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Cyberface Tutorial


Homer

Should I keep working on it for release?  

27 members have voted

  1. 1.

    • no
      3
    • yes
      24


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okay, most of the problems i see are mapping issues. and with mapping issues, they're taken care of in the UV Mapper. the areas i pointed to, what you'll need to do is play with it. but do one area at a time, one point at a time. it's meticulous work. open the uv mapper and make it as large as possible, but small enough so that you can see your preview screen. zoom into one area that you're working on. now literally use one point at a time. and use either horizontal or vertical one at a time until you see what you want. but you're gonna use the C 'n M tool to do it. if you're unable to grab just one point in some areas, then use the select tool to select one point at a time, and then use the move options. there's really not a whole lot else to do there except experiment.

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i haven't tested it in game because all of my faces look like hell in game, my video card is worthless, i plan on getting a new laptop when i get my student loan in january. but if anyone wants to test it to see what it looks like in game, be my guest, i'll send files, etc...

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pain in the butt aint it? :) looking better. i still seeing some mapping work that could be done if you wanna get picky. around the nostrils, left temple, and under the nose.

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yeah, the left temple area is giving me a run for my money, also on the left nostril, i just gave it about 20 minutes before calling it a day today, i didn't have much time, i'm going to work on it more but yeah man, much respect to those of you that put out great looking faces, it's very intricate and deserves more credit than is given, that's for sure.

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i think i have something i'm satisfied with here, is there anyone with a decent system that would be able to test this out and take a few screens or something so i can see what it looks like? my system just doesn't do well with faces, i mean, they look ok but i know that on some of the screens i've seen, other systems make the faces look better.

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  • 2 months later...

Homer, I have a few questions - mainly in regards to O-Edit - and hope you can help me out.

In your video tutorial, you keep mentioning that the eyes, nose, lips, nostrils, etc. are not lined up properly and that you use the UV Mapper to fix it. How do you notice that those parts of the body are not aligned properly? Do you look at any dark spots and tell? Its really hard for me to tell from the video as to what parts of the face of Rick White are aligned and what parts are not aligned properly.

O-Edit seems to be the hardest part for me. In fact it took me nearly 30 minutes to actually zoom in on the face that I was working on. Had some trouble with the left click, right click, left click+shift commands. :smile:

Anyway, if you could shed some more light on O-Edit, it would definitely be of huge help. Thanks and take care.

EDIT: Also, why do we erase the eyeballs from our blended image in Photoshop? Is it because there is already a design for at the bottom left?

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there are a couple reasons i may erase the eyes:

1. the one below has the color i want if i'm using multiple base textures

2. most likely when i cranked up the sharpness of the layer, the eyes, teeth, or hair may not look like i want. this is a very minor detail, but if it's the case, i just erase the sharpened layer. that's really all.

as far as recognizing what's aligned and what isn't, that really just takes practice. it's hard to explain until you've done a few. to get used to this, i suggest just stopping where you think you're done, save the o file but don't close oedit. import the face into the game. zoom in, and take a picture. then paste it into photoshop or something and use it as your preview screen. you should be able to see the areas that looked warped. then try playing around with those areas in the uvmapper and see what they do.

another thing to try is open up the uvmap, and opening it as large as you can, and then take a general look. first, try not to pay attention to your texture, just look at where all the points are at, and you will see some general shapes, such as the points that form the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. you will actually be able to see where the edges are, and where the centers are for each shape. well those points should literally line up to those respective spots on your texture. in particular, if you look at the points that form the mouth, you're just gonna see an outline of the lips, and you can see the corners of the mouth, which thus allows you to see the center line, which should map out where the lips meet.

once you do this, you'll start noticing things that aren't lined up correctly without having to go in game. so for instance, look at the picture above. we'll start on the left side of the picture. that first arrow on the left is pointing to the temple area. do you see how the texture looks stretched? the lines on the skin are straight. if you look at the skin all around that area, you can see specs, freckles, pores, and just details of the skin. if looks vastly different in that temple area. that's simply a mapping issue. from experience, i can tell that the mapping points in that area is most likely needing some adjusting. i would grab the points around that area one at a time, and move them up or down first to see if it improves the look. sometimes you can't do anything about this because of the limited vertices, but sometimes you may only get a slight improvement. if i get a limited improvement, i'll then try moving that point in a horizontal direction, and then possibly some points around it.

now the next thing you see in that picture is i circled the corner of the eye. i know that the pupils are bulging out, so it can be confusing. but if you look closely, you can see the general shape of the eye if you follow the outline of the white of the eye. well do you see where it comes to a point? now look just to the left of that and you can see the crease on the side of the eye, and the crease in the top eyelid. first, that side crease doesn't line up with the corner of the white of the eye, so it needs to move up a little. secondly, the crease in the top eye lid looks a little blurry and stretched. it also doesn't form a consistent curve that is somewhat parallel to the white of the eye. so that just tells me work can be done there.

next, if you look at where i circle the nostril. look real close in that picture. if you do, you can see two things. the first thing is you can see the actually shape of that nostril. it looks like a dark, sharp shadow. you can see that the texture lines up fine at the bottom of the nostril, but as you follow the curvature up, you'll see that it starts to separate. what i see is that the shape (model) of the nose is to the left, while the texture is stretched to the right. this part is a simple fix. in the uvmapper, you just need to move a few points for that part of the nostril in a horizontal direction.

next, you'll see the arrow on the far right, pointing to the temple area. this is the exact same thing as i described above about the other temple.

the last thing in there that jumps out at me, which i didn't circle, are the nostrils. do you see how the nostrils are nice and round? but then it seems like the black in the nostrils seems abruptly incomplete? the black color should fill that entire circular area where it's all white. at least, that's my opinion of it. again, it's just a matter of moving a couple of points in the uvmapper. play with one point at a time, and move it either in a horizontal or vertical direction at a time. move it slowly to see what it does.

and the controls are tough to get used to. again, it just takes getting used to. once you get used to it, it'll start making more sense.

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Thank you very much for the help. I will try it out again and maybe post my final product on here for your review.

Also, when creating your texture in Photoshop, one of the steps you did was you mirrored the left side of the face. What is the reason for doing that?

And, if a pressbox photo has a player smiling, do you just use the smudge tool to get rid of the smile? Thanks again.

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the step about the mirroring is optional. most pictures you're working with should be fine without this step. but in my case, a lot of classic guys don't have the quality of photos, so i mirror. sometimes i only have half a face to work with, so i mirror it instead of waiting for a decent picture. or even in some other pictures, there's too much contrast from one side to the other, like a huge shadow or something. then again, i will mirror it just so i have a full texture. the only draw back to this method is that the typical person doesn't have a symmetrical face like that, and any scars, blemishes, birthmarks, and such need to be added or removed manually.

as far as the smiles go, they're tough. so far, jogar and thr33nil are the best i've seen at removing them on a regular basis. so i'm sure they may have some tips too. but it involves many different tools. like i said before, the smudge tool is one i rarely use, as it creates a blurry look. the ones i use the most in this step would be the clone tool, and really the cut and paste method. with the cut and paste method, you may have to use the free transform tool (Ctrl + T) in order to rotate the shape. also under the Edit>Transform menu, there are other things, such as skew, warp, perspective, distort...i will often times use these too. then i have to use a combination of the eraser to blend in. the key to this is that if you use any of these transform tools, i suggest going into the filters menu and using a sharpening filter of some sort to this layer, as transforming or rotating it will blur the image.

when dealing with the texture with a smile, removing the smile involves more than just the lips. if you don't know what i mean, put yourself in front of a mirror and see. you'll see alot of things on your face move. for instance, the eyes slant a little, the eyebrows raise, the nostrils flare, the lips not only smile, but stretch. when the lips stretch, they lose the detail in the texture, and they lose the details in the cleft. and then there are the cheeks. you can see they are more pronounced. the lighting on it hits it differently, looking more concentrated and glossy. alot of these details need to be changed to get rid of the smile.

with the eyes, you can do some of it in photoshop. the rest needs to be done in oedit, with rotating, resizing, and moving the the eye itself.

with the nostrils, that's mainly an oedit thing. once you've mapped the texture to the model, reshape the nostrils a bit. make them a little less wide, and maybe lower them a little.

for the cheeks, i find that this part is mainly a photoshop issue. i use the clone tool a lot to flatten out the cheeks, and getting rid of the exaggerated lighting. also, pay attention to that crease between the nostrils to the outter edges of the lips. that will often times need to be removed too. the clone tool is great for that. remember with using the clone tool, experiment with it. don't try to do too large of any area in one stroke. you may also need to lower the opacity, as you may not need a full texture clone. you may simply need to use it to change the color or darkness, so lowering the opacity will work quite well.

with the mouth area, you may need to add in texture to the lips somehow. get creative. take it from another quality photo, or take it from another texture. you also may need to add in the cleft to the texture. then on top of that, in oedit, you may need to reshape it to add in the triangular shape to the top lip. also in oedit, you may need to select one half of the mouth at a time (including the teeth), and use the rotate tool. rotate it enough until there's a frown or less of a smile. with rotating it, you'll notice often times the lips won't line up afterwards. simply keep those same points select, and use the vertical move tool and move them down a bit. repeat it on the opposite side.

with the eyebrows, you can simply move them down a bit in photoshop, or remap it so it sits a little lower, especially the outer edges of the eyebrows.

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Thanks a lot Homer. Its a safe bet that I would like to start off with a pic. where the player is not smiling and once I get a handle on O-Edit, I can move on to getting rid of smiles and such.

EDIT: Homer, I re-did my texture since my pressbox photo had the player smiling. I would like to get your opinion on the image and let me as to what else I would need to change. I tried to get rid of the smile as much as I could. Here's the link to the pressbox photo and I am also attaching my texture.

Link to pressbox - http://www.mlb.com/pressbox/photos/headsho.../453056_raw.jpg

EDIT 2: Homer, just found out that in your tutorial, when dealing with oEdit, you had mentioned that holding down shift and the left mouse click will let you move the head, but in fact its ctrl and the left mouse click that does that.

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yeah it's definitely Ctrl. that was just merely a typo. after typing from memory for that long, that late at night, sometimes you get buttons confused. i thought i had caught all of them, but apparently i missed that. hopefully everyone figures that one out. thanks for pointing it out.

that texture isn't bad. he's got a tough one to do since his face is pretty generic, but the the blending is very good. the only thing i noticed is that i might've picked a darker skin tone as a base.

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Man, never realized creating cyberfaces would be this tedious, especially since you have been creating those classic faces left and right. But I am sure experience plays a huge part in it.

In regards to the cyberface, I have been messing around with it in O-Edit for the past one hour now and I think I finally got the eyes to lineup and the nose to lineup properly. Moving on the lips now.

Also, it actually took some time for me to come up with a base and stecropper's download helped a ton. I had initially wanted to go with Eric Byrnes but his hair was not dark enough and then decided to go with Jeff Kent as a base. Good or bad decision? Also, you had mentioned that it was just a matter of going through the screens in stecropper's download to choose a base, but is there anything else that I could do to speed up the process?

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unless you've done enough and have some shapes and faces to memory, i find it's the fastest way. otherwise, your choice was fine.

when going through that thing, there are a few things i look for first:

1. if i need a guy who has a long neck, a long face, or a fatter one, that gets priority, since i can mold everything else around it. it's tougher to give a guy a long neck if the original doesn't have it.

2. i look for the similarities in the nose. i try to make this as close as possible. but a lot of times, it's just not.

3. skin tones. i try to get an idea of what skin tone i'm using. if you hadn't noticed, that's how he numbers those pictures. they're organized by the skin tone assignments. this way, depending on what guy you use, you know what skin tone to assignment him in mvpedit.

4. look for features on each face. if i need a guy who's bald, i keep an eye out for it. facial hair, sideburns, hair color, eye color. stuff like that.

your decision to choose kent is fine. but remember, you can choose one guy for the shape, and another guy for his texture. say i choose jeff kent, but he has none of the features i want. say i actually need a bald black guy instead, but kent's model is very similar to what he looks like. and let's say for example i choose ruben sierra as the texture i like. simply use the kent as a base. line up your picture in photoshop with kent's texture. and when that's done, simply paste the texture of sierra on top of the kent layer. blend in as usual.

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You suggestion of taking an in-game screen of the cyberface and then making changes on O-Edit based on that is actually a great idea.

I was satisfied with the way it came out in O-Edit, but when I went into the game, I noticed a black section near the eyes that was quite obvious and needed to be fixed. I think I am slowly getting an handle on O-Edit. Its much comfortable to use now than compared to the first time I ran it.

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