I went back to the original Indy head shape (no more Baretta, I hope! ;-) ), changing only the nose and a few other minor things. I kept the "new" fedora from the first "Redux" version. I went back to the original light setup. I changed the camera angle to be slightly more "dramatic." And - finally! - I really did get Black Eyes working (I was wrong about it working before).

I still need to do a fair amount of work, especially on texture seams, etc. But this is much closer to what I originally had in mind...TIA for any and all comments or suggestions! -Mike

You seem to be on the right track. His face shape is much better. The only thing that appears to be distracting is the roughness of the texture. Using a high res texture would add another dimension of reality that would work wonders. Good work.

Wow that is starting to look great. Way better than anything I have been able to do as far as making a recognizable character. If it helps, I noticed that when the image was loade, and just the upper half of his face was showing, top of hat to just above tip of nose, there was no recognition on my part. However, when the remaining half loaded, I clearly saw HF. I checked this, by scrolling up and down, and noted again, that when I few just the top half, I do not see a resemblence but with the lower half alone I do.

I commented in your last post about his chin being too narrow. This version is a thousand times better. I was hesitant when I first opened this post but he's looking great! Kristta (going to convert him to han solo eventually?)

I think it would help your render if the whites of his eyes were not so white. Eye whites are actually a little pink from veins visible in the eye. I hope it helps, Jay

Er... Charles Bronson? :D

Thanks for all the comments! Let me see if I can answer in order...

TygerCub: You're definitely right about the texture. I've got a very high res texture for the face, but it needs cleaning up. The body tex is based on Kane, but the Kane tex (believe it or not!) is not hi res enough for what I'm trying to accomplish here (either that, or I'm just not using it right). I'll probably bite the bullet and work on an all-new body tex at something like 4000X4000 (or higher?!?!?) soon. That's going to keep me busy for a while! :-)

Shadownet: Hmmmm, you're right. I think it's mostly the eye shape - I've been tweaking it for ages, and it's hard to get just the right HF squint (it's almost as distinctive as Clint Eastwood's). The HF factor is more noticeable with the hat off, as I've duplicated his forehead lines, but I definitely need to keep working on those eyes...maybe some work on the temples too (no pun intended!)

Kristta: re Han Solo - sure, why not? :-)

Jaybutton: yeah, that's the one thing I still haven't figured out on Black Eyes/Actual Eyes. I had veins in his eye whites, but then they disappeared! I wonder how that happened...any suggestions, anybody?

Casette: No, no, no - Alan Alda! :-D

-Mike

One minor point. His nose should be a little asymmetrical. It sort of slants a bit to one side, that's part of his uniqueness. I think you're really getting there. Try Googleing for his images. You probably can find a really good close-up.

Message edited on: 06/29/2004 14:46

Hi, artnik. Thanks for the tip. You're quite right about the nose, of course. I have managed to get the tip of his nose to slant (maybe that's part of why the resemblance is better from the tip of the nose down), but I've been having trouble getting the rest of the nose to follow suit. Any suggestions about which dials to use to "break" the nose correctly? -Mike

Mike, he's great. I've got an idea for a kind of goofy image of Han Solo and Princess Leia married with kids. (spending way too much time watching movies with son) Kristta

Thanks for the kind words, Kristta. Han and Leia with kids - sounds like it could be a very interesting image :-)

At TygerCub's suggestion, I went back and looked at the image size for the head tex. It's only 1500X1500. I decided to go for broke - I'm now working on a 4000X4000 head tex! It's going to take a while - stay tuned for updates! :-D -Mike