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New model topology

Krisonrik
polycounter lvl 17
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Krisonrik polycounter lvl 17
I look through quite a few pictures of other good modeler's topology and created this model. This time I try to keep triangles at minimle level and pushed all of them into either inside of eye area or inside the mouth. Now I want to model my ear carefully, I couldn't find a good way to cut ear off the main head and remain as one polygon shape. I tried extract, and copy face. But they all split every single face up. Even after merg all the edges, model is somehow broken when I try to add more lines. Please help m(__)m
MeNew1.jpg

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  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Getting there. I think polygons with many sides are no better than triangles, try to keep more quads. And avoid loops that don't contribute to the shape or at least keep it, the chin's loops will cause problems (making it look too hard edged) when subdivided.
  • Krisonrik
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    Krisonrik polycounter lvl 17
    [ QUOTE ]
    Getting there. I think polygons with many sides are no better than triangles, try to keep more quads. And avoid loops that don't contribute to the shape or at least keep it, the chin's loops will cause problems (making it look too hard edged) when subdivided.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Is it because of too many loops around the eyes? Here is the image that I am modeling from. The shapes around the eyes are a bit hard to shape without many loops. Anytips? MeF.jpg
  • Ninjas
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    Ninjas polycounter lvl 18
    It's looking much better.

    Since this looks like it is ultimately to be meshsmoothed, it would be nice to see both the low poly (control mesh) and high poly.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    Much, much improved krisonrik!
    Be careful of the obvious double edge that goes all around the mouth. You might want to spread it apart as it goes around the top of the chin there to avoid getting too hard a line. Two edges close together will cause too hard an edge on subdivision, and I think that would also happen on your chin. Make sure you periodically smooth and undo, to see how your geometry is subdividing.

    I wouldn't worry too much about wrinkles in the forehead geo on such a young subject. I think you could bump map those fine.

    As for your question, make sure you have polygons>tool options>keep new faces together ticked before doing any extracting.
  • Krisonrik
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    Krisonrik polycounter lvl 17
    I took out 1 loop around the eyes and here are the new topology and smoothed view. Btw, can anyone please tell me how to cut the ear off? (not delete) I want to seperate the ear portion and refine it.
    MeNew2.jpg
    MeNew3.jpg
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    Lose the grid! smile.gif

    Check my note on using extraction.
  • Krisonrik
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    Krisonrik polycounter lvl 17
    Is that in your tutorial Daz? Lol I remember you said... "I stuck an ear from other model... and why the hell not!?" XD
    But how did you do it, I didn't see.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    No, I meant I have a note higher up in this thread about using the extract tool.

    Well, I've got a bunch of different ears lying around now for sure. But I'm not fully sure I understand your issue.
    If you have an ear, and a hole in the side of your head, you just stitch them together no? As in, simply polygons>combine and then going in and welding verts and re-arranging some topology with the split poly tool.
  • Krisonrik
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    Krisonrik polycounter lvl 17
    [ QUOTE ]
    No, I meant I have a note higher up in this thread about using the extract tool.

    Well, I've got a bunch of different ears lying around now for sure. But I'm not fully sure I understand your issue.
    If you have an ear, and a hole in the side of your head, you just stitch them together no? As in, simply polygons>combine and then going in and welding verts and re-arranging some topology with the split poly tool.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Oh, I know the stitching part. It's just that I want to cut that lame ear off the head and then use that cut off part modeling around to create an ear that's not so lame... I better go search for your extract tutorials then. I is easier to use poly-to-poly method to model ear? Or is it easier to use a existing general model and refine into it?
  • retleks
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    retleks polycounter lvl 18
    Looks like you've got the major loops laid in, for the most part. The problem comes with the way you are handing you're details. The main point behind using Good mesh flow is for ease of animation, it just so happens that also goes hand in hand with ease of sculptability especially when going to zbrush. One thing that seems evident here is that you seem to be having trouble terminating your edge loops. Instead of just running them in to an edge and stopping like in the forehead region, try looping them back into each other. This is localizing your details, something you'll notice in good meshes is how there is a general set of edge loops defining the masses of shapes, and then within that you have detail edge loops defining specific features, such as the wrinkles on a forehead. Something else you mentioned was that you tried to keep the tris to a minimum and only in the corner of the eyes. This is a very bad place to put tris because the eyes get animated more than any other feature on a face. Don't be affraid to extend that edge and either make it connect, or put the tri somewhere like, behind the ear, or in the oriphace of the ear. I'd recommend to go here http://www.subdivisionmodeling.com/ and read what they have, especially on methods regarding terminating loops.

    Good luck, just keep practicing and one day you won't even realize think about this stuff, it just happens.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    I better go search for your extract tutorials then.

    [/ QUOTE ]
    I don't have any extract tutorials. I was just saying earlier in the thread that If you want to use extract and keep all the polys together, make sure you have 'keep new faces together' checked.
  • Krisonrik
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    Krisonrik polycounter lvl 17
    [ QUOTE ]
    [ QUOTE ]
    I better go search for your extract tutorials then.

    [/ QUOTE ]
    I don't have any extract tutorials. I was just saying earlier in the thread that If you want to use extract and keep all the polys together, make sure you have 'keep new faces together' checked.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Keep new faces together? I don't see that option ; ;
    There is a "separate Extracted Faces". And I unchecked that. But, each individual face still seprated. And when I use Separate under Polygon menu, Main head is one piece... and ear is many pieces. Even after combine and merge edge, they are still many pieces in the menu and very hard to manage.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    As for your question, make sure you have polygons>tool options>keep new faces together ticked before doing any extracting.

    [/ QUOTE ]
  • Krisonrik
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    Krisonrik polycounter lvl 17
    [ QUOTE ]
    As for your question, make sure you have polygons>tool options>keep new faces together ticked before doing any extracting.

    [/ QUOTE ]
    Thank you so much! You are my savior (praise to Daz Orz)
  • Krisonrik
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    Krisonrik polycounter lvl 17
    Anyone can share some tips on getting rid of triangles? Somestimes after dividing the polygons, a triangle or a few may fore around the intersection. I try to maintain the loop and try to transform those triangles into squares. But it just seems that they end up showing around somewhere else. It's very frustrating.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    Well, I've a couple of thoughts on that.

    1) Currently you are sort of working backwards. You had a mesh that was lacking in the quad department, so now you're revamping the topology to be much more quad centric. That in itself is much much harder than starting with a very low poly model that is 100% quads, and building up edge loops to add detail. In essence, adding more detail to an already predominantly quad model is much much easier on the brain than re-arranging pre-existing poor surface topology to be all quads.

    2) Some tris are almost inevitable, and you'd be hard pushed to end up with 100% quads. It's possible, but it takes time.

    3) It gets easier with practise. If you will, your brain builds up a visual library of junctions, terminations and general topological arrangments to call upon that make it easier over time to figure this stuff out.
  • Krisonrik
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    Krisonrik polycounter lvl 17
    Thanks Daz, but actually I wasn't work backward. This model is completely new and I just built it yesterday. It's definitely started off from quad. I built one other model before from the same photo(actually that photo is me) and that's what you saw in the other thread. It's just that when I put loops around. For example... say two lines are intersected perpendicularly, and I have a loop that's going to go through these 2 lines. That by itself is a triangle. I am still kind of new to this all quad idea. And it's very hard sometimes. Some evil triangle will stuck in the middle of everything... and I can't quite get rid of it. This is the latest edition of my model. I just added an ear on it. I consider it less lame than before.
    MeNew4.jpgMeNew5.jpg
  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    This brings me back to when I started modeling heads. you are doing all the "mistakes" I did when I first made my heads. Make your loops around the mouth go in circular patterns and not to the back of the head like you are doing now. If you do that you'll get nasty shading around the mouth and jaw. Mop has some good head modeling videos that show how to do this.

    Anyway I think you need to focus on how those edges form large shapes first then worry about refining.

    It seems you are trying to detail the eyes, nose, mouth first then worrying about how to model the volume with all that detail in there. Since polycount is down I'll post you the videos Mop made if you are interested. They still help me look at things differently when I get stuck on something.

    Do what Daz did with his picture and draw a wireframe inside your 3D app with the line tool before you start modeling. Just make sure they have no bezier handles, I don't know how that setting is called in Maya though, but I'm sure it can do it. Actually I just looked it up select the EP tool go under options and set the curve to linear. Draw the minimum amount of loops needed.

    Make eye socket shape with 4 verts first then have those edges flow into other areas in the face. Try to keep the edges flowing in circular patterns. Then when you get to the point where you can't smooth anything out with those 4 edges that where introduced by the eye add four more points and detail as much as your can with the added detail. Mops video shows this very well so let me know if you want to study it.

    It easy to make a mess out of it, it just take a lot of practice.

    Alex
  • Krisonrik
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    Krisonrik polycounter lvl 17
    I used to want to get away with continuing all lines through, but I actually followed up on most of the curves throughout the model. You can see my eyes are all connected with the rest of the curves. It's not just a loop by itself. Reason there are more lines around the ear is because I extracted that part and refined it seperately. This is the first model that I pay attesion to loops and making sure most are quads. In fact there are maybe 10 triangles in this model at the max. And 8 of them are inside the mouth and eyes where you can't really see. Anyway, I would love to see those videos. Every bit helps.
  • Sage
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    Sage polycounter lvl 19
    I'm sending you an email to the address posted on in your profile. It says where you can download the file from. The service is called yousendit. By the way are good at low poly modelling?

    the file was sent .:) This is the link just in case you don't get the email there.

    http://download.yousendit.com/93AA77961FF9F8BA

    Alex
  • Toomas
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    Toomas polycounter lvl 18
    Take a mirror and grin as hard as you can, now looks how the loops look around the mouth, slowly relax your face and take note where the skin from the bottom of the loop ends up at.
    Repeat untill you figure out all the loops.
    Also if you make an angry face you can see most features more clearly than with relaxed face.
    And some stuff is hard to see so use your fingers too while studing your face or if you find a victim then his/her face.

    Good luck
  • retleks
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    retleks polycounter lvl 18
    Maybe you should try a different technique until you get the hang of it? http://kolbyjukes.com/?page_id=8 some videos of the edge extrusion method, which once you get use to it, can go extremely fast. Obviously it has some downsides, but one of the big ups, is that it is very hard to end up with tris where you don't want them. The major down, you really need to have a good idea of what you want before you get started, because it isn't exactly a rough out the shape way of working.
  • Krisonrik
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    Krisonrik polycounter lvl 17
    wow, so much good stuff. Thanks everyone for being so nice and supportive. I love this community laugh.gif
  • Jeremy Lindstrom
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    Jeremy Lindstrom polycounter lvl 18
    The page cannot be found, he took his movies down back in March.. frown.gif
  • retleks
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    retleks polycounter lvl 18
    Damn, so he did. I guess I can up them to my site if there is interest?
  • shadows
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    shadows polycounter lvl 18
    Like others have suggested maybe you should try a different technique, approach, like edge extruding.
    It would be a bit easier (was for me and other people) to understand how to place your different edge loops and keeping a cleaner mesh from the start. Because right now you have something that is quite messy and could take you sometime to get everything to flow nicely together.

    Things like wrinkles is something you should keep for the end stages when all your edgeloops are set up so it doesnt get in the way. Or not modelling them at all and simply painting them into a bump map.

    But yea you're going in the right direction, keep at it.
  • Krisonrik
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    Krisonrik polycounter lvl 17
    I can use some tutorial about extrude edge then... I can't seem to find it useful for a solid shape. Put it simply... I don't see which part of the face modeling will be needing it. Anyone mind give me some tips on this?
    Or if you mean by modeling piece by piece with extrude edge? Isn't that similar to poly-to-poly modeling? like modeling from some part of the face and actually grow to be a full size face.
  • retleks
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    retleks polycounter lvl 18
    Yea, same thing. Just start with a single poly, and just start extruding out edges to make your shapes. I'll place the videos on my ftp when I get off work.
  • Krisonrik
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    Krisonrik polycounter lvl 17
  • retleks
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    retleks polycounter lvl 18
    http://www.beneoff.com/vids/kolbyvids.zip
    Uploaded, will only be up for the week end probably though.
  • Jeremy Lindstrom
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    Jeremy Lindstrom polycounter lvl 18
    sweet, I can use em too..
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