model - subsurf face

[zuriastrad]

this is just a subsurf model of a face that i made. if anyone wants to play with it and get to try subsurf modelling then feel free. the model is public domain. Download the blend file.

thanks to OUNS for hosting the files.

[torus]

It seems like you are still trying to model faces and figures the conventional way, instead of using some of the more powerful tools which can be at your disposal. The result is that your face isn't particularly realistic- it's a bit out of proportion in small ways that send it careening into the uncanny valley.

I suggest learning to use a sculpt tool. Blender has a fantastic one integrated, or you could buy ZBrush or Mudbox (no real need though). Sculpting allows you to make highly realistic organic forms exceedingly quickly, with no need for hours of tweaking. The sculpt mode in Blender is just like clay- you can push and pull, smooth, deform, grab, and inflate groups of verticies in real time.

For example, I made this face (obviously not a woman's face, but that would be just as easy) in approximately 10 minutes from scratch (a sphere subdivided several times so I would have plenty of verts to work with.



Afterwards, you could do a series of polygon reductions and cleanup operations on the model to get it to a reasonable number of polygons, then encode the difference into a normal map.

I highly recommend you try it out

By the way, I'm not completely sure what you mean by "subsurface modelling." The subsurface modifier smooths models and adds polygons, giving models that "bar of soap" look, but that's really only a starting point for any model (unless you are modelling for a pixar film).

[zuriastrad]

thanks for the feedback torus,

i agree that sculpting tools are quicker to work with, but i really don't have the skills to make a face freehand yet, so i'm very reliant on using reference images if i'm to have any chance of getting the facial proportions correct. "hours of tweaking" may be a chore, but for now it gives me better results. maybe when my eye for facial proportions improves i might have more luck with the sculpt tools. i really should take up sketching with paper and pencil to work on that side of things.

subsurf modelling might have the "bar of soap" look initially, but that simplicity isn't a bad thing when you are working on getting the proportions right. once you are happy with the general shape you can apply some levels of subsurf to give yourself a lot more polys to work with and then break out the sculpting tools and start carving finer detail in. i reckon a combination of the two techniques would give some great results.

[torus]

The only way to get better is through experimentation Sure, subsurf gives you enough polies, but you could also subsurf a sphere (what I did for the above image), and go from there- then you don't need to build even a general face shape beforehand.

Sketching on paper only goes so far- it would be much more helpful if you worked with clay or some other malleable substance, and practiced making human forms. From there, sculpting in Blender is easy- it's just pushing and pulling.

[zuriastrad]

ok, you've talked me into it, i'll give the sculpting tools another chance.

sculpting with clay does make sense, since it is a 3d medium. i'll keep an eye out for any evening classes.

[tZork]

also keep in mind that while skulpting the base you do not (nessesarely) have to keep joints nicely bend-able, think abt uv or mind loopflow, if you retopo the model later.

[ai]

Time to bring out my hat and glasses.

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Ok, listen my fellow disciples:
The most important thing is edgeflow and edgeloops. Edgeloops are, as the link tZork provided loops around the eyes, and mouth. The mouth can have stretched loops around the nose too. However these are tremendously important if you want to animate the thing you model out. Sure, you can animate things that doesn't have edgeloops and nice edgeflow but you won't get nearly as good results and you will have a much harder time to animate it.
Then to make your edgeflow flow the same as muscles would on the real body, with other words, try to simulate the muscles with the edges. You'll have a much easier time modeling out definitions too if you do that.

Now, there's basically two ways of going about doing this. One way is just to take a sphere/box etc. (a simple shape) and start sculpt it.
Now you can just start practicing to get the anatomy and proportions right if you need that, but the thing is, you don't need to worry that much about the edgeflow. Why?
Because later, when you feel you are done with the model you can re-topologize (I don't know how that works in Blender as I use ZBrush, but it should basically be the same thing, although probably a little different technique).
Re-topologization means that you will lay out the edgeloops on your own directly on the model, then taking that new model and save it (at least in ZBrush), efficiently applying the new egdeloops.

The second way is to build a base model, low-poly, with the correct egdeloops and muscle edgeflow, then divide it to get more detail and start sculpting in whatever you want.
So you would start from scratch, building polygon by polygon and slowly getting the shape of the face with the correct (hopefully) edgeloops already in place. If you're used to this kind of thing you can quickly get a base face/head and start dividing that.
But do keep in mind that building a head or a face is a process without instant gratification, you will need to work on it as it probably won't look too good at first. Also, creating correct and really good edgeloops isn't as easy as it might look.

Those are the two most common ways to do it. Whatever you feel most comfortable with and works best for you.
I tend to switch between these methods as I don't really have a preference. However, I do like to lay out my edgeloops before getting into detailing anything. Feels cleaner that way and I don't have to have that sneaky feeling in the back of my head knowing that this is a disaster edgeloop-wise. It throws off my concentration, and nerves.

Research edgeloops on google to get an idea what the hell I was talking about, if you do not know already.

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Ok my fellow disciples. Class over. Go have sex .... or just stay at home, eat chips and drink cola, get fat and watch porn ... or something. You earned it.

[torus]

I've done stuff with edgeloops before, but I'm not sure why the hell you would need to worry about that for the face. Last time I checked, Nexuiz had absolutely no facial animation system, nor are there plans to implement one

[zuriastrad]

Last time I checked, Nexuiz had absolutely no facial animation system, nor are there plans to implement one

i have some ideas in this area.

the only reason you couldn't do facial animation in nexuiz is because you can't run multiple animations at the same time (as far as i know). the way around this would be to make the head as a seperate zym and mount it on top of a headless body in the same way that weapons are mounted onto the player characters. then you could animate the head to your hearts content because it wouldn't interfere with the bodies animations.

the only question is how you get a head model mounted on a body model. would it need to be done in the code of nexuiz or could it be done with a simple config file?

[ai]

Nexuiz probably won't need them. But it's always good practice to have edgeloops. I just said how to do it the "right" way. Edgeloops aren't just for animation purposes, but also with muscle flow which will help out in creating correct anatomy.