Dog faced soldier rides Pee Wee Scooter into infamy

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

I have a question about preparing a pilot face using the paint face tool as a material and then rendering it via print screen to a paint program. For the eyes, I dissect a sphere section from the top of it then separate the part and shape it into a nice elongated eye shape. Then I polyline draw out a nose shape and extrude it into a 3d looking nose. For the mouth I prepare 2 eye shapes and form them into a fair looking lip shape all the parts of which are positioned over a flat skin colored plane object. Then I play around with the preset lighting schemes to select lighting that complements the facial features of the geometry objects and finally render the scene and grab the scene via print screen and paste it into my paint program. One of the problems I'm encountering is the lack of visual depth as the scene is being rendered frontally. The lighting effects look nice applied across the geometry, but I guess because it's later saved as a basically flat object and then applied as a texture to another flat surface it lacks much visual depth. Any suggestions on how I can make it look more 3d like? Should I render the scene in 3d view with a slight angular orientation to get more depth? The frontal render looks okay I guess, but I'm looking for a more natural looking human face, and I guess other pilot related stuff like his suit, hands, and boots if you know what I mean.


PS: TGF spell checker I can't spell worth beans!

[mrtwosheds]

I recommend very dark tinting of helmet visors. 
I'm lucky, Daleks only have one eye and no obvious mouth or nose....

[anomaly]

You want to make a more natural looking face?
There are probably tutorials that can show you the basic steps for making a face.  Is this for use in bz or is this for a more hi-rez model you're making? Most tutorials you would find would probably only help with the latter.

If you want more depth you're probably going to need to make a more detailed face model and/or make a nice face texture in a graphics program. 

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Everything I make is for BZII as this is the only game I'm currently modding for. MTS, do you mean a dark clear visor with the face being somewhat obscured yet somewhat visible? I think I can do that with the material editor by setting the transparency control appropriately. Hey tanks, I never thought about the visor thingy, but think that it would be a good idea to help some disguise my current lack of of artistry skills. I also tried the one eye cyclops method on my dog face soldier and it looked quite alien with an eye the size of the head. I'll try modeling a semi sphere shaped face and render it frontally for painting. This method is quite useful for such things in terms of having the geometry itself make the basic facial features, face painting the object shapes like eye parts, eyebrows, etc. I'm not concerned too much with a very high level of detail just adequate enough for the game. I may try the metaballs in TS as one tutorial that came with program shows the basics of how to model a head adding multiple metaballs and manipulating them into things like eye sockets, nose, ear, and lip objects. Tanks guys...BNG

[Avatar]

You want to make a more natural looking face?
There are probably tutorials that can show you the basic steps for making a face.  Is this for use in bz or is this for a more hi-rez model you're making? Most tutorials you would find would probably only help with the latter.

If you want more depth you're probably going to need to make a more detailed face model and/or make a nice face texture in a graphics program. 

Lol... 

You could always do the old 'Face in the scanner' trick...   

-Av-

[mrtwosheds]

I was thinking more of ways to not put faces in at all. You really need to be a very good skinning artist or avoid the issue, your dog will need a space helmet won't he?

[anomaly]

If this is for bz2 then why try to make a face if you're going to cover it with a helmet or visor.  There would be little of the face to see and would probably be a waste of polygon resources.  If you use a helmet and you still want to do face, then maybe only do the eyes.  Those would be a lot easier than trying to get a mouth and nose to look nice.

But, if you really want to make a whole face try looking at how they were sculpted and skinned in other older games.

Found a tutorial for making a relatively low-poly head.  Still a bit high in poly count but you could adjust that to take bz2's limits into account.
http://www.webdesigntutorials.net/tutorials/3d_studio_max_tutorials/Generic_3D_Game_Dude_3_Modelling_the_Head.php

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

In my case, the face would be something like a painted face on a flat plane or maybe a simple quad divided plane shaped out slightly to form a simple 3d surface. I like the eye only idea or maybe even mouth only with the rest of the face covered by a visor object. Just want something a little different then currently being used. I also am trying the diggy photo route using my own mug as a model by UV mapping it to a plane object, and then drawing out the facial features with the polyline tool in GSL and TS. The method is quite useful for getting things like proportions and placement in the right placement. Reminds me of the good Ole days at college taking courses in art on drawing the human figure. Unfortunately, I've forgotten much of what I learned and now that I'm doing this stuff on electronic media; it's even more alien if you know what I mean. I also want to keep the poly count to an absolute minimum as the ship should have priority over the pilot figure onboard. OBTW, the dog soldier does have a helmet object, it's just not very visible from a frontal view. It's basically nothing more then a sphere object slice in half and extruded frontally to form a flat surface fro the face. The body of the soldier is nothing more then poly drawn body, legs and arms; still need to refine them a bit more to get away from the boxy look they currently form. I like the lighting effects of the rendered objects as they appear in my paint program as I basically just need to some detail to the image, save it and then apply it as a texture to the model geometry. I tweak the texture placement in the UV editor after flipping the image 180 degree in the paint program as otherwise I have to rotate the UV map in the editor to get the texture to appear right side up. For some strange reason GSL does not automatically do this and when a texture map is output to my paint program it by default appears upside down when applied as texture is GSL. Still, I've gotten into the habit now of flipping it after I'm done painting the image. Afterwords, in the UV editor I basically set the U & V repetitions to 1 and resize the UV map in the editor to get the them to line up perfectly. My artist skills are still a work in progress, but slowly it's all all beginning to make some logical sense.   

[Red Devil]

Try Shabayev's face (face4.pic).

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Here's something interesting to try for making an otherwise flat photo to look a bit more 3d. This photo has an emboss effect applied to make it a bit easier to work on in a paint program. I maximized the effects controls to draw out more details in the otherwise somewhat fuzzzy image.



It really pulls out the details I'm looking to replicate for facial features on a pilot face. I'm going to try using the bend tool to add a more natuarl curve to the flat plane object the image it's UV'ed on, and primarily just tweak elements of the facial features to make it look more 3d looking. Does anyone have any other suggestions that I might explore for achieving similar effects?

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Gimp, has a nice emboss feature where a photo is processed to look pretty much resemble a charcoal type rendering for use a guide in painting stuff like a face or ship skin. Here's a photo I took, transfered, and opened in GIMP to help me get some practice doing a face.
I tried the same thing in Ixla, but the effect was more pleasing in Gimp. Once I got it loaded I tried a few effects like skin colored bucket fill after bucket filling with white to better define and eliminate some of the darker parts of the image. I also tried some airbrushing on some parts. The edges aren't too important as the UV lines can be adjusted in the UV map editor after saving the file and applying it to the geometry. It more or less involves using the move controls in the editor to reposition the UV lines where you need them. Mostly, I 've just needed to adjust the U V repetitions to 1 as sometimes the editor likes to set them at like 5 by default and resetting them to 1 manually makes them better match the ratio of the actual geometry.

Gimp, has some nice filter effects and is pretty easy to use with some experimentation. You can try stuff, and if you don't like the result it can either be undone or redone adjusting the filter controls as you go along. I believe it can also be selected in GSL as the default external paint program for working in conjunction with the UV map edit/unwrap utility in GSL to automatically open when doing the unwrap/mapping thingy.