Character head

Mr. Bean

Hi,

My ultimate goal is to create a character like the Half Life 2 characters. So I thought I'd post my latest result so I can get critique and comments.

Here it is (After many, many redos, studying, techniques, and even looking at some anatomy): http://i726.photobucket.com/albums/ww264/Nimbus5000/Face_32_plane_extruded.png?t=1258477671

Wire: http://i726.photobucket.com/albums/ww264/Nimbus5000/Face_33_plane_extruded.png?t=1258478090

I think it looks pretty good, considering that one of my first attempts looked like this: http://i726.photobucket.com/albums/ww264/Nimbus5000/render_2.jpg?t=1255023871

Comments and critique are welcome and wanted.

Thanks

vcortis

He needs fuller cheeks. They're angling back straight into the side of his head when in fact it should be more of a curve.

Jaco

Too lazy to type right now, so here's a quick paint over. Hope it helps.



There are also some nasty smoothing errors around the jaw and nose you should fix.

praxedes

what's your available apps? I ask because extrusion modelling is not necessarily the best approach to this and there are a couple of other approaches that you could try out to get better proportions, including doing a sculpt style head from a sphere is ZBrush as per the ZB character creation book, then retopoing it, or modelling key edges and stitching pieces together from reference photos. Edgeloop characer modelling from focal press is good for this. Personally I wouldn't start with a box base mesh but you may yet find your method gets results.

Good luck!

~P~

Mr. Bean

Hi guys,

Thanks for the tips. I added another edge loop so that I could fill out his cheeks a bit more, and using Jaco's paint over I did a lot of tweaking. I'm not completely done with tweaking probably (You can never do enough tweaking ) but here's what I've got:

Praxedes, I'm using Max and Photoshop. I could use Zbrush, but I'm not very good at it as of now so I was hoping to only use Max for the modeling. For this head I used the plane extrusion method. I was hoping to get this into a decent head model, and then later when I make another character (for example I was considering making a WWII soldier at some point) I could just kitbash it into whatever head I need.

I was also wondering, it sounds so far like everyone has been critiquing the form of the head model, and not the topology. A lot of people have been telling me that the topology could use work, but so far no one has said the same here. Is the topology really good enough? If so, that would be great, because I've redone the head countless times because of the topology being bad. I specifically am creating this character to be designed for a game, so I have to keep it low poly and design the topology accordingly.

By the way, I was wondering what you thought of this person's topology in their head models: http://www.3drt.com/3dm/characters/realpeople-males/characters-realpeople-males_18.jpg Those heads look like they have kind of messy topology, but I know that 3DRT is a very successful company, so is their topology actually okay?

Thanks everyone for the critique so far!

Thanks

EmAr

A side view would be better for these comments but I'll write them anyway. Back of his neck is either too wide or too fat. This may be related to the back of his skull too. His chin area is a little flat maybe?



About topology, you have many flat edge loops. You could use them to define the curvature of the surface in all directions.

EDIT: those 3drt models look like pretty old/low spec. ones judging by the elbow joints. Probably those faces were not modeled to be animated in a handy way.

Jaco

About your topology, collapse those edges running from the ear across the head, or space them out to help smooth the top of the head.