Summer Glau in 3d.... by Dinky

BLUE SUN ROOM

Summer Glau in 3d....

POSTED BY: DINKY
UPDATED: Sunday, March 19, 2006 17:14
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Friday, February 24, 2006 12:17 AM

Some people may have remember me posting a pencil sketch of that camera shot in Objects in Space, in that post I mentioned that I was thinking about making her (Summer) in 3d! Well I thought about it for a week or so.... And yesterday I started work in Maya 6.5 on Summer Glau in 3d.

I don't have much done! And I don't want to show anyone the early product (because early products of 3d models look like CRAP) but I am getting close to finishing her nose, so I figured I would take a shot of that :P. Sort of as a little teaser heh.

EDIT: IMPORTANT NOTE!!! This is only one side of her nose/face. It's important that you know that 3d Modelors just work on half of the face, then when they are complete with the model they Duplicate that side with a -1 scale to create a mirrored model, then merge them.

But I also have a huge request!! You can see in the background in that image is a picture of Summer from Serenity and that's the only good profile photo I could get of her. I also have one for a straight look at the front of her face.

BUT! I would be interested in better Front/side photos of her head/face!!! If you have or know of any, lemme have'em please!

Oh and the project could take something like a month or two, I'm a busy busy boy.

I hope this is the right part of the forum to be posting this :). Now I'm off to bed! It's 5:16 AM!

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Friday, February 24, 2006 9:17 AM

Shiny, can't wait to see how that turns out. Let's just hope a 3d River doesn't cause your computer to go all... bendy ;p

________________________________________________
You can take my hope when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

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Friday, February 24, 2006 4:31 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by nuclearday:
Shiny, can't wait to see how that turns out. Let's just hope a 3d River doesn't cause your computer to go all... bendy ;p

I don't understand what ya mean!!

But anyway, I got to start work on it again about 5 minutes ago, and here's pretty much ultra-near finished nose. Well... I will probably tweak with it later but this is finished enough that I will begin work on other areas of her head. Probably work more on the mouth.... Make an ears...

I just can't wait to start on the hair!! I love Maya Hair simulations!

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Friday, February 24, 2006 4:54 PM

hopefully they're better than they were in 4.5...the hair simulation was alright then but not quite right...or at least i never got it quite right. I'm more of a set-up/animation guy...haven't done it in quite a while, though.

/me looks at his useless college degree

good work, though ;)

---
http://www.xffx.net/blog <-inching towards daylight

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Friday, February 24, 2006 4:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by LightMeDark:
hopefully they're better than they were in 4.5...the hair simulation was alright then but not quite right...or at least i never got it quite right. I'm more of a set-up/animation guy...haven't done it in quite a while, though.

/me looks at his useless college degree

good work, though ;)

---
http://www.xffx.net/blog <-inching towards daylight

Thanks!!!

As far as I knew everything before Maya 6.0 only had Maya Fur. Maya Hair was brand new at 6.0.

Wasn't it?

But yet, I hope to go to college and do 3d animation and 2d animation. I hope to get into Game Developing, if not then Cinema or something like that.

I'm only 16 though.

EDIT: Oh and I gots an image of my 6.5 toolbar. Do you remember a Hair Tab??

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Saturday, February 25, 2006 11:25 PM

I just wanna update and make sure and tell everyone that I am still working on it.

The face is really starting to look like Summer, but she still looks weird without ears or hair or a neck... Or a jaw (without the neck the jaw doesn't really show... Err atleast I don't bother making it until I make a neck).

But I'm working on her ear now!! I just started a while ago, check out the image of work in progress!!!

UPDATE: Ear + more Progress:

Update 2: And yet another Ear update:

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Sunday, February 26, 2006 11:55 AM

I know 4 and 4.5 had fur...don't think it had hair. I think I used PaintEffects to do the hair...it actually was pretty decent, but I'm sure the Hair simulation in 6.5 is much better.

Keep at it, if you go the way you are now you'll do just fine. Good luck with your future as an animation artist ;)

---
http://www.xffx.net/blog <-inching towards daylight

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Sunday, February 26, 2006 1:02 PM

Yeah Maya Hair is actually pretty amazing.

Check out page 8 of this PDF.

http://downloads.alias.com/mkt/gmk_maya7_technicalfeatures.pdf

I remember when they first introduced Maya Hair there was a video around for it... I just can't find it.

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Wednesday, March 1, 2006 10:36 PM

Haven't updated this post in a while, nor have I had time to work on the model the last two days. But I pretty much finished the ear today!!

Now I gots to connect it to her head.

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Sunday, March 5, 2006 10:03 PM

I haven't really been updating. So here's an update!!

1. Ignore the eyes.

2. Ignore the baggy saggy lower ear part (the Lobule). Summer has an ear that the Lobule connects straight to her jaw skin. I will have it like this, I just haven't gotten around to it.

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Saturday, March 11, 2006 5:29 PM

I haven't been posting here!

I've got tons more screenshots posted elsewhere, and her head/face looks better now than the older shots here.

But anywho! I've done her torso, but that has nudity so I can't show you that! But I've also been working on her Arm and Hand. I recently merged the two models (the arm and hand) so I took a shot... Here's the latest:

Still needs work, but it's a nearly finished lo-res arm.

UPDATE: One more image

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Saturday, March 11, 2006 5:45 PM

I've had some experience in Maya, but I could never do anything close to this, great work so far.

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Saturday, March 11, 2006 5:48 PM

keep it up, and keep updating us...i'm interested to watch it progress

---
http://www.xffx.net/blog <-inching towards daylight

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Saturday, March 11, 2006 6:12 PM

Thanks!

Yay I love positive feedback :).

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Saturday, March 11, 2006 6:45 PM

It looks great! Please don't leave us in the dark; keep us updated--lots of pics

I want to see how this turns out. Hurry!

«°-:-°»
Also... I can kill you with my brain.

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Saturday, March 11, 2006 7:20 PM

BROWNCOATSANDINISTA

Apart from the obvious shiny factor (And oh how shiny is this?) what are you going to do with this? What will the end product be? Can this be applied to a video game as a skin?

If anyone gets nosy...Shoot em.
Shoot em sir?
Politely.

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Sunday, March 12, 2006 2:56 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by BrowncoatSandinista:
Apart from the obvious shiny factor (And oh how shiny is this?) what are you going to do with this? What will the end product be? Can this be applied to a video game as a skin?

If anyone gets nosy...Shoot em.
Shoot em sir?
Politely.

Well, the finished version of her will be fully Textured with a Color map, probably a Diffuse Map for making her skin look realistic, and possibly a bump map if I feel I need one, but she is of course female and Summer has great skin so there really isn't much need for a bump map (a bump map or normal map makes things like scratches, scars, or anything that goes in or out look as if it's there on the geometry when it actually isn'). But then again now that I think about it a bump map would do well for veins.

After she's all textured up the only things left to do with the model would be to give her Hair, with actual hair simulations using Maya Hair. Not cheap imitation Geometry with a texture and some transparency slapped on it :P.

After the hair it'd be time to make her dress and simulate that using Maya cloth. Which I find will be the most difficult =/.

And after all that I may give her some movement animations. But as for a game model, I didn't design her as a game model. Game models are a lot less polygon that what this will be. Not only that but the texture maps I will be giving her will be pretty high resolution, maybe 1024x1024. Games today really only use 512x512. And I would have to remake her hair so that it would work in the game engine that I would be importing it into, and give her the dress as pure geometry, not a simulate.

In other words, no it wouldn't be possible to put this model (when it's finished) into any current game, or any near future games for that matter.

But after I am finished with River I may make the whole crew... The next one would be Jayne since he's my next favorite :). Not only that he's got lots of weapons and stuff on his belt, so that would be fun to make/animate. But that's only a possibility. Being 16 I am preparing a lot of stuff into a portfolio for colleges and job market.

Boy this is a long post, I'll stop here.

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Monday, March 13, 2006 6:50 AM

I've pretty much already finished her leg geometry. It's just nothing special because it's a female leg... What I mean by that is that it's very smooth, it doesn't look like anything really until I get a texture on it which probably won't be until May =/.

But I moved on to her feet, and I got her big toe and index toe done, then I'll just make the rest of the toes (except the pinky toe) out of duplicates of the index toe. The pinky toe I'll have to make from scratch like the big toe because it's not really the same as the others :).

Here's the latest screenshot on what I got so far.

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Monday, March 13, 2006 8:34 AM

Yay! Foot = more done. (not done yet though.)

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Monday, March 13, 2006 8:45 AM

Quote:
3d Modelors just work on half of the face, then when they are complete with the model they Duplicate that side with a -1 scale to create a mirrored model, then merge them.

How curious. Perhaps that's why a computer-generated 3-d face model is rarely entirely convincing when examined carefully? People never have truly symmetrical faces, and when you just mirror image somebody, it looks very weird.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

They couldn't take the sky from them.
Our Big Damn Heroes made a film!

... C'mon Universal, and greenlight a sequel...

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Monday, March 13, 2006 8:46 AM

I should say it's rarely convincing if the face is a familiar one. We humans know something ain't right there when we see it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

They couldn't take the sky from them.
Our Big Damn Heroes made a film!

... C'mon Universal, and greenlight a sequel...

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Monday, March 13, 2006 9:49 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by grizwald:
I should say it's rarely convincing if the face is a familiar one. We humans know something ain't right there when we see it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

They couldn't take the sky from them.
Our Big Damn Heroes made a film!

... C'mon Universal, and greenlight a sequel...

Maybe you should spend some time browsing the http://www.cgsociety.org/ news pages and forums. You might learn a thing or two about Photorealistic 3d art.

Artists spend years studying the anotomy of human being's entire bodies, and especially faces.

When someone is talking to you or making faces at you, their face is not perfectly symmentrical, nor is it when they are just relaxing their face. It's because of human muscle growth that two sides of the face are even noticibly different, your bones are about the same on both sides, and when they are different you are either 1) severally disfigured or 2) You have a very small difference, like just a little piece of bone proding out of smoothness, and THAT makes no difference in the two sides of your face.

Now when an animator animates a face, with all proper shaders, textures and all, it's extremley difficult to tell anymore.

Have you seen The Chronicles of Narnia?? You know that Lion that's in that movie?? Completely fake. They never had a lion on set anywhere. King Kong is another example, King Kong himself is very photorealistic, though the other things that the artists didn't spend too much time on color correction or shader work is what got noticed, like the Computer Generated Cars that King Kong slammed around, now those didn't look so real, but King Kong himself looked as if they were filming a giant sized gorrila.

You're right, we humans can tell when something looks out of place. But guess what is making the art in the first place? A human. You think a robot makes this art? If the artist notices something is wrong, he'll change it.

How fake does this look?

EDIT: OH and in-case you didn't notice the following two images are NOT MY WORK

The Following can be found at http://www.cgtalk.com forums!!!
By Rich Wright at http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?threadid=327194 :

Or this?

By Ershad Rahbar at http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=328245&highlight=Ershad :

Take Alias' Fake or Foto Challenge you can find here: http://www.alias.com/eng/etc/fakeorfoto/quiz.html One or two are pretty easy to tell, but that quiz is a few years old.

Also, take a look around what artists can do with an application called ZBrush, www.zbrushcentral.com

And now time for me to post more work of my own. I've connected her foot and leg and made her ankle :). Still got more work to do.

By Me:

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Monday, March 13, 2006 9:56 AM

My goodness, you certainly missed my point!

1. I was not attacking you or your work in any way, shape or form, computer-generated OR natural. No need to defend yourself from ME.
2. I should have edited my first post rather than adding a second, as it would have clarified things.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

They couldn't take the sky from them.
Our Big Damn Heroes made a film!

... C'mon Universal, and greenlight a sequel...

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Monday, March 13, 2006 10:18 AM

I didn't know I said that I was defending my work... (by this I mean I wasn't offended, nor did I think you were attacking my work, even if you did, I wouldn't care.)

I was just trying to prove to you that humans can be fooled. Believe me, in todays tech it can be.

Believe me, I probably won't be able to get Summer to look photo realistic. Maybe close though if I can figure out Render nodes well :).

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Monday, March 13, 2006 12:11 PM

cloth simulation is fun, hehe.

When I model (which isn't often, I'm an animator) and I copy one side over, i tend to make some changes to both sides after merging to create a more natural look by creating some differences.

---
http://www.xffx.net/blog <-inching towards daylight

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Monday, March 13, 2006 12:28 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by grizwald:
How curious. Perhaps that's why a computer-generated 3-d face model is rarely entirely convincing when examined carefully? People never have truly symmetrical faces, and when you just mirror image somebody, it looks very weird...

Oh, there's a term for that... the uhm... oh, great now I forget the word. Uncanny valley? Something something valley...

Oh well, whatever it's called, the theory is that the closer we get to true photorealism, the more pronounced the errors become (seeing as how on a subconscious level we humans are experts of human anatomy, etc.) I think the term comes from how if you chart the audiences 'suspension of disbelieve' in films ranging from very cartoony to actual film, you'd see a dip or 'valley' when you approach photo-realism, with it coming back at say 95% or so.

Say with hand-drawn animation, we expect that the characters aren't going to look just like real people. Then you get to like the Final Fantasy movie, or Advent Children. There's spots where your eye is tricked, but often when you see the face in motion, we subconsciously recognize that it's lacking in certain subtle facial cues, etc...

Anyways, that ran on quite a bit longer than I'd planned. Looking forward to seeing how River turns out. I certainly never had the patience to do much more than play around with 3D, all you modelers out there certainly have my respect ;p

________________________________________________
You can take my hope when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006 6:22 PM

Hey all, I've completed her body Geometry! But I got no screenshots of that now :P.

Sorry, I haven't been updating at all because life has been keeping me busy! But fortunetly, I've found some time to start work again! So I've started on her Hair.

Now the screenshot below is me working IN MAYA. That means that the hair and everything in it is low res, and NOT RENDERED!!! When you Render, all your full quality settings go into operation, and you get a better, higher quality product. But since there wouldn't be much to show in the Render that would be much different than my current stuff, I decided why not just show you a screenshot of the workspace??

But I just want to make sure that you all know that this is a very EARLY stage in her hair development.

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 6:04 PM

Yay!! I'm giving River the boot!!! The Serenity Boot!!!

It's still early in development, but after it's done I will just duplicate it -1 with a pivot at coordinate 0 so I don't have to do much work to make a second boot for the other foot :P. But this is it so far:

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 6:21 PM

Another!! More developed!

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 7:19 PM

More details added!!!

If anybody has a problem with me sorta' spammin' my own thread, lemme' know.

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 8:49 PM

I see a lot of similarities in this, but I don't know if it's the artist in me or what, but the nose doesn't even look CLOSE to the one in the picture of River. The flared outside curve of the nostril is too high, her nose curves down too much - Summer's curves up and is rounder, and the lower outer edge of the nostril is too low and sorta bulges down, where Summer's is very lightly arched UP.

I've tried making characters in the Sims 2 modeller - only one, the good Cap'n, and I don't envy anyone trying to match them very closely. That's as advanced as I have the money to spend on the program to create it.

I'm sure this program isn't easy - so I certainly give you TONS of credit on the efforts so far - they're awesome.

I just can't help but see that there's a LONG way to go on a lot of the facial features before she really looks like Summer.

You know you want it - http://www.shadesiren.com

You know you need it - http://www.oberonrpg.com

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 8:55 PM

Oh yeah believe me, I went through tons of Image planes to find the right ones. And when I do I find others, and I match those up and they match correctly.

It's just that in other images I find her nose in different poses and such, but in the screenshots I have here. Well I could take proper comparison shot sand they would work out well. But believe me, I keep staring at it and it's not right for me either. I'll work on it when I feel like it. Right now I'm getting the harder stuff out of the way (Hair and Cloth).

That's why I haven't made her teeth or eyes yet.

Then again I should note (I usually avoid doing so). I'm not looking for Critique unless I'm asking for it. I don't mean to sound rude, but I know how to get my stuff done.

Critique when I don't ask for it hurst me =/. No matter how good the intention may be.

:'(

EDIT: Oh and you should also consider the angle of the camera in the photo, and the angle of the camera I have setup. It's a little higher and farther around to the right so... Ya. The slant on the bottum of her nose is going to stay as slanted as it is, because believe me, if I slant it up anymore, she looks like a pig.

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 10:01 PM

By the way I was joking about it always hurting :P.

Anywho, I did some minor adjustments, and this is about as close as I'm going to get with this amount edges on the nose.

When people mention crap I already know I have to fix... It just makes me fix it immediatly no matter what I'm currently doing :P :P.

EDIT: Here's a better closer shot.

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Thursday, March 16, 2006 10:12 PM

And I added a few more features to the boots:

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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Sunday, March 19, 2006 5:14 PM

Well sorry I haven't been updating. I don't update here often because there's that "Last updated forum post" think on the front page of the Community page. I update pretty often and I don't like spamming that module on the front page.

You can check all my updates at the following forum post at the official Summer Glau fan site: http://forum.summerglau.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=86 (there's 4 pages so far.)

"Th3re !s n0 spo0Ne." -The Matricks

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