Texture painting

To creating the texture for the model I opened up the UV template in Photoshop to use as a guide. I created a solid black layer so that I could see the guide. I doubled the texture size to 4096 x 2048 so that the texture would be as large as possible so it would be clearer.

I opened up refence image to use when creating the texture. I used the lasso tool to copy and paste sections from the reference images into texture and then used the free transform and warp tool to get it to fit to the UV template.

I merged the individual layers so I could then blend them together. I used the healing brush, spot healing brush and the clone stamp tool to blender the different sections of the textures together. I saved a PNG copy of the image with no compression so this will not affect the quality of the texture.

In 3DS Max I created a new material and set a the image texture as the diffuse colour for the material. Below the head model is shown with the partly complete texture map in place.

Below the texture map so far is shown. I have tried to remove the shadows from the texture as these will be created by the lights in the scene so do not need to be included in the texture map.

Below the material in 3DS Max so far is shown, there is still a bit of work to do on the face as well as trying to remove the seams on the top of the head and neck.

I also need to add the hair at the front of the head and to move lips, eyebrows etc so that they are in the right place on the mesh.

I will continue creating the texture and then go onto creating the bump texture material for the model.

Finishing UV unwrapping

I edited the UV map again and scaled down the size of the ear so that it was in proportion with the head.

Later I moved the ear into the bottom left corner of the UV texture as the other side of the UV map had to be welded to the first side. I exited edit mode and then turned on symmetry and added another unwrap UVW modifier on top of the symmetry modifier.

I went back to edit the UV map. Using element select I selected the map for the other side of the head and mirrored it and moved it so that it lined up. I welded the points down the middle of the face and moved the ear and mirrored it. Next I changed the aspect ratio of the image and scaled it to fit.

Next I rendered a UV template that will be imported into Photoshop and used as a guide to create the texture. I saved this as a PNG so that it would save the alpha channel into the image. This will save me from having to create a mask from the template when importing it into Photoshop.

 

Next it is time to create the texture for the model using the template as a guide.

UV unwrapping the ear

Now to unwrap the ear. I selected the polygons for the ear using paint selection and then using alt + left click to remove any of the polygons selected by accident.

I created a seam on the ear using point to point seam and clicking on the edges where I wanted a seam.

To unwrap the ear I used pelt mapping as this will be able to stretch the map for the ear out so that it is flat. I clicked on start pelt then when I was happy with it clicked commit.

Below the UV map for the ear after the pelt has been stretched is shown.

After the ear has been unwrapped the texture flows better across the ear.

Next to render a UV map that will be used as a guide to when creating the texture for the model.

UV unwrapping

Below is the final head model before the textures are applied. I created some basic eyeballs out of spheres. When they were in place I moved the eyelid vertices so that they fitted around the eyes. I also modeled more of the neck.

Now to UV unwrap the head, this will allow the texture to flow correctly over the model. I added a checker material to the model and turned off symmetry. I added an unwrap UVW modifier under symmetry modifier and then in polygon selection mode and using paint selection tool selected the polygons for the head leaving the polygons for the ear as these will be unwrapped later.

I selected cylindrical and scaled the cylinder so the head fitted inside it and moved it so the centre was inline with the centre of the head. Next I exited cylindrical mode and then clicked edit to edit the UV map.

I clicked the filter selected faces button so that only the selected faces were shown. The UV map is messed up and needs to be spaced out so that it will flow correctly when applied to the model. I selected the vertices on the top of the head and then went to tools>relax and this brought up the relax dialogue.

In the relax diaglogue box I selected relax by edge angles and then clicked relax.

You can see that the vertices for the head have spread out making flow better. I did the same for the chin and neck.

Next I selected the vertices around the eye and then used relax, this time setting it to relax by edge centers instead.

This spread out the vertices so they were evenly spaced. I used the same on mouth and nose, then I moved and spaced vertices by hand to make sure they were well spaced and to make sure that they were all quads and none of the faces looked like triangles.

Using select inverted and select overlapping faces I could see which vertices needed to be moved so that no faces were overlapping or inverted.

I closed this and as you can see the checker texture flows better across the head with less stretching.

The head is now unwrapped, now it is time to unwrap the ear.