High Poly Continuous Mesh Avatars

Lions

Using Drawings as templates for 3D Modeling
 lionmane_front_305x420_neg.jpg
These sketches provided reference for the head and mane.

lion_drawings_574x480.jpglion_splinedrawing540x480.jpg

A negative image of a scanned sketch can provide guidelines for the creation of Splines in Surface Tools. I used these images to build the lion's head and mane, texture mapping them onto crossing planes in 3DStudio Max for reference. It may be useful to include a 3rd plane for the Top View as well. Although tedious, it is important to align these drawings, either by hand or in Photoshop using the "Difference" filter.

Head and Body Modeled in 3DStudio Max 3.0 / Surface Tools
lion_splinedrawing540x480.jpgcat_face640x480.jpg
The lion avatar has about 7200 polys total - 1400 in the face, 5200 in the body, 400 in the mane, and 200 in the eyes. A simple 256x256 .jpg hair texture is mapped to the head and body. More elaborate textures will be applied to the body later.

Morph Targets
lion_neutral_480x480.jpglion_morphs_480x480.jpg
Whereas the lion's body is a continuous mesh, driven by animation data, the detached head uses morph targets for animation. The neutral head appears on the left. Morph targets include - top row: wink, blink, and narrow; middle row emotions: happy, sad, and angry; bottom row, extreme speech positions: widest, upper lip, and lower jaw.

Stasia McGehee
December 16th, 1999