Low Poly Self Portrait: 3D Studio

[Right-click the image to download the full resolution file]

This character was created for use in an animation as a part of a larger project which never came to fruition, but still was a good learning experience.  The character is myself (or a cartoony approximation at least) and the intent was to model a character which looked good and was still simple enough that my humble pc could actually handle it as a part of a larger animation.  The whole idea was render speed here, which is why its not a more realistic character.  I had to skimp on the poly’s and use a meshsmooth modifier to get a decent looking character and any thoughts of using the mental ray renderer had to be thrown out, but overall it looks rather like me.  I’ll probably take another stab at modeling myself in the future, but for now, this digital doppelganger will suffice.

I did get around to rigging the face up for some animations.  My expressions are limited but I am capable of eyebrow movement, and some smiles.  The real stumbling block for the whole idea of animating a character though was the amount of difficulty in lip synching.  Unless I want to be a mute, it would take a lot of work to manually morph between phonemes for every single word.  There are automated tools available but without something like that, it’s a difficult process to get a character to say anything.