Building a human face
Building a human face has always been a great challenge for any CG artist.
It's not easy. It's usually not fun.
And I tell you it's a really big pain to get the process right.
I spent around 2 weeks staring at Ken Brilliant's '
How to build a Digital Human' (described
here) and experimenting before I managed to refine the process used in this tutorial, so hopefully it'll benefit you as much as it's already helping me.
It should be noted that the process I've provided within this tutorial is by no means perfect.
I've tried my very best to make the tutorial as simple as possible but there's always the niggling feeling that certain parts can be improved upon. Mayhaps I'll try and refine the process even more when I've got time in the near future :D
Oh, before I forget.
I royally messed up and totally forgot where I obtained the image that is used in this tutorial.
So, many apologies in advance if you happen to be the image owner.
Now without any further ado, away we go~
Here's a sneak peek at what we'll be building today.
Now I can already predict what's going through your mind.
And yes, we are only going to build the eyes, nose and mouth.
The other areas of the face seems relatively managable so I'll let you figure them out on your own :D
Before you proceed, you might want to download the background image and the accompanying LWO file for this tutorial.
The layers within the LWO file will illustrate the changes the undergone by the 3d model over the course of the tutorial.
Let's start out by building the mouth.
Nothing too complicated. Just use a flat plane and get yourself a rough layout of the mouth.
Use the Edge Extrude/Extender tool to make this a quick and easy process.
You'll notice that all the polygons used are quads.
Next we build the nasallabial fold...
...and fill in the blanks.
Then we move on to the eyes...
...and fill in more blanks.
Righto. That was the easy part.
But don't dismiss what you've just done as something that's unimportant!
I learnt for myself the very VERY hard way that what you do here in the beginning affects the final model A LOT.
The construction of the nasallabial fold is very important because it governs how the mouth and cheeks deform during speech.
A very obvious problem at this point is the fact that we're only using ONE front facing photograph.
Thus we can't tell how far back the eyes are set or how much the lips protrude.
This is the part where a good reference book will come in handy to give you the information you need.
If you happen to own a copy of '
Action Anatomy' (described
here), turn to page 103 for the positions of the various elements on a person's face.
You can start shifting points forward now.
Extrude the eyes into the socket by a little bit.
Perform a loop slice for the upper lip...
... and the lower lip.
One more slice above the upper lip.
Here's a closeup of it all.
That wasn't too tough right?
Hehehe... the fun has just started.
We'll be tackling the contruction of the nose first.
That's because it is possibly the most troublesome part of the face to build.
The slicing we did just now around the mouth is integral to the construction of the nose.
Add in the 2 polygons for the nose bridge then perform a loop slice.
Split the polygons near the nostril area.
You can practically ignore the front viewport for the moment.
Just focus your attention on the side viewport for now.
Reposition the nose area's vertices.
Perform a slice and reposition the vertices again.
Still with me?
I certainly hope so... the tough part is coming up next and it's easy to get confused.
Here's a particularly tricky slice.
Reposition more vertices... again.
You'll need to slice and then merge polygons for this part...
... and then merge and remove some extra polygons.
Remember, we need to try our best to make sure that everything is built using quads.
Even though Modo 201's renderer will be able to handle n-sided polygon sud-div cages, you cannot ever discount the possibility that this model may be loaded into Lightwave for animation.
Quads are always the best way to go.
Perform a loop slice that goes all the way through the lips...
...and then reposition more vertices.
Perform a slice from the side view.
Split a few polygons and reposition more vertices.
The whole reason behind all these slices is to give the nose enough geometry to contruct the nostrils from.
An alternate way would be to build the bridge of the nose and then extrude the nostrils out.
I've tried that method before but unfortuantely it never seems to work well for me.
One more slice...
...and more repositioning of vertices.
This is the part where you should shift all the points on the nose into their final positions.
Why? Because you're almost done with the nose!
The only elements remaining are the nostrils, so you'd better make sure the shape of the nose is correct.
Perform 2 bevel-insets and then extrude.
And we're finally done with the nose! Whew!
That felt good didn't it?
Next up, we've got to settle the eyes and then the mouth.
It's fairly obvious that Alexander here doesn't have eyeballs.
But that doesn't mean you can do a slip-slop job with the eyes.
I HIGHLY recommend that you at least build 2 spheres to place behind the sockets as they will help you a lot when you need to mold the curvature of the eyelids.
Bevel-inset the pupil area once.
Ok... we've got a problem here.
I don't know about you, but most people I know don't have rounded outer corners for their eyelids.
So... what do we do about it?
Perform a slice to correct the problem.
We're nearly finished with the face!
Next up is the mouth!
Reposition more vertices...
...and perform a loop slice.
The loop slice around the perimeter of the lips to make the edge of the lips more pronounced when you convert the mesh to sub-div or sub-patch. It's basically playing around with the way sub-div works when vertices and edges are close together.
A bit more repositioning of vertices and we're done!
And that's basically it. Not too shabby eh?
The final model comes in at around 380 quads.
However, there ARE 2 triangles stuck in the outer corners of the eyes.
But from initial testing, they don't seem to cause any trouble when I hit Shift-TAB so I guess it's ok to leave them be.
Modo is a very powerful tool. So powerful that it may be intimidating to some.
Hopefully this tutorial will help you to alleviate some of the fear you may have had when it comes to particularly tricky models.
As I'm sure you will have noticed, the construction of the face involved a lot of slicing, merging and splitting of polygons.
Speaking from personal experience, I myself used to be afraid of these very same processes.
But therein lies the power of a 3D modeler. Don't always restrict yourself to bevels and smooth shifts.
Harness the power of Modo! :D
If you've got any questions about this tutorial, feel free to contact me via the addresses listed on my
site.
I hope you had a smashing time with my walkthrough of building a human face!
Modo win!!11!!!!!!1!~