How do you set up reference photos?

I want to do my little brother as a character, but I don’t know how to properly take and set up the front and side reference images. Could someone please instruct me how to pose the model, the proper method of taking the photos, and distorting them to model? Thanks in advance.

http://www.blenderheads.com/site/index.php?topic=11.0

Also, check out the tutorial forum

And This

thanx man. I’ll look these up.

Those don’t answer my question. Any other takers?

put camera on tripod, and an X on the floor where you want your brother to stand. have him face the camera and take a pic. have him turn to his right and stand on the X and take another pic. Upload, and use those two pics as background images for your front and side views. In Blender, you split your model window into two windows. In one, you select Front View, and then click Background Image and pull up the front picture. In the other window, switch to side view and pull up the side picture. Start modeling as per the tutorial Obi-ron gave you.

Thanx, I was moving around him. It wasn’t working too. That’s just what I needed.

glad i could help! Also, make sure he does not slouch in the side view. in the viewfinder, pick a reference object like a picture or whatever on the wall in back of him as a height guide; you want his posture to be the same in both pics. Arms away from the sides helps you model his torso. there’s a site somewhere with like 50 reference pics of office workers and casually dressed people…it was posted here awhile ago, maybe search can find you a link.

You also want to use the longest lens you can (telephoto) to “flatten” your subject’s features, if you will be modeling in the orthographic side/front views. That way when you go to a perspective view of the model you’ll get the least distortion. Think of it this way: if you used a very wide-angle or fisheye lens to take your references, your brother’s nose would look way larger than in real-life, and you wouldn’t want to model your brother that way. Well I would, but my brother’s a stinky brat.:cool:

I once found an excellent tutorial series on modeling the human heads from reference photos. It’s for 3dsMax but the basic principles are transferable to Blender. It covers everything from taking the pictures and aligning them, to drawing reference lines, to modeling and texturing the head. I’ll send the link when i’m on the production computer tomorrow.

Edit: Here it is, the “organic modeling series” by Eric Maslowski. Readers are urged to view all parts.