We live in an age with cutting edge technology we hold right in our pocket, with uses far beyond just snapping a selfie! In fact, what if that we took the next step - turning that picture into a fully realized mesh! In this post, I'll be breaking down the creation of this demonic jack'o'lantern asset - of which I used a real pumpkin I scanned with my phone as a base!
From Photograph to Photogram:
Step 1: Download Capture
Step 2: Slowly maneuver your phone around the object - get several angles as the software captures this data into tiny spacialized points.
Step 3: Admire your work!
That's great, right? But it's not quite ready for my purposes, as I want more creative control with a more traditional model. Capture let you export a non-colored point cloud in the USDZ format, due to it being the supported file format Apple was using for AR purposes. I used an online converter to turn the point cloud USDZ into a series of tiny triangles in an OBJ, which I could then take into Maya.
You may notice a problem. This topology isn't going to work for my current needs, so the question becomes how to turn this pseudo-point cloud into something manageable. The answer is shrink-wrap! After deleting the stray points of the table, I scaled a low poly sphere with the topology to around the same size as the pumpkin, then turned on "live surface" for the topological nightmare we imported. With that, just a few clicks around and the points of our sphere snapped right onto the shape below. Inflate the shape outwards so it's never below the surface, "smooth" to increase the resolution, and repeat till you get the level of detail you desire!
From there, I had a nice organic template I could start turning into my final mesh! I tweaked the proportions and shapes around to my liking, and added extra details. The face has extra topology around the eyes so it can deform into a more sinister form with a blendshape!
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