Head Topology

Nemecys

Hey Guys, i'm looking for some opinions and critique on the topology of my head, bare in mind its not finished, but i seem to be stuck in my ways.

By this i mean, in the area of the cheek, i always seem to cause the loop to flow up the mouth and then up around the ear, I have had a look at other game title head models such as Dom and Marcus from Gears of War, and they don't do the same thing as i do.

So now my real questions are this;

-Is this bad topology?
-Will it cause my mesh to deform incorrectly?
-What is an acceptable Polycount for a head like this in as a low poly for use in UDK?

P.S. Im a uni student and this is our first attempt at creating base high and low poly meshes, so forgive my newbiness

Thanks

Mark Dygert

It's hard to say without a front view.

Most of the critical loops in the face are for animation and run around the eyes and the mouth so its hard to tell from the side. Not much animation going on in the back or side of the head so they can be messier without much effect on the facial acting.

Overall it looks a little dense for a character you would see in a cut/cinematic scene in games and definitely in need of optimization for a character you would see running around next to you in a game. It looks like you have loops in most of the right places (can't tell for certain without a front shot) so removing a few extra loops would be pretty easy, hopefully, if not you might want to rethink a few loops and poles so they can be up/down res'ed easily without effecting the UV layout or the deformation.

Personally I work with meshes about that dense every day, animating facial expressions and character dialog so it seems prefect for what we do, but our engine is mostly per-rendered so what we do doesn't really apply to most games, especially one running on ancient xbox hardware, like most games today are forced to do...

Psyk0

Topology can be done in various ways, with certain rules to work from. You seem to already know the basics, but like you said, there's a funky network of edges on the cheeks. Using poles is the simplest way to keep a clean mesh:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1247603

In short, poles are used to redirect flow, the pentagon one (where 5 faces share a common vert) will show up where you connect the main loop regions together.

This example (from Pior Oberson) is what i usually end up with:
http://www.pioroberson.com/svgalleries/piorfemale/images/pior12inchfemale%20%2894%29.jpg

From the examples i've seen, a basic head is around 2300 tris for UT3, that includes eyes, mouthbag / teeth, and portion of the neck bone when severed. Recent games, probably higher.

More topo goodies:
http://wiki.polycount.com/FaceTopology?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryTopology%5Cb%29

Nemecys

Ahh okay guys, i was scared of using poles and tris to be honest for a low poly mesh, i dont know why im so afraid of tris but i feel im going to put them in some really stupid places

Here is an improved side and front view just to see whats happening, i tried to reference this link http://www.xsibase.com/forum/attached/poly_regions.jpg for a more clean cut well formed topology.

Is there any serious improvements to look at?
Or should i just remember next time to look at maybe an 8 sided eye to help limit my dense
mesh

(sorry im just on a tight schedule with other projects i cant just purely focus on this while i do prefer it :P )




P.S For some reason the vertices just wont go away, even though i don't have it selected, ive been using the PolyDraw tools is it something to do with that?

Psyk0

Scared of tris and poles? If you take a look at a UT3 head, found in the SDK, this is what you get:



Not so neatly organized, right? but real time meshes are meant to be efficient, so the main thing you need to focus on is the silhouette, the pure black version at the bottom.

Rule of thumb is: edges that don't contribute anything to the silhouette can be taken out, they're just wasting geometry instead of changing the shape of the silhouette.
With that in mind, you still have to maintain a deformation friendly topology, as long as you have major supporting loops it should be fine.

Now i don't know what kind of guidelines you were given, so maybe you should stick with an all quad version, but try to at least use the maximum out of each polygon, your edgeloops are really tight together.

For the vertices problem, try this, right click on your mesh, go to object properties>uncheck the box that says "vertex ticks"?

Nemecys

Ohhh my god..... wow i never thought it would look, well not "bad" but i didnt think it would look like that xD

Wow thanks Psyk0, ill definately have a word with my lecturer and reference him to this and ask him if this would get me less or more marks.

But basically from this is it safe to say,
i can put tris ANYWHERE i please, aslong as i allow for deformation and silohuette?

Also im not sure but is this mesh safe to deform for facial animation, it certainly looks liek it may get.....sharp to say the least?

Oh and Mark cheers for the heads up on your personal experience with mesh's like mine its good to know that a mesh as dense as mine actually still has purpose somewhere helps me set up good references in my mind

almighty_gir

it's worth mentioning that the UT3 head was probably made with input from an animator, saying "yeah you can lose those, but keep these edges please!"

i can imagine that a modeler without any animating experience could, and most likely would optimise a mesh in such a way that if it then made it to an animator, the animator would likely shit themselves haha.

fade1

for me this ut3 head looks like it ran through a poly reduce tool...

almighty_gir

i don't think so. it looks like it's been reduced mostly by hand, as you can see the specific areas where animation would be most affected are clearly still looped properly.

Psyk0

almighty_gir wrote: »

it's worth mentioning that the UT3 head was probably made with input from an animator, saying "yeah you can lose those, but keep these edges please!"

i can imagine that a modeler without any animating experience could, and most likely would optimise a mesh in such a way that if it then made it to an animator, the animator would likely shit themselves haha.

Exactly, it's a balance between optimization and deformation.

It's also worth noting that this guy isn't gonna be a used in close-up shots for cinematics, he's running around in an action packed game...he's even got the option to wear a mask, so his facial expressions don't need to be perfect.

Nemecys: your quad mesh is still all tris in the end anyway, the difference is that it's easier to read and manipulate an all quad mesh for us.

So quads are commonly used because:

1.They subdivide in a predictable manner, without much artifacts (poles can create minor ones)

2.You can select whole edgeloops/ringloops instantly

3.Easy loop selection = easier uv mapping, you can quickly lay down your uv seams and use pelt / planar mapping on each portion, then stitch together.

4.Easier to select verts when manually weighting a mesh.

Ruz

http://www.mikerusby.com/images/newbasehead.rar

here is one of my base heads, far from perfect, but fairly clean layout

Nemecys

Ruz: cheers for the head mesh, ill save that and just use it as reference

Psyk0: ahhh cheers, i had a feeling that quads were just an easier way for us to work, noone had ever really explained it to me like that...

Our lecturer has set out low poly with a 6k tri count, so Im a bit confused, and if i make it too low poly i feel i will get marked down cause it wont look as nice, so im going to stay safe with about 3k mesh but oh another note, what on earth has happened here guys?



EDIT:

Dont worry it was just Terrible-S Max's fault for being so terrible :P, i got the Xoliul Shader 2 and looks so much nicer

Nemecys

Okay guys new problem.....

Im just full of them this week ;D

Ive had a browse around even got help from Cyph3r about pelt mapping and he can't seem to get it,

Can anyone tell me why for some reason the pelt mapping is trying to use the Map seams aswell even though they're different?

Psyk0

I think i throw on cylindrical mapping (doesnt matter as long as the seams get welded) and redo the seams/pelt when that happens.

Maybe it's not the same problem, but give that a shot.

Nemecys

i tried to do the cylindrical mapping but in 2012 i was so confused, i managed to do it with the relax until flatten tool though....

but even though i can see them in the bottom right i cant get them to work those shape mapping tools.

And honestly those seams won't weld, at all..... its so weird, but its a bit more flattened and relaxed now just trying to perfect is hard tho there's so many red areas like tip of the nose and stuff

Psyk0

Oh i think what you are seeing is edge distortion, go to display and uncheck edge distortion, it does not affect your seams at all, it just shows you which area have some stretching that's all. I hate it and always turn it off.

Nemecys

I think it actually crashes my copy of 2012, cause after a while it goes back to white, and then if i DARE click pelt or anything like that again, the windows pop up but then insta disappear,

Cheers for the help guys, the normals have come out fairly well, hopefully there isn't too much distortion on my face for the diffuse etc.

Ill probably keep this posted to get some critique as i progress, please excuse me if i totally ignore some of it though i may not have the time to fix it , only got like 2 weeks to do 4 assignments

Mark Dygert

For some of the problem areas, you can go into vert mode, turn on soft selection and relax just those areas. It will often relax better on a selection rather than the whole thing and the soft select will help it blend into the surrounding area.