My Week With Marilyn

[brkurt]

Hello everyone...

Inspired by Frankenstein's monster, I'm going to my best to create a working, speaking model of Marilyn Monroe at age 26 or thereabouts when she made 'Gentlemen prefer Blondes'./ I was able to find a full-one face shot (they're not very common) and was enthralled by how beautiful she was. Her eyes are significantly wider apart than normal, as is her heart-shaped face. She had a nose job, and that's the look I'll use. Help will be appreciated!

[Manuel]

If you want to make a morph target, remember to don't alter the base mesh topology!

[brkurt]

I'll be using the Wavefront .obj export from the October 31 2011 nightly build, and I won't delete a single vertex.

I've looked around for tutorials how to make a custom target for Makehuman, but I couldn't find one.

I have OpenArtist 2009 running on an older Pentium 4 system, and it has MakeTarget on it. Does this software still link to the latest nightly builds?

The most important thing to note about Marilyn is that she is a perfect example of high estrogen.

[mflerackers]

Here's an older tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aAjda29JKk.

[brkurt]

Interesting. The project breaks down into two sections: (1) an accurate topology of 22-year-old Marilyn Monroe (after she got her nose bobbed and teeth straightened); and learning how to create the morph target using MakeTarget.

The first I can do easily. I've notice that Alpha 5.1 had a more Euro-centric model, whereas 6.1 is truly universal. This is of course a tactical advantage; however, it is problematic when trying to design a character clearly as Germanic (Celtic?) as Norma Jean Baker. Note the very high square forehead, the tiny chin and heart-shaped mouth. This is presently quite difficult to duplicate in the latest svn.




As for the second, I've got Blender 2.49b Python 2.6 and Blender 2.60a Python 3.2 running on Ubuntu 10.10 (I don't trust the Unity desktop). 2.49b can't find 'maketargetlib' and 2.60a doesn't have the MakeTarget interface. So...I'll need some help in understanding how MakeTarget works.

I didn't choose Marilyn Monroe at random. In 2012, her pictures, voice, performances go into the public domain. My hope was to have her sing 'Welcome to Makehuman', Transformers Bumblebee style.

[Sethren]

Try working on Myrna Loy, now that is a pain. Rather unique facial features.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/45 ... k.jpg/sr=1

[brkurt]

Interestingly enough, Myrna Loy's nose can be re-created with Nose Slider 9.

Back to Marilyn!

Here's what I've done so far: created a generically beautiful blonde of medium height, about age 25.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2gtFCCUW_I

The recreation of her face--with its triangular forehead, very high cheekbones, chiseled-but-tiny nose and chin will be more difficult. When Jonathan Williamson did this, he created extra edge loops for the details of the nose; but that is a no-no here, because the bash mesh vertices are inviolate. Back to the drawing board!

[brkurt]

Here is a day further on. I've used a screen capture from one of her last films, when she was a platinum blonde. Her facial body fat changed a lot over her last decade, but here she is very lean. I then created a Jaw vertex group, and layed it over the image.



The triangularity of her face really becomes apparent her. To match it, one must go way outside the present software parameters. Also, I created upperGums, lowerGums, upperDenturs, lowerDentures, and mouthCavity to make this workable.

Here is a render, using a tweaked UV image. I'm really getting in touch with my inner make-up and hair stylist!

Good enough! I'll start rigging here; I want to use some lines from her movies, and have the character speak.

[cooldave22]

can you explain how it is you make custom morphs? I am trying to figure it out and it's really hard, do I need makeTarget? I can't find any documentation anywhere!

[brkurt]

I asked the same question over in Suggest and Contribute; I also added the first of my Anime figures that I and a colleague are working on.
It would be great to have Makehuman and Blender running concurrently, so I could move from one app to the other, the way I do with Blender and Gimp when I'm creating a UV texture.