I've spent possibly too much time on facial sculpting (I'm a perfectionist, I cant help it), so I'm fairly happy with the basic shape now. I'll probably be making more tweaks every now and then anyway. But I've got around to sorting the nose out, its still a bit wide, and needs some more work, but it'll have to do for now, because I want to get on with the lips and eyes. I had a quick attempt at the lips, but the mesh smooth really mucks things up, even when using vertex weighting.
I'm a bit annoyed, that I spent a long time resculpting the chin, almost perfected it, then realising that I had done it on a version I didnt want to keep, now its back to pointy land. Oh well, save it for another day.
Has anyone got any tips on doing the lips? I'm sure the texture will be most of it, as the colour really defines the shape somehow.
I found a few good tools that I'd highly recommend using:
- "Relax" tool can be found on the vertex subgroup of the object, and it basically takes the selected vertices, and evens them out a little, like an average. Use the custom settings for it though, and you can do wonders getting rid of annoying bumps and dips in the face, without the aid of smoothers.
- "Retriangulate" is a polygon tool, which will redraw your quads, with the inside edge being optimised. What does this mean? Well I've taken an example below, to show you how the same quad can look very different. What you must remember when working in 3Ds Max (and possibly all 3D software, is that every face(polygon) is a set of triangles, so quads are simply two triangles. Retriangulate will try to choose the best looking option, so selecting ALL polygons and using this will improve your model greatly. If you dont trust the computer to do this, or it just comes out a bit messed up, use "Edit Triangulation" to draw the centre line manually. It saved me going crazy a few times.
- I'm sure you all know of soft-selection by now, I'd still recommend using it for softer areas (duh!) such as cheeks and chin. The 'bubble' factor is worth using, so you get the right curves.
3 comments:
This looks so good James, you should be really happy with it. On your point about the mesh smoothing making things less defined, read Richards blog, he mentions a method on there which sounds like it could helpful. Good work mate, looking really good. The final is going to look great wtih all of us putting in this much effort.
I made my lips by just extruding the top lip a little bit (not all the way to the corners) and moving them back a little. Simialr technique with the bottom of the lips as well. Its easier to grab them by using the vertices's. Don't pick up the corners (or edges) of the lips for the moment. Once you have the main shape, move the edges of the lips back towards the corners of the mouth. You will have a gap for the mouth. Thats how I managed to do mine!
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