icons then the collection mode will be active without having to select it.
- pick the top face of the cube, right click, and press extrude. now repeat 3 more extrudes from that top face.
- once you get your extrudes done. pick the 2 edgeloops that are in the middle ( illustrated on picture below. ) and scale them down.
- now we got the basic shape of the model. to make modeling a lot shorter though, we will get rid of one side of the model, and instance mirror. first lets cut the model in half. Go into body mode. ( you can choose the green square ontop of the window( 4th from the left ) or you can press B. while in body mode right click to bring up the menu. and middle click on plane cut. what this will do is bring up a menu with a number of options for truncating a part of the model. choose which side you want to keep. ( i usually leave it as default ( negative) ). press OK.
- after cutting the model rotate the view so you see the cross section of the model. right click, and choose Virtual Mirror. now pick that cross section face. you should now have a symmetrical model, which you can edit one side. and the other will be taken care of for you, and will be treated as if the points accross the middle of the model are welded together.
*(tip: while modeling, make sure that your cross section is always solid. what i mean is keep it one face. if you split that face. then a number of points on that new face will not be a part of the welded cross-section. you can always choose middle click to temporarely hide the Virtual mirror fix up the model, and then left click on Virtual mirror to unhide it again. ( reason for middle clicking is that you hide the mirror. and not delete it. so you dont have to set up the mirror again. you just hide and unhide quickly. )
Step-4 Dividing & Editing Shape
- Move a few points around until you have a more appropriate shape for the model.
- select the 2 edges that are running vertically and one at the side. then use the "Connect" command to slice through those edges and connect them with new edges. you should have 2 polygons on the front of the face. select the polys/faces on the front and the side of the head and press "edge divide". this will give us the neccessary polys to start working on the face.
- now its time to edit the profile till we have something that matches what we are going for. you can use the X,Y,Z hotkeys for your convenience to switch views. ( I have it set so that when I have the camera aim at those axes, it is temporarely switched to an orthographic view. this way i can more accurately edit the profiles. you can also use alt+X,Y, or Z to get the negative of any of those views. youcan manually switch in and out from perspective by pressing P ( note: the option for temp ortho align is inside preferences under Geometry/ Camera )
- move the points around and add edges using the connect command to areas that will help define your characters shape. (note: new users to mirai usually get frustrated with mirai because when you left click on move it constrains your transformation to the world axis. I find it good to always rotate the camera to a desired view, and then middle click on move to get a screen relative transformation. lets me get the points where i want them nice and fast.) you can also get into tweak mode by pressing "2" this will let you move points around without having to go through the menu. and it uses a screen relative move. ( this is also accessible through the icons above.) you can get back into menu mode by pressing "1"
- magnets are also a good thing to practice with to get your initial volume of your model set. to access the magnet select something , open up the menu, then hold ALT, and select any of the interactive commands under transformations and a few other commands. then you pick a point that will suggest the falloff. ( you can get to the magnet options by accessing the settings menu "CTRL+right click" on the viewport , and then selecting "settings")
- dont stay in ortho views for too long. because what often happens is a person spends too much time using ortho views for modeling, and their model will end up looking flat because they are modeling with no depth perception. so while you edit the points around make sure you go out of ortho and orbit around your model often to make sure the character looks good from all angles. that includes top view.
