by
David Nagel
Executive
Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com
This
will be our first foray into character modeling in Amorphium Pro
from Electric
Image. We're going to take it in small pieces. I want to give
you a thorough understanding of how the tools in Amorphium work
so that, when it comes time for doing something like the face,
it will be more a matter of technique than remedial work.
We'll start
off with the eye (the eyeball, lens and iris, as seen on the right).
The method I use here is by no means the only one (or even the
best), but it is a good way to familiarize yourself with the workings
of the program. (Incidentally, if you have alternative solutions
or would like to submit your own Amorphium tutorials, let
me know.)
You can find
tutorials on modeling eyes all over the Internet. However, I have
yet to see one for Amorphium Pro, which is, after all, the only
3D suite really targeted toward designers. So let's take a look
at the method I used to create the eye you see here. I should
mention that many of these techniques came to me by way of my
colleague, Stephen Schleicher, who heads up Video
Systems online.
What
this tutorial entails
This tutorial will cover the eye itself (not the eyelids or lashes
of other junk surrounding the eye). In it, I'm going to do a little
bit of work in Photoshop, though by all means you can accomplish
everything from within Amorphium Pro, if you so choose.
Our eye is
going to have five elements, along with one texture map created
in Photoshop. The order in which I present this seemed to work
well for me; you might have a more efficient method.
For this tutorial,
we'll be using a broad range of tools in Amorphium. These will
include functions in the Composer, such as Scale, Move, Link to
Parent and others, as well as many in the Material, Mapper, Tools
and FX workspaces. With several of these steps, you can click
on an image to view a short QuickTime demonstration.
The
texture map in Photoshop
We're going to create one texture map and one map derived from
the texture map that will serve as a bump map and specularity
map for the iris. If you're not familiar with maps, they're used
to create textures in your model—basically the visible surface
(and surface properties) of the individual objects that make up
your model. The texture map is the actual color of the texture,
and the bump map is a grayscale version of our texture that will
tell Amorphium which parts of the texture should have depth. Our
bump map will also serve as a specularity map, which determines,
logically enough, the specularity of our object. (Specularity
is related to reflectivity; our specularity map will determine
which areas of our object will take on more or less reflection.)
For
our iris, we'll be creating the texture in Photoshop. (You can
use any image editor you prefer, or you can avoid texture maps
entirely by painting directly within Amorphium Pro's Paint workspace.)
You can also download any number of textures from the Internet
that will satisfy your needs here. You could even use a photograph.
I like to do everything myself. If I didn't, I guess I could just
skip 3D modeling altogether and go out and get a video camera.
Besides, who wants to take credit for other people's work?
Now, my texture
is going to be 512 x 512 pixels. This will give me all the room
I need to create a detailed image. (Actually, you don't need it
to be anywhere near this large, unless you're planning to do some
serious closeups of the eye you create.) I'm going to make my
iris brown, with a few lighter and darker variations. Here's how
I did it in the example you see above.
1. Begin by
drawing a circle with the Elliptical Marquee tool in Photoshop.
2. Fill in
the circular marquee area with brown (or whatever color you want
to be dominant).
3. Add in
some rings of varying color, from gold to black and maybe even
a hint of green.
4. Run a filter
to add in some texture. You can use really anything, from Craquelure
to Mosaic to Texturizer. I used one of the plugins from Panopticum's
Plugin Galaxy. It doesn't really matter. You won't see much of
it in the end.
5. Fill in
a black circle in the center and a black or dark brown ring at
the edge of the circular marquee.
6. Run a Radial
Blur, using Zoom (not Spin) at 100 percent. You should also use
the "Best Quality" setting.
7. Clean up
anything that got too distorted, such as the ring on the edge.
8. Add noise
using the Noise filter (or even Dust & Scratches). Don't add
a lot, just enough to bring in some specks and break up the evenness
somewhat.
9. Again,
do a little cleanup in the black areas.
10. Save this
file as a TIFF as "iris1.tif" in the Textures directory
of Amorphium Pro. Don't close the file yet.
