Appendix A: Preparing
Character Style Sheets
Character style sheets are the front and side drawings of a character. These hand drawings can be an invaluable resource for a modeler as they provide an important visual template upon which to build polygons. However, they can also be a terrible hindrance if they are not properly done and prepared.
In this appendix we will be looking quickly at how to prepare character style sheets so that they become the effective tool they need to be. Whether you drafted the style sheet yourself or inherited it from another character’s designer, a bit of time in Photoshop will ensure assets that speed and inform the modeling process.
Before we get too far into Photoshop, a few general notes about drawing style sheets that will help keep things clean:
1. Do the initial drawings on graph paper. The core issue here is really about making sure that the front and side views line up. The nose for the front view needs to match exactly the nose for the side view. If they are off by just a little bit, it wreaks havoc in Maya as you don’t know which drawing to trust.
2. For the front view, consider just drawing one half of the character. We’re about to discard one half of the drawing anyway, so sometimes just drawing half saves time and effort. This largely depends on you as an artist, though — some people can only find the form when they see the character in its entirety and so need to draw the whole form (and that’s ok too).
3. Unless you’re really good at illustrating in Photoshop, color your sketch with traditional media. Some folks — like Jake Green in the style sheet below — are very good at coloring in Photoshop and are able to define some great form for musculature and bones through deft handling of Photoshop’s tools. However, overwhelmingly, when my students turn in sketches that were colored in Photoshop — it ends up looking like a Microsoft Paint project from 1986. Don’t underestimate the power of effective coloring for defining how a form is actually built. If you aren’t ready to spend the time to define this through many, many layers in Photoshop, just pick up your Prismacolors, paints, or even crayons to get that form right.
Tutorial A: Preparing Style Sheets
Figure A.1 is the style sheet created by Jake Green as part of the homework assignment for the organic modeling chapter. It’s a great drawing; and, because he’s also a modeler, it has been done with a great amount of attention to having a nicely prepared style sheet for modeling. However, it will also serve as a great example of how to prepare individual images for use as Image Planes within Maya.
FIG A.1 Character style sheet.
All of the following steps are done in Photoshop.
Step 1: Flatten layers. Once the file is open, go to Layer>Flatten Image.
Why?
It’s going to be very important that the front and side versions of the style sheet are the same size. If, during the painting process, there are multiple layers, or if the front and side were assembled separately, you can end up with situations where a selection may include empty pixels-that will be lost if that selection is copied and pasted to a new document. Flattening the image makes sure there are not empty pixels anywhere and that you just have a flat collection of pixels that make up both sides of the image.
Step 2: Crop away unneeded image (Figure A.2). Just leave the actual character with very little background.
FIG A.2 Cropping down to just the character.
Why?
Most of the time, your character sketch is going to be fairly high resolution. This one for example is at 300 dpi. This can be good as you’re going to be modeling quite tightly on the character (it’s really important to be able to zoom right into how the lips come together in Maya). However, Maya actually deals with these large images surprisingly poorly and your performance can take a real hit with these large images. One solution is to reduce the resolution of the image — but this makes for a really pixelly image when you need it most within Maya. Another solution is to make sure you’re not carrying around any pixels you don’t need by cropping the excess away.
Step 3: Create comparison guides. Do this by first hitting Cntrl-r to bring out the rulers. Then, drag a horizontal guide from the rulers at the top down onto the image. Pull this guide down to the top of the head of the front view. Drag another down for the chin. Add a third for the top of the ear and a fourth for the bottom of the ear (Figure A.3).
FIG A.3 Adding the first collection of horizontal comparison guides.
Why?
These horizontal guides serve the important purpose of ensuring that the two sketches line up. If the ear is higher in the side sketch than it is in the front sketch, we’ll have real problems in Maya.
Step 4: Adjust if needed. This can take a couple of forms. Sometimes things don’t line up because the sketches are rotated. To fix this, select everything with the Rectangular Marquee Tool and hit Cntrl-T to activate the Free Transform tool. Rotate the selection until the sketches line up better.
In some situations this may be more complex and you might need to make use of tools like Liquify (Filter>Liquify) to nudge parts of the anatomy into position.
Why?
“C’mon,” you may be saying, “I drew it, let’s just get it into Maya and build it.” This is a real temptation, but the few minutes it takes to get things lined up here in Photoshop will yield incredible benefits in Maya. If these sketches aren’t lined up, there is great head scratching and form compromising when the polygons have to be unyieldingly placed to describe the form. Working out the problems here will pay dividends in the 3D world.
Step 5: Add additional horizontal guides. Do this for everything imaginable: top and bottom of the eyes, middle of the eyes, top and bottom of the nostrils, ends of the lips, middle of the lips, top and bottom of the collar bones, top and bottom of any other meaningful anatomical part. For full characters where the sketch is the entire body, this should include things like the bottom of the crotch, shoulders, arm pits, elbows, hands, fingers, knees, feet, and especially any armor.
Why?
Again, having things lined up makes the modeling much, much easier. Making guides are cheap and easy but they can help in a hurry and let you know if there are problems that need to be dealt with before the modeling begins.
Step 6: Make adjustments as needed. Again, this could be about scaling, rotating, or even liquefying one side of the sketch so that the front and side line up perfectly.
Separating into Two Images
Up to now, the front and side have been together in one image — which is really what we want and need as we work through the comparison of the two. However, once the two line up and you’re confident that the front and side are set to go, we need to get these into the discreet images that we’ll use as image planes in Maya.
Step 7: Select the part of the image that makes up the side view. Do this with the Rectangular Marquee Tool, but make sure that your selection starts right at the top of the image and goes completely to the bottom (Figure A.4). This is most easily done by starting the selection above the image in the canvas area and then dragging down to below the image (also in the canvas area).
FIG A.4 Selecting the side sketch.
Why?
A common pitfall is for people to get the front and side images all lined, up and then when splitting into two separate images not copying and pasting selections that are the same height. When this happens, it becomes very difficult to get these two images to line up right in Maya. By making sure that you are getting a selection that goes the entire height of the image, you can ensure that the front and side images are indeed going to be of identical height.
Step 8: Copy and paste this selection into a new file. Do this by selecting Edit>Copy then File>New and then Edit>Paste (Figure A.5). Save the file as YourCharactersName_Side.jpg.
FIG A.5 Side View.
Tips and Tricks
At this point, it’s largely cosmetic, but if you’d like, you can paint out chunks of the front view that may have made their way over to this side image. However, make sure you don’t change the size of the image overall.
Step 9: Back in the original aligned style sheet, make a new selection (again from the very top of the image to the very bottom) that is one half of the front view. This selection needs to be very accurate, so take your time and get exactly half that image (Figure A.6).
FIG A.6 Selecting one half of the front view.
Why?
If you have an assymetrical character, you may want to skip this step entirely. However, if the character is symmetrical, it will make things much easier in Maya if the center of the image is really the center of the character. This will mean that when the front image is brought into Maya as an image plane, the image’s center is at X = 0.
Step 10: Copy and paste this selection into a new file. Again, Edit>Copy then File>New and then Edit>Paste (Figure A.7).
FIG A.7 Copying and pasting the half of the front view into a new file.
Step 11: Change the Canvas Size to be twice as wide. Do this by choosing Image>Canvas Size…Change the settings to match Figure A.8. This will move the current image over to the left side and make the canvas exactly twice as wide as it is.
FIG A.8 Setting the Canvas Size to be twice as wide.
Step 12: Choose Edit>Paste to paste another copy of one half of the front view into this same image.
Why?
One half of the image will be stored in memory so simply hitting paste again will keep you from having to go back to the original image.
Step 13: Flip this new copy with Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal. This will create a mirrored version of the selection.
Step 14: Use the Move Tool to move this flipped half over to the other side of the image. If Shift is held down while the selection is dragged, it will keep it from shifting up and down. This second half snaps into place once it’s over against the other side of the canvas image (Figure A.9). Save the file as YourCharactersName_Front.jpg.
FIG A.9 Symmetrical front view.
Conclusion
And the rest you know. Now that you have a good front and side view and you know that they line up and that the front is truly symmetrical, the images are ready for use within Maya and can be imported as image planes into the front and side View Panels.
There is great power in good front and side image planes. If you’re modeling your own design, you will be able to move with much great efficiency as you place polygons. If someone else is inheriting your design, they will praise your name if the style sheets arrive on their machine properly prepared. In all cases, the half hour it takes to complete the steps listed in this tutorial will be time well spent.