Essential Blender- P10 ppsx

Figure 70: Roughing out the eyes. Once the eyes look fairly smooth, use the Level spinner to return to multires Level 8. Then, add a level of multires, taking you to Level 9. Inflate and draw the general form of your eyelids. Remember to draw them closed a little, and not to put the eyelid lines at the seam between the eyeball you've created and the rest of the head. Continue alternating between smooth and inflate until you're happy with the shape of your eyelid and eye. Figure 72: The eyes with protuberant eyelids. Working in Lowe r Multires Levels We'd like you to step back from details for a moment and change some of the larger structure of the head. In particular, you need to actually create a mouth and redefine the lower half of the face. While this could be done at the current high level of detail, there is an easier, faster way. Using the "Level:" spinner on the Multires panel, turn the level down to 5. The model is now significantly less detailed, showing more general forms. One of the great things about multires modeling is that any changes you make to the mesh on a lower level carry through to the higher levels, and vice versa. Even though you didn't shape the level 5 mesh like this, it has been pushed and pulled into this state by the actions you've taken at other levels. If Partial Redraw is enabled, disable it now, so that the individual faces show. Figure 75: The rougher forms of level 5. With the Grab brush set to a fairly large size (75 or so), drag upward on the lower, outer rim of the jaw to form the basis of a more pronounced jaw and two upward-facing tusks. Figure 76: The lower jaw pulled out and up. Note: At this point, your monster head may look significantly different than the one in these examples, and that's fine. Sculpting is a very organic process, and the odds are that even if we recreated all of the illustrations for this chapter, following the exact same process, they would be different each time. Depending on the exact topology of your monster head, the next set of instructions may work more or less well. If you just can't seem to get your tusks and mouth to follow the example exactly, don't worry. The example is just that: a sample to learn from, not something that needs to be duplicated. With the rough form created for the base of the tusks, move up to multires level 7 to continue adding more detail. Using the Draw brush, create a fat line around the base of the tusks that will form the lower lip. It'll look fairly ugly at this multires level, but you'll smooth it in a bit. Figure 78: The lower lip drawn in. Up in multires level 8, put a separation line between the base of the tusks and lips. Switch to the Smooth brush, and give it medium values (50-60) for both size and strength. Smooth the lower portion of the lip into the rest of the face until it blends nicely and seems to be a continuous piece with the rest of the model. Figure 79: The lip blended into the lower jaw. You will notice many details in the above illustration. They were created using the same method as you used earlier when making creases in the brow: parallel inflation strokes, then pinch in the middle and smooth. The model itself is done at this point. You can continue to add details, extra tusks, horns, etc., as you like. Using Textures as Brushes A monster should have strange skin to go with its horns, long ears and tusks. The sculpting tools allow you to sculpt with a textured brush. In the buttons window, go to the Texture buttons (F6), and click on the Brush button of the Preview tab. To add a new brush texture, LMB click on the top texture channel to activate it and click the Add New button. Figure 84: The brush texture panels. Any of Blender's textures, including Image textures, can be used as brushes. From the Texture Type menu that appears, choose "Musgrave." Many of the texturing options are described in greater detail in Chapter 9. Figure 91: The Musgrave and Musgrave options panel. From the Musgrave panel that appears, change the "Multifractal" setting to "Rigid Multifractal." All you've done here is chosen a texture that will look sufficiently nasty when applied to a skin. Finding a good noise texture for your projects is mostly a matter of trial and error, although the Materials and Texturing chapter of this book can give you a good starting point. With the Musgrave noise texture set, move back to the Edit buttons (F9). In order to use the new texture brush, either go to the Brush tab in the Edit buttons or focus on the "Texture" section of the Sculpt Properties floating panel. If it's not already active, click on the texture channel labeled "Tex," then click on the little automobile icon to have Blender assign the name "Musgrave" to the texture. Make the rest of the panel match this illustration: Image:Dummy.png Figure RH01: The Brush and Sculpt Properties panels. Enabling the 3D button will apply the texture to the model throughout 3D space, as opposed to "painting" it onto its surface. When 3D is enabled, a Size control will appear. Like the SizeX/Y/Z controls in the Map Input panel of the Material buttons, this size spinner works the opposite of the way you would expect. Raising the value decreases the size that the texture is applied at. Set the Size control to around 400. Now, use the Draw brush on the cheeks of your monster and watch the ugly ridges form within its surface. Figure 95: A nasty texture for a nasty creature. For some variety, create a different texture brush for the rest of the head. Return to the Texture buttons, and select the next empty texture channel. Add a new texture with the Add New button, and select "Voronoi" from the Texture Type menu. You'll just use the default Voronoi settings, so go back to the Edit buttons and the Brush panel. This time, set the brush to "Drag" style instead of "3D." Rotate to the back of the monster head and begin to use the new texture brush in Draw mode. Immediately, you can see the difference between "Drag" and "3D." When working with the 3D option, it was almost like the brush was causing a texture that was already within the model to grow and become clear. With the Drag option, you are using a single instance of the texture, stamping and smearing it as you work the brush. Figure 97: The back of the head, brushed with a different texture. When working in Drag mode, you can change both the size and rotation of the stamped texture interactively. When changing the brush size with the F-key, you actually see a representation, right within the brush, of the texture that will be used. Likewise, you can use Ctrl-F to rotate the texture for even greater variation, and see it rotate right on your display. Figure 99: The finished monster head. All Done At this point, you can call the model finished. If you were going to go a few steps more, you could disable Symmetry and put in details that differed from side to side like scars and warts. You could also drop down to detail level 5 and pull some of the general shapes out of symmetry as well. Whether you decide to do that or not, you will have learned a great new way to create organic models: Blender's sculpting tools. One last tip: The sculpting tools are "experiential," meaning that the more you experience them, the better you will become. We encourage you to start this same tutorial from scratch, and, knowing what you know now, see if you don't come out with a significantly better result the second time. Figure 100: A second time through the tutorial will give even better results. !