Newbie playing with sculpties - Making a face mask

As the title says, I'm a newb that's been playing around with sculpties (about a day or two). I've been playing around making organic shapes. The first 'real' thing i created was a tophat shape, which to me worked pretty well, I'm learning to use Wings 3D.

I tried using blender but it kept crashing on me and i found the learning curve reasonably difficult (considering i have had 0 experience with any 3d modelling program)

I'm now venturing into wanting to/trying to make a face mask, specifically this one:





Some of you may recognise that as the Guy Fawkes mask from the movie V for Vendetta.

I'm not sure how hard it is to make this with my limited knowledge, but one major dilemma i can't get my head around is how to form the eye holes, I know i can't delete any vertices or panels in order to get the hole, but i don't know which tools to use to get the eye holes

Holes such as this are tricky. The only shape that would do is the cylinder, using the ends of the cylinder as the eyeholes. The problem with that approach is that it'll make the bridge of the nose a highly concentrated area (32 faces across) and you'll struggle to make a clean model.

On a single prim full head model, I've used a plane type and modeled so that the top and bottom of the plane come together across the eyes. This allowed me to leave the gaps for the eyesockets.

But the best way to do it in my opinion is to model over the eye sockets, then use the alpha channel on the texture to make the holes.

I see, then i shall learn how to texture models when i have the time.

Do you advise that i make the eye socket area as thin as possible?

I'd make it as a single sided sculptie from a plane. When the mask is worn, the reverse side wouldn't be visible so no need to waste faces on it.

there is actually a easy way to work around this.

and Pumpkin Tripsa did it.

he used the avatar example .obj files to create a skin display dummy that displays skin textures.

if you can take the face and make it a sculpty then in theory it will allow you to make the mask into a skin texture for the head and let you go from there.

the exact process on this i do not know but if Tripsa did it then i know its possible

Unfortunately for the OP, Blender 2.48 is able to shrinkwrap now. Useful for this and form-fitting clothes among other wild things.

This site has many variations on the avatar mesh. You may find a closer match to the shape you want here.

http://www.ccccybernetics.com/avatar_databank/all.php

Now that Blender 2.48 has Shrinkwrap, I thought I would use it like papier mache and shrink a sculptie plane over the face of a non-sculpty model. This means I can concentrate the sculptie lines over the area I am interested in and not waste resolution on something that does not need resolution.
I started by shrink wraping a Domino Marama sculptie plane over the model, unfortunately it always gives the concave surface, not the convex. So I get a sculpty of the inside of a face, which is transparent on the outside.
Is there a right and wrong side to a plane and how do you tell or is there someway of changinging the UV map to give me the outside of the face?

"UNfortunatly"? 0.o

I think you're all trying to go about this the hard way. Yes, there's multiple holes, but you shouldn't need to see the back (it's a mask, it's suppose to be worn). That said, it's dead easy to apply a texture to one continuous mesh that has alpha holes where the eyes, nose, and mouth should be. You've already got two good views of where they should go. >

This might be a little difficult to explain, but I'll have a go.

The way a friend of mine got around it was, by pulling the mesh at the eye part of the mask, INTO the head. So you would end up with a mask that has the shape of a face, then at the eyes you would have big sunken dips in the mesh, which wouldn't show as when you are wearing it, they will be INSIDE your head, so no need to mesh with alphas and stuff (hope that makes sense lol).

To be honest that is the best way I can describe it without having any pictures to hand. I will try get some pics sorted, but the friend I mentioned, is rarely on lately, so I can't promise.

Hopefully the explanation will suffice.

=)

having the meshes intersect? interesting idea, though it would look weird when not attached, and having the holes fit perfectly would become very important to not get weird results I guess...

Yeah well there are some **cough** flaws with the idea used in my post above lol =P