So many people make heads out of boxes and sphere's making a fairly decent head but forget about topology. To be honest, I couldn't make a head without topology. My attempts failed, Hours of work for a terrible head. Look how terrible my best attempt was even though it took over 3 hours! (Pic 1) My first attempt at topology beat all of my other heads, And it only took 1-2 hours! (Pic 2)
Pic1
Pic2
Planning Topology:
The way i make my topology is to plan it out in photoshop first. It doesn't take too long, Normaly 10-40 mins.
Note: Use the pen tool and stroke to create the lines
Note: Don't worry about planning topology on the side reference, The front is most important
So, I start by making a simple, Low poly, Topology plan.
(For this example i will use my light yagami topology plan.)
The topology i use contains 2-3 loops for the mouth, 3-5 Loops for the nose and 3-4 For the eye. Take into account the distance beetween the inner loop and the second most inner loop as the inner one will most likely be pulled back slightly. The cheek bone needs some loops to create the curve of the characters cheek and the nose needs alot of attention payed to it as parts carry on untill the top of the head of connect into the eyes. While making your topology you need to think about anatomy too, For example, The zygomatic bone crates a curve that needs more geonometry than the forehead.
After the head has some base topology we need to remove this hyper lowpolyness. At the moment we have little to work with, Start to divide the empty area'to create a nice ammount of loops to work with.
Note: Don't worry to much about n-gons, You can fix them later while moddeling
Methods:
What i would call the best ways to make your head is the following:
Method 1. Create a plane over the head with no segments, Cut in the topology that you planned and around the face. After you have done that pull the vertecies out one by one using a side reference. It may not work in certain modeling pakages as they man not have the needed cutting tool.
Method 2. Create a plane the size of one polygon from your topology plan (Preferable around the eyes or mouth and, Just to stop confusion, Make sure the plane is in the place of the polygon aswell as the size) Then start to pull it out and move it around to the correct position on the side reference.
I'm not saying these are the best methods, I just find them easier than some others.
Comming soon: Modeling the head!
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