Help!!!(Face Topology)

[Androgs]

Hi all, I really need help for this one, I'm pretty a noob when doing a character model. Now I'm trying to model a male character for my animation study. He's a father with one kid, and his name is Mr. Jonathan.
done in Maya and still have a bunch thing to do of course. so please..any suggestion, help, c n c are very..very welcome here. btw, how's my face topology? I start it with polygon modelling. Thanks for your time .

[Ilkejav mk5]

whe I look at the side views of the face, I think it is slightly tilted forward compared to the rest of the head. aside from that, nice start. if you keep tweaking, it'll eventually look really good.

[shiroii]

hey man,

some tips.

Keep it smooth and flowing. You want to make the line as smooth as possible, this will result in smooth surfaces. You're already doing good here, but it still needs some tweaking.

You really need work in the eye area; a lot of tris and too few polies. Insert some more edges to shape it some more and keep everything circling. You should really get the edges to flow. Basically you should be able to pick a rondom point, follow it's path and get to it again without to much interuption. This will make the defformations easier to make.

You should also round the cheek out a bit.

Work on the mouth, you've already got the circle thing going on, but you need to define it more, there are some broken edges there.

you should also put the neckmuscles in more correctly, you've got the edges for it so ...

anyhow, I've made a little drawing, hope that helps!

[Phynius Gauge]

On top of shiroii's example, maybe this will help:



The topology's not perfect, but it demonstrates some of the edgloops that shiroii drew out. I'll take it down if you don't want it in your thread

[Androgs]

Ikejavmk5, Thanks. I think I know what you meant, I doesn't realize that at first, will do some tweaking!. Thanks again!

shiroii, wow! big thanks for the help and tips, thats what I need right now. I'm still a bit confusing about edgeloop, I think what I need to do is a practise and practise..hmm..will fix it and I'll post an update later.Thanks again.


Phynius Gauge, Thanks!!!!please post some more if you have some good one. actually I need a lot reference about edgeloop, Thanks for posting the image. There's a lot kind of edgeloop in the net and its a bit confusing to me because different people have a different approach, btw, in the pic you posting there's a polygon contain 5 vertex if I'm not wrong, is it still able to have it in poly model? Thanks again for your time

[shiroii]

Quads are prefered becuase of better smoothing and easier deformation, at least, that's the way I see it. Triangles and five sided polies are ok as long as the quality doesn't get affacted. Lots of people use triangles at the bridge between the brows and at the crows of the eye so..

anyhow, since you've requested it some more reference for topology, I've included a link to my most recent model. It's a few weeks old, not totally perfect, but I'm happy with it and currently using it to practise my UV and texturing skills

Front and side image of my most recent model - female - 500 kb

[Phynius Gauge]

Originally Posted by Androgs

Phynius Gauge, Thanks!!!!please post some more if you have some good one. actually I need a lot reference about edgeloop, Thanks for posting the image. There's a lot kind of edgeloop in the net and its a bit confusing to me because different people have a different approach, btw, in the pic you posting there's a polygon contain 5 vertex if I'm not wrong, is it still able to have it in poly model? Thanks again for your time

When I created that model I wasn't sure if that 5-gon would be a problem, but it turns out that 5/3/n-gons are only problematic in areas that require animation. It can actually be beneficial to use a triangle here and there to acheive deformation that would otherwise take many quads.

Cheers

[Phynius Gauge]

Here's some more ref (I'm pretty sure the first was done by bay raitt, the second by song hwasup, and the third by some random helpful forumite). Keep in mind that there is really no perfect topology, just that which is ideal for pertinant situations. I'm pretty sure in movies, if a character requires an extreme expression/deformation in a certain shot, the modellers will actually create a version of the face just for that expression.

[shiroii]

2 things you all should check out:

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=249393

and

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846

The second one is a book called "stop staring" by Jason Osipa. It's a great book, it's about facial animation, but it also tells you how to make a head with a good topology. Jason's got some theories on how you should make the edges loop in order to create good deformation. I couldn't model a head that well nor fast, but after I went trough the modeling chapters of this book; I got a lot better

This kinda sounds like an advertisement,... but you should check it out at a bookstore and browse through it, see if it'll help you

[Androgs]

Phynius Gauge, Many Thanks for the reference and a such helpful explanation. I planned to tweak the model a bit but also want to give a try with NURBS modelling. I'll post some update later.

Shiroii, Many Thanks for the link.I hope that book you pointed appear in my local bookstore , I really want to check it. I also saw your female model, which is a good modelling so far, but I think the ear is too low..or intended to be like that?. nice model nevertheless, any other progress soon?

I found a good link that explain a bit about edgeloop, the author using a software called "Blender". but the topology is still able to apply in any platform I think. here's the link
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21066
I think its cool to post the link here.

[Androgs]

I said with NURBS, nah..I take back my word. I found its a bit hard doing with it. I decided to do another polygon modelling with a new edgeloop. here's the image



another problem is, now the face has a different personality from the first one. please tell me what do you think about this one, about the edgeloop or the face itself. any suggestion how can I improve this head?
Thanks for viewing

[shiroii]

Looks better, The flow is pretty good

I would add another loop over the cheek, just to give it some more volume.

Do you use a reference image, if so, can we see it? Is not, GO GET ONE!
reference is very important if you want it to look like anything or sombody.

Just tweak around a bit on:
the eye cascets (eye holes, or whatever)
the corners of the mouth (very hard to do (>_<))
the overal roundness of the skull (there's some kinda glitch in the middle of his head )

good luck!

[Androgs]

Thanks for your help, Shiroii. here's an update after tweak a bit everywhere especially cheek and eye plus mouth. I also post the reference. I use Don Moen ,Christian singer as my reference because I think his face personality suit to my character. here it is



still need much of work. ear still not attached to the head.
any other crits and comment are surely...surely welcome.
Thanks!

[Androgs]

here's after attach the ear with the head, and a very..very..very early texturing test, hmm..without sss and such..

[Androgs]

a very..very early texturing test. crits and comment are welcome.