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Fun with nurbs 2001 01 03

Timothy Paulus Henricus Kanters id117

Introduction
By Viacheslav Slavinsky (svo) and Timothy Kanters
(Kib_Tph).

In this tutorial you'll be making your own cartoon style mouse


head like you see on the image, using the blender Nurbs
feature. Why nurbs? Because it's a very fun and relatively easy
way to make nice and detailed characters. When you finish this
tutorial you will know the basics of Nurbs and then you can try to
apply your knowledge and make your own cool models. To be
able to do this tutorial you are required to have some knowledge
about the basics of Blender. If you don't have this knowledge try
some of the simpler tutorials first.

I hope you'll have a lot of fun while working on this tutorial.


The final result

Adding the surface curve

The first steps


All this starts exactly like Bart's cave tutorial on skinning. First delete everything in the scene (by selecting
everything and pressing ), then make sure you're in front view ( ) and press then add >> surface
>> curve. It's very important to use a surface curve and not a regular curve. The difference between the 2
is basically that with a surface curve, blender can calculate the so called skin of the object, but we'll get to
that later on in this tutorial..
Closing the curve

We now have an open curve. This is our base curve and we will create the entire model out of this single
curve by using modeling tools like extrusion, subdivision and smoothing. However we want the curve to be
closed, so simply press once to close the curve. Watch out that you only press once, if you press it
twice, the curve will open again.

Getting more control


First we'll start by making the mouth of the mouse, we will need
a bit more control, so we'll subdivide the curve. Now we have a
nice amount of control vertices (CV's). Subdivision ruins the
geometry of our curve hence it is important to adjust it after
every subdivision. It's also vitally important to maintain horizontal
symmetry. Never move CV's left or right, instead, always select
two and scale with . So now you can model the basic shape of
the mouth (as you can see on the image).

The basic shape of the mouth

Use your imagination

Wow a mouth!!!
Now leave edit mode ( ) so we can duplicate some curves with + and give them some shape,
you can use rotate , scale and grab to do this. If your 3D imagination isn't yet advanced enough to
imagine what to do exactly at this point, just make something like what you see. It can also come in handy
to look at the next few steps before doing this one, as it will give you an idea of what we're trying to do
here. You don't have to be to precise, asany mistakes can be easily corrected later on.

What you see now are basicly a few nurb circles as separate
objects. We want to create one object out of those curves. So
lets select all the curves with and join them together using
+ . Now that all the curves are one object we can add the
so called skin to the nurbs, so first go into editmode and
then select all CV's ( ) then press + to skin the nurbs
curves. When skinning nurbs curves you have to make sure that
they all have the same amount of CV's or else blender can't skin
them.

Joining the curves

Isocurves are parametric curves that form the surface. When we


performed the first part of this tutorial, we prepared V isocurves.
When we skinned them, we (or to be exact, Blender) added U
isocurves. Think of them of some kind of a smooth grid with silk
skinned on top of it. If you move one junction the surface
changes, but smoooothly.

Setting up our surface


Our setup

Enter editmode, select all ( ) and press "Endpoint U" in the editbuttons menu. Do not press Endpoint V (they
are uniform now), because it will ruin the tubular shape of our creation. You may try it and then switch back to
Uniform. I also find it is not enough to work with the default resolution. Usually for a start I set it to something
like 24/24 or 32/32.

The resolution affects the level of nurbs surface tesselation when it's being rendered or drawn. You can see
how the density of the wireframe surface changes, so choose a resolution you like. I would also suggest to
leave the order as it is - 3/4. I will not explain to you in detail what the order means but you can find out for
yourself by doing this; open a new blender window create something like a nurbs circle and duplicate it a
couple of times then for each circle set a different value and then you can see what the value changes or
causes.
Adding an extra curve

Working towards the nose


Now it's time to get busy shaping. Your friend is + . Select a CV, press + , it selects one
isocurve along either U or V. Press it second time, it changes the selection from U to V and vice versa. This
helps in first time shaping and in subdivision.

On this image it looks like the two outer isocurves are not subdevided enough so we're going to add
another subdivision. We first select a CV on the outmost curve (far right), press + to select the full
circle. Then select a circle of CV's next to it (don't forget to hold while selecting more CVs). Now
press and choose subdivide. And there you have it an extra curve.

Never subdivide before you're absolutely sure you can't get the shape you need without more subdivisions
because the more CV's you have the more complicated your object gets, and the more difficult it gets to
deform it. Maybe you can drag some CV's from somewhere else where they are not necessary? Maybe
just move them in some other way you didn't think of yet? If it doesn't work, subdivide.
Shaping the nose

Now it's time for you to start shaping the nose, just select the CV's and move ( ) them. Make sure that you
always select atleast 2 CV's so that your shape stays symmetrical. You can shape the surface by using
regular modeling tools, like grabbing and moving ( ), scaling ( ), etc.

A nice and plumpy nose


Now we're going to try and make a nice and plumpy nose for our
little mouse. Look at the final image to see what we want to
achieve here, so you know what we're doing.

Nice and plumpy?

It looks like more V subdivisions are necessary to make that


nice plumpy nose. Select V isocurves, and subdivide ( ) them.
Let me remind you of one thing I said earlier in the tutorial: when
you subdivide, the geometry of surface changes. If you
subdivide in favour of some particular detail, the "parasite" CV's
accumulate on the other side. Never subdivide two curves
several times straight. Instead, subdivide, adjust the shape of
the whole object, and see if you need more subdivisions. If you
do, go on, but it often turns out that you don't. And also keep in
mind the symmetry of your object. I can guarantee you, that it
makes it a whole lot easier.

Making more V subdivisions


After some more shaping of the nose we get something like this.
The nose isn't perfect yet but it's getting there. For now lets
leave the nose alone and move on to the eyes.

Now that's what we call plumpy!

The location of the eyeballs

The eyes
We've reached perhaps the most scary part of any face, the eyes. Scary because the level of detail they
have is often very high. Let's add an eyeball as a separate object. It doesn't matter what kind of a sphere it
is because it is going to stay round. I think it's better to have a mesh UVsphere here. So, add one,
duplicate and adjust them. Find a good position for them. If you have a sketch, use it or you can of course
look at where I've put them.

Wow we just made some eyes

Here you just need to move your CV's like insane to get the desired result. we need to increase the
number of subdivisions here. And then just try folding the CV's around the eyes.
A closeup

After serious shaping of the eyes we most likely get creases. Try to smooth ( ) them very carefully. On this
figure I added another subdivision to tumble out the seam. Be careful and do not add more seams by
adding a subdivision.

Finishing up
Now the eyes are finished try working a bit more on the nose
and mouth, like I did right here. The mouse head is almost
finished. You can do the ears on yourself that should be no
problem, you managed to get the eyes done, after all.

Almost done

Here you see the mouse head complete it still needs some
smoothing but you can do that on your own. After you've finished
this head you might wanna try textureing it, or completing the
mouse and making an entire body for it, perhaps animating it or
whatever. Well, we hope you had a good time doing this tutorial,
and we hope you learned alot doing it.

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