Facial Edge loops flow

Kyle_butler

Hi. I know this issue has been addressed before, but I've seen a lot of different approaches to this. It is as if there isn't a definitive way, only more or less efficient ways of doing it.

I'm doing a character for in game animation. Right now it is a little over 8000 polygons.
My main concern is not doing a proper facial edge loop and later, in rigging, it will prevent my progress. Can you give me some instructions? As I'm not familiar with the rigging process, I really don't know which problems may be ahead with this current mesh. Thanks!

(Ps: the model is slightly assimetrical).

Neox

where are those 8k tris hidden? can you show a picture of the whole head? i looks way below 8k from the mesh density i can see. For 8k i'd expect the ears and eyes to be way more defined.

[EDIT] Ah Oh 8k for the whole character, hmmm still i'd say definite some parts better end clean your topology there are tons of useless polies, you should decide if you want either very cleant sds style topology or more optimized one, right now you have plenty of strange loops going on with plenty of useless quads.

Also if you want to animate him, why is the mouth closed?

Kyle_butler

Thanks for the quick response, Neox.
This is a work in progrees. I'm currently working in the mouth area.

I supected that was something wrong with the model (hence I asked for help). But I can't really point out where. Could you name those "strange loops going on with plenty of useless quads."?

D4V1DC

Your trangles are noticeable you want to 'try' to avoid those at all cost, especially if you don't have a limit on your character (as far as polycount is concerned, no pun intended.)

The body is asymmetrical right, not the face?
Do you want the mouth to be animated as well?

Here I just made this update yesterday to a model I'm working on.
Probably won't be making any facial animations but we all pretty much make our models animation ready, for practice. If you need more angles let me know.

I usually learn a lot by just reading/studying images but the basic idea is to just put down the major loops into the face then add supporting groups to smooth It all out.

If you google / images ("Head topology") you'll get a bunch of images and that is how I created this head attached.

If your still having problems just post a response with some specific issues your having.

This is an all Quads head.

Eric Chadwick

We have some good face topo examples
http://wiki.polycount.com/FaceTopology

Many ways to skin this cat
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80005
http://www.hippydrome.com/MeshDesignFace.html

Kyle_butler

Thanks for the examples, $!nz and Eric Chadwick.

I don't have a polygon limit, but I don't want to push my hardware to the limit when animating and rendering, so I'm trying to keep as low as I can.
-The face is a little asymmetrical. If you look closely, the left eye and nostril are slightly different.
-Yes, the mouth will be animated as well. It is closed due to an error that I carried on from the zbrush model (which I had sculpted with the mouth closed.)

As for the research, I tried to find a "definitive" guide, but there isn't one. So I was confused on how to approach this.

After your examples, I decided to go ahead, ditch the current head and start a new one, altogether.

This time, I think the overall loops are better, specially around the eyes and mouth. There is a problematic area around the ears, but I think I may be very close to finish it.

Neox

$!nz wrote: »

Your trangles are noticeable you want to 'try' to avoid those at all cost

thats just plain wrong. With the polylimit in mind this is going to be a lowpoly asset, therefore quadonly is a super stupid idea to follow, especially when you consider that in engine everything will be tris anyways. Quadonly is a philosophy that comes from film, where it applies in most cases but should not be used as a law you have to obay. If it smoothes well and if it deforms well, tris or ngons are perfectly fine.

When it comes to sculpting its a whole other issue, there you would want to make a topology which has few poles and is distributed evenly to avoid stretchings and such, tris are okay if they smooth good, ngon can be a problem, in zbrush at least.
A 5sided ngon will become a quad and a tri, on symmetrical meshes this can result in different quad/tri combinations and therefore will make the mesh asymmetric which can screw you over while sculpting.

D4V1DC

I needed an all quads head for my project and I guess I assumed he would add in details like normal maps and such so trying to kill to birds with one stone.
Also the corners of his first head were pretty bad if you look at the corner of the mouth.
It was my mistake for assuming he was going to sculpt detail into this and not asking directly, guess It's animation only then.

Kyle_butler:
Heads looking better and looks like you learned quick enough to sort out the issues that were visible in your previous head, nice and quick update!