Hair on the Brain

First pass at hair, well in this case fur. It looks pixelated and I"m sure there's probably some sort of oversampling setting that can be used. The lack of eyebrows is disturbing now.. And I feel like hair is just another one of those things can can be tweaked and tweaked... heh. Color, length, thickness, opacity.. all of those need to be painted before it probably looks better. Eh.. anyway. Oh, and new eyes, but the bump map is a little screwy. I didn't make the eyes, but my modification kinda screwed them up a bit. Overall I think my eye sockets are too large. I'd like to start on another head sometime soon so i don't forget what I did during the modeling stage of this one...

starting to texture

Well i'm starting to texture and i'm messing w/ the bump at the same time. I think the lipstick edges are too severe, i don't like the lip or eye bumps, and now the eyelids are really bugging the hell out of me. Well, all good lessons for next time.

hair test.. enjoy

this is a hair test I did.. I repeat this is just a test, if it were the real thing then...

toned down

Ok i toned down the SSS.

starting the bump

Just started messing around w/ bump settings and bump map.... have a really basic texture map on there right now w/ eyebrows and lipstick and nothing else. Needs lots more work... not sure if i'm going to texture the eyebrows or model it as a separate plane... i'd sorta like to have independant bump control over it so i might just make it another plane....

SSS update

Apparently i had the SSS messed up before. So here's the head w/ actual SSS... i think i need to fix the eyes a bit.

texture update

Okay, rebuilt all textures from the ground up w/ a new UV layout that helps the resolution a lot. I think it's still a little soft in areas, but overall it's looking not so bad.

Updated Model

Ok.. I've updated the topology a bit. I still have tri's, but I think it's a bit more organized. For the features I did the following: 1) pulled the ears out a bit so they weren't pinned, 2) thinned out the jaw so that it wasn't so wide, 3) smoothed the brow line just a bit, 4) brought out the cheek bone a little, 5) removed a lot of un-needed lines, 6) tried to make the geometry more uniform.

I think I could still make the chin smaller and maybe workout the forehead some more. Also I'm not completely happy with the intersection of the tris near the jaw line. Not sure how to handle that just yet.. anyways, here it is. I might just move on to texturing now since I'm so far behind now.

Face Mapping Tutorial

http://www.madartgraphics.com/tutorials/face1.htm

The face they make looks a little lame, but the tutorial is awsome.

http://www.virtualmediastudios.com/tuts/mapping/part10.htm

This one has the same problem.. but it's good.

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/tutorials/astil_afro/astil_afro_01.asp

This model is great! but not that in-depth of a tutorial.

New Bump and Spec

New bump and spec maps - no color yet, I'm redoing that as well. There's a few mesh tweaks - I thickened the eye lids and tweaked a few things here and there.

JF Update

Here's an incremental update - bump maps are tough to paint.. I'm fine w/ a bit of push back, lots of refinement to do

time

Mind if we push this back a bit? I have a lot of work i need to do at.... well work.

just can't stop

I just can't seem to stop making simple adjustments that aren't even noticeable to the mesh. Hard to tell but i added the dimpling of the side of the lips and some more dramatic lighting w/ mr. fernslers help. She's got the Maya fast SSS shader on there. The ear attachment is still bugging the hell out of me so i might have to hide that w/ hair or something.... dunno.

JF Texture Update

This is the first pass at the texture - some misplaced wrinkle lines and a bunch of updates to do, but it's a start. And like Dan, I'm off for a few days.. I'll work on this later.

Looking at it again the color is in an okay direction - but there needs to be more variation. I think the chin is probably the closest. I'm having a little difficulty wrangling the skin shader to do my bidding tho. I need FAR more bump in this all over the place. Then I can assess the specularity.. eh, it's clearly a first go...

Minor texture updates..

my last post before I leave for the rest of the week.. few minor texture updates. Nothing spectacular, just smoothed things out a bit, added some more skin variation, added a couple of bumps. Small stuff, anyways, here it is..

anatomy of the neck

http://www.csupomona.edu/~jlbath/Lab%20Pics/neck.jpg

ears

I'm a fucking liar. I changed the shape of the ears and moved the closer. On to texturing!

SSS head

Well added the base SSS and the muscles in the neck. Probably the last mesh tweak before starting the texture.

texturing...

had to start early because I won't be here thurs. - monday.

Mr Brownstone..

Just some mapping, a couple of hairs bound to a vert on the right side of his face and thats it.. Kinda fun..

Lip deforming..

This is a small sample of the previous lips I made morphing to see how well that layout deforms:
Click here

Another render...

This is just where I'm at.

Open Mouth

edited...

mouth.. open

I was tired of seeing this.

heads

So i made her head a little fatter since it was too narrow, and gave her some spooky dead looking eyes.... and last but not least... i copied Jeremy's soft drop shadow :-p. Oh this is the smooth 1 iteration of the cleaned up mesh.

love them lips..

Ok.. these lips are modelled in a snear position.

once again...

A bit of a riff on dan's latest posts w/ a dash of what I think it should be - got the slight fleshy bulge happening on the corners and the loops lie in a fairly natural feeling place to me..

More Lips..

Ok heres further exanding on my theory of the lips..

cleaner wireframe

Started manually removing detail from the mesh.... got the chin, neck, and back of the head much more manageable now.

Lip Study..

See if this sheds any light on the subject.

I made these lips real quick and found the reference image afterwords, but I think it conveys the loopage idea I'm talking about. I just find the edges to be a little more rounded and they have the dimple at the end which dissapears when you pucker.

I think ideally there are two creases that can occur on the sides of the mouth. One is at the edge of the mouth where the lips meet the skin and the second is a result of the mouth muscle underlapping the cheek as it expands out.

Anyways take a look at the loops here..

Smooth...

layout from below - just smoothed and rendered.

More loop rework..

As per dan's request to work more on the mouth, I've re-organized a few loops so that the outter edge of the nose drops down past the mouth corner.. better flow?

Topo Rework

Alrighty... deleted the mouth and resculpted that w/ results that I'm much happier with. Now the loop that forms the bottom of the top lip rolls to the outside and down to form the lower portion of the lower lip - forming a corner I can be happy with. Also redirected some loops in and around the base of the nose for a better join to the face. Finally reworked a bit of the eye socket to form up to the eye more and to get a little bit of a better look in the corner. I still need some loops on the top and bottom of the eyelid to give it some more volume on the edges.

Thoughts?

ears finally

I gave the model some ears and also realized that the mouth in the ref. images was slightly open.... maybe i need to give her some teeth or something. That ngon in the cheek is screwing things up still.

odd proxy issue

I've been having weird issues w/ my smooth proxy. There are certain vertices that just won't weld correctly even tho everything is correct on the low poly mesh.

For you Maya folks out there...

This should be handy for the next round...

He came down w/ SSS as well...

Just to keep this rolling - I scaled my head to make sure it fell w/ in averages, dropped the Maya Fast Skin SSS shader on it and hit render. I did not alter any settings, it's waxy for sure I think primarily I need to break up the specular stuff. I also popped on some eye shaders from highend3d and did an ambient occlusion pass and a soft drop shadow for mike.

Jeff Unay Master Class (Siggraph 04) on Hyper real modeling

Great Great pdf.

Click here

she has sss...

This is a test to get sss working properly. Looks like I'm getting somewhere with the settings. Will post my findings later.

a little more toned down and adjusted..

Female Head .. mmm female head.. yeah..

I didn't build her all that well, but she's decent.. I have some more renovations to do.. just posting another "in progress".. Enjoy.

Figured I should get my wires up there as well for comparisons.. Don't think I'll get any awards for how the ear is attached.. a pretty crappy job if I do say so myself. Could probably clean it up if I noodled it out a bit more. The mouth corners are an issue, I think my problem is that I didn't properly roll the loops out for the lower lip.. I should have done that early before the mouth got fully integrated into the nose and other loops. bah. These head things are tricky :) gotta start right or your screwed later. Anyway, I thought everyone did a good job. Looking forward to the next challenge.

wires

Here's the wireframe. You can see how damn heavy it is. One really fucked up ngon right along the cheek too.

some more tweaks based on dan's crit

Some really small tweaks really, mostly in the nose and i added eyelids finally. I've got some really weird issues around the mouth now tho.... i think she could use more defined cheeks and ears of course. But i'm pretty tired of this head. I'll have to incorporate that info on the next one. Think i need to sink the eyes a bit deeper.

It's late, I'm done.

I'm well over the time limit, probably close to 6hrs now. Did some more layout - fixed proportions and made an ear. Also tried to make a more light hearted mesh - no so angry looking. Don't think that's all that successful.. :) Basically just too soft selection and shoved it around a bit. Anyway, I'm done with this, I'm mostly happy w/ it, the mesh isn't overly populated, but the ear connects and looks weird. There's a dent in the middle of the brow that showed up after smoothing that I could get rid of. But overall I'm kinda done w/ this. I could keep pushing and pulling but that won't fix the larger issues. So if I do another, I'll start fresh. Maybe more toon-esque next time.

bah critique

i was trying to be all constructive and shit and draw on wireframes.... apparently i can't post images in comments in blogger tho so you get a whole post and i don't think i'll be doing anymore on wireframe drawing :-p. On the profile image i drew some stuff to make the head more feminine (well according to that morphology of digital creatures course at siggy). Apparently females have no harsh brow ridge and their jaws are much more curved than males (who have boxier jaws and a very defined ridge in their brow almost like a shelf) so he was saying a sure fire way to make a person feminine is to either really smooth out that ridge or get rid of it completely (like pocohontas in the disney movie) and really curve out the jaw. The circles are just edge loops that would drive maya batty. Dunno how max likes that stuff but it seems to smooth out well for u. You might have problems animating characters w/ so many ngons tho. Especially since they're right in the brow where u'd have a lot of furrowing animations, and along the nose and nostrils. Temples and side of head probably don't matter at all. That's about it... i better get some sleep now as i tend to ramble when i'm tired....

stupid NIH blocking blogger :(

Well here's the head i was doing at work using the face by face method.... it's generic as shit looking right now. About 4 - 4.5 hours. Forgot to render out a wireframe tho :(. I'll probably tweak a little more tomorrow. You'd think i'd give it proper lighting... but eh i'm lazy. BTW my first foray into the face by face method, the mesh got really really heavy. I gotta go a lot lighter next time. As for the model itself its way too freaking heavy right now to make changes easily. I really like the face by face method but i have the exact same problem as when i box model which is getting the correct edge flow. I actually think it was harder w/ this method..... hmmm next attempt i'm going to model all of the edge flows separately then combine them into 1 mesh... that might work.

Good points to method - I liked doing the eyes, mouth, and nose separately... i especially liked how the nose turned out since i usually just extrude faces for nostrils and that doesn't work well.

Bad points - combining and connecting stuff and closing holes. Sometimes i'd just stare at it and wonder how the hell i was going to connect shit. Also, u kind of lose the ability to create good edge loops if you add too much detail from the get go.

DM female face update..

Eh.. this isn't turning out great yet.. I'll mess with it more.

JF Update

couple o' mesh tweaks and now he's got a skull - ear forthcoming, but hey, it looks like a head of sorts... this is probably another 45 min to an hour of tweaks, maybe a tad more..